Nigella Lawson has written eleven bestselling cookery books including the classics How to Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess – the book that inspired a whole new generation of bakers. These books, and her TV series, have made her a household name around the world. 
 
www.nigella.com 
@Nigella_Lawson

Nigella Lawson

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Christopher Fowler

Arthur Bryant and John May are Golden Age detectives living in the modern world. Together they head up the Peculiar Crimes Unit, ready to solve any of the weird and wonderful crimes that fall across their desks.

The year is 1969 and ten guests are about to enjoy a country house weekend at Tavistock Hall. But one amongst them is harbouring thoughts of murder. . . 
 
The guests also include the young detectives Arthur Bryant and John May – undercover, in disguise and tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones, a whistle-blower turning Queen’s evidence in a massive bribery trial. Luckily, they’ve got a decent chap on the inside who can help them – the one-armed Brigadier, Nigel ‘Fruity’ Metcalf. 
 
The house’s owner – a penniless, dope-smoking aristocrat – is intent on selling the estate (complete with its own hippy encampment) to a secretive millionaire but the weekend has only just started when the millionaire goes missing and murder is on the cards. But army manoeuvres have closed the only access road and without a forensic examiner, Bryant and May can’t solve the case. It’s when a falling gargoyle fells another guest that the two incognito detectives decide to place their future reputations on the line. And in the process discover that in Swinging Britain nothing is quite what it seems… 
 
So gentle reader, you are cordially invited to a weekend in the country. Expect murder, madness and mayhem in the mansion!

Bryant & May – Hall of Mirrors

(Bryant & May Book 16)

Frank Gardner

In the dying light of an Arctic afternoon a vast black shape slips beneath the waters of Murmansk bay, her full complement of crew on board. But the Russian nuclear-powered submarine the Novorussiya is carrying something else - something so diabolically destructive that not all the crew are aware of this cargo. 
 
Kilometres to the south, at a military base hidden in the frozen forests of Arctic Russia, a lone figure steps out into a blast of windblown snow. Unseen, Major Orlov makes his way to a distant corner of the base and retrieves a hidden transmitter. He knows all about the Novorussiya and what she’s carrying and he needs to alert his handlers in London. But Orlov also knows that the net of suspicion is closing in on him and he wants out. Fast. 
When Orlov’s extraction across the border into Finland goes disastrously wrong MI6 assign Luke Carlton to team up with the formidable Finnish Special Forces officer Sini Järvinen to spearhead the quest to find out exactly what the Russian double-agent knew so the West can prepare. Their mission takes them across the border by night-time parachute drop, to the very edge of the Kola Peninsula, home to Russia’s ballistic missile fleet, then on to the tropical island of Tobago and a vine-clad villa where a terrible truth is revealed. 
As tensions between the West and Russia reach fever pitch, can Luke Carlton and his Finnish accomplice discover the secrets of Moscow’s latest weapon before it’s too late?

Ballistic

It’s a fresh start for the Met's oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit. 
Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt... 
Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate. Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London. All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city. And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls… 
Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere - it’s even discovered hidden in the PCU’s offices. And when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is hiding something. The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him, playing on his fears of premature burial. 
Rich in strange characters and steeped in London’s true history, this is Bryant &amp; May’s most peculiar and disturbing case of all.

Bryant & May - The Bleeding Heart

(Bryant & May Book 11)

'Winningly eccentric . . . London, in all its non-homogenous, sprawling splendour, is as much a character as Fowler's sleuthing duo' Barry Forshaw, Financial Times 
 
 The Peculiar Crimes Unit has solved many extraordinary cases over the years, but some were hushed up and hidden away. Until now. 
Arthur Bryant remembers these lost cases as if they were yesterday. Unfortunately, he doesn't remember yesterday, so the newly revealed facts could come as a surprise to everyone, including his exasperated partner John May. 
 
Here, then, is the truth about the Covent Garden opera diva and the seventh reindeer, the body that falls from the Tate Gallery, the ordinary London street corner where strange accidents keep occurring, the consul's son discovered buried in the unit's basement, the corpse pulled from a swamp of Chinese dinners, a Hallowe'en crime in the Post Office Tower, and the impossible death that's the fault of a forgotten London legend. All of the unit's oddest characters are here, plus the detectives' long-suffering sergeant Janice Longbright gets to reveal her own forgotten mystery. 
 
These twelve crimes must be solved without the help of modern technology, mainly because nobody knows how to use it. Expect misunderstood clues, lost evidence, arguments about Dickens, churches, pubs and disorderly conduct from the investigative officers they laughingly call 'England's Finest'! 
 
_______________________ 
 
 
What readers are saying: 
***** 'Another gem from Christopher Fowler' 
 
***** 'I've loved Bryant &amp; May since I first discovered them' 
***** 'A perfect collection of implausibly, improbably impossible mysteries for readers of Bryant and May both old and new'

Bryant & May – England’s Finest

(Short Stories)

The defenestration of a ruthless theatre impresario's young son was definitely not the best way to end the play's first night party. And the crime scene itself was most unusual: a locked bedroom, with no sign of forced entry, no prints or traces of blood, just a sinister, life-size puppet of Mr Punch lying on the floor... 
 
Everyone at the party - from the dodgy producer and rakish male lead to the dour set designer and the assistant stage manager (the wild daughter of a prominent civil servant) - is a suspect. 
 
It's a perfect case for Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit but the Home Office, wary of the PCU's eccentric methods and intensely aware of the potential political embarrassment, wants them off the investigation. 
 
The elderly detectives are not so easily deterred, however. Delving into the history of London theatre and the gruesome origins of 'Punch and Judy', they uncover a maniacal killer is at work - one who must be caught before it's curtains for everyone!

Bryant & May and the Memory of Blood

(Bryant & May Book 9)

The unthinkable has happened at London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In the bitter depths of winter, a member of the team has been murdered, and everyone who works there is a suspect. With the exception of Arthur Bryant and John May that is, for the eccentric detectives who run London's strangest crime division are stranded on a desolate snowbound road somewhere in the West Country on their way to a spiritualists' convention. As the snows worsen, Bryant &amp; May attempt to solve the crime long distance. And their situation is about to get much. much worse. Unknown to the elderly detectives, an obsessed killer has travelled from the Riviera to Dartmoor, and is stalking the stranded vehicles, searching for one particular victim and edging ever closer with each passing minute... 
Two murderers, two incapacitated detectives, just six hours to solve two crimes and save the unit. Armed only with their wits, woolly coats, a mobile phone with a fading battery and some dubious veal and ham pies, Bryant &amp; May are bracing themselves for a strange and very dangerous day...

White Corridor

(Bryant & May Book 5)

Patrick Worrall

“What you've got to understand is that men like him are the aristocracy in here. The armed robbers and contract killers. They're a breed apart.” 
 
Darren Sinfield, the most notorious inmate at Lower Marston maximum-security prison, has gone over the wall and is thought to be holed up in nearby Avonford, a decaying town with a squalid underbelly. 
 
The intelligence officer tasked with hunting him down, Declan Rennard, was an Avonford man himself back in the day. But times have changed. He used to know where the bodies are buried. Now he’s in danger of becoming one of them. 
 
To catch a criminal, Dec is going to have to start thinking like one and that means entering his own dark history to engage in a twisted game of cat and mouse with a man who plays it better than anyone. 
 
But unearthing the past will lead him into some dangerous places - the brutal world of organised crime, the dirty secrets of the security establishment and an inverted skyscraper under central London that is home to all the stories Britain would rather forget...

The Aristocracy

Ellie Graves

Revenge is tough to swallow... 
 
Things for Renee Landis are finally looking up. She just quit her dead-end job at a chicken shop after landing the coveted role of junior chef at London’s pristine NOVA restaurant. 
 
But it's not the restaurant that draws Renee in - it's the executive chef. Gracie Fitzgerald is as legendary as she is secretive, known for her succulent, signature dishes and the notorious methods in which she runs her kitchen. No one can touch her workspace with bare hands. No other chef can taste her signature dishes. And no one, under any circumstances, is allowed to enter her personal freezer…

Maneater

Janet Gleeson

Agnes Meadowes is cook to the Blanchards of Foster Lane, the renowned silversmiths. Her quiet world of culinary activity, preparing jugged hare, oyster loaves, almond soup and other delicacies for the family, is a happy refuge from the hustle and bustle of 1750s London. But in a single night everything is to change: the Blanchards' most prestigious and expensive commission, a giant silver wine cooler destined for the house of Sir Bartholomew Grey, is stolen and a sinister chain of events is set in motion. A young apprentice is murdered and a young maid, Rose, disappears. Are these portentous happenings connected? 
Called upon by her master to investigate 'below stairs', Agnes enters a dark world of hidden secrets, jealousy and murderous intent. Before the game is played out she will be forced to act as mouse to the infamous Thief Taker's cat as she is drawn into a seamy underworld of London crime. And the truth comes at a high price: she must decide how big a sacrifice she is prepared to make to bring the villains to justice. 
Boasting a heroine who's going to win a multitude of admirers, THE THIEF TAKER is a spellbinding novel of crime, chicanery and cooking.

The Thief Taker

'The newspapers referred to it as the case of the seventy-seven clocks. There was quite a fuss at the time. We got into terrible trouble. Dear fellow, it was one of our most truly peculiar cases. I remember as if it was yesterday.' In fact, Arthur Bryant remembers very little about yesterday, but he does remember the oddest investigation of his career... 
It was late in 1973. As strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during Edward Heath's 'Winter of Discontent', sundry members of a wealthy, aristocratic family were being disposed of in a variety of grotesque ways - by reptile, by bomb, by haircut. As the hours of daylight diminish towards Christmas, Bryant &amp; May, the irascible detectives of London's controversial Peculiar Crimes Unit, know that time is the key - and time is running out for both the family and the police. Their investigations lead them into a hidden world of class conflict, craftsmanship and the secret loyalties of big business. But what have seventy seven ticking clocks to do with it? 
Now the full story can at last be revealed, in this most eerie of adventures that features Arthur Bryant at his rudest, John May at his most exasperated and a gallery of colourful, bizarre characters who could only make their home in a city like London...

Seventy-Seven Clocks

(Bryant & May Book 3)

Our story begins at the end of an investigation, as the members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit race to catch a killer near London Bridge Station in the rain, not realising that they’re about to cause a bizarre accident just yards away from the crime scene. And it will have repercussions for them all… 
One year later, in an exclusive London crescent, a woman walks her dog – but she’s being watched. When she’s found dead, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. Why? Because the method of death is odd, the gardens are locked, the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog has disappeared. 
So a typical case for Bryant &amp; May. But the hows and whys of the murder are not the only mysteries surrounding the dead woman - there's a missing husband and a lost nanny to puzzle over too. And it seems very like that the killer is preparing to strike again. 
As Arthur Bryant delves in to the history of London’s ‘wild chambers’ - its extraordinary parks and gardens, John May and the rest of the team seem to have caused a national scandal. If no-one is safe then all of London’s open spaces must be closed… 
With the PCU placed under house arrest, only Arthur Bryant remains at liberty – but can a hallucinating old codger catch the criminal and save the unit before it’s too late?

Bryant & May - Wild Chamber

(Bryant & May Book 15)

Erika Johansen

With each passing day, Kelsea Glynn is growing into her new responsibilities as Queen of the Tearling. By stopping the shipments of slaves to the neighbouring kingdom of Mortmesne, she crossed the Red Queen, a brutal ruler whose power derives from dark magic, who is sending her fearsome army into the Tearling to take what is hers. And nothing can stop the invasion. 
But as the Mort army draws ever closer, Kelsea develops a mysterious connection to a time before the Crossing, and she finds herself relying on a strange and possibly dangerous ally: a woman named Lily, fighting for her life in a world where being female can feel like a crime. The fate of the Tearling – and that of Kelsea’s own soul – may rest with Lily and her story, but Kelsea may not have enough time to find out. 
In this dazzling sequel to her bestselling debut The Queen of the Tearling, Erika Johansen brings back favourite characters, including the Mace and the Red Queen, and introduces unforgettable new players, adding exciting layers to her multidimensional tale of magic, mystery and a fierce young heroine.

The Invasion of the Tearling

(The Tearling Trilogy 2)

A controversial artist is found dead in her own art installation inside a riverside gallery with locked doors and windows - the only witness is a small boy who insists the murderer was a masked man on a horse. A television presenter is struck by lightning while indoors... Two seemingly impossible crimes that only Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit might be able to solve. But Bryant has lost his nerve following a disastrous public appearance, and May is fighting to keep the unit from closure. Worse still, the case of the Leicester Square Vampire, an unsolved mystery from the past that changed both their lives, has returned to haunt them. 
With a sinister modern-day highwayman bringing terror to the London streets in a series of crimes each more puzzling than the last, the elderly detectives track their suspect to an exclusive private school and a deprived housing estate. But just when they need all the help they can get to uncover a new breed of criminal, the highwayman is hailed a national hero, and the public turns against them... 
Bryant &amp; May are back on the case in an adventure that explores the dark side of celebrity, the conflicts of youth, age and class, and the peculiar myths of old London.

Ten-Second Staircase

(Bryant & May Book 4)

Winner of CrimeFest 2013's 'eDunnit Award' for 'the best crime fiction ebook published in 2012 in both hardcopy and in electronic format'. 
 
Two small children are playing a game called 'Witch-Hunter'. They place a curse on a young woman taking lunch in a church courtyard and wait for her to die. An hour later the woman is indeed found dead inside St Bride's Church - a building that no-one else has entered. 
 
Unfortunately Bryant &amp; May are refused the case. Instead, there are hired by their greatest enemy to find out why his wife has suddenly started behaving strangely. She's become an embarrassment to him at government dinners, and he is convinced that someone is trying to drive her insane. She has even taken to covering the mirrors in her apartment, and believes herself to be the victim of witchcraft. 
 
Then a society photographer is stabbed to death in a nearby park and suddenly a link emerges between the two cases. And so begins an investigation that will test the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit to their limits, setting Arthur Bryant off on a trail that leads to Bedlam and Bletchley Park, and into the world of madness, codes and the secret of London's strangest relic. 
 
As the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit dig behind the city's facades to expose a world of private clubs, hidden passages and covert loyalties, they realise that the case might not just end in disaster - it might also get everyone killed.

Bryant & May and the Invisible Code

(Bryant & May Book 10)

London is under siege. A banking scandal has filled the city with violent protests, and as the anger in the streets detonates, a young homeless man burns to death after being caught in the crossfire between rioters and the police. 
But all is not as it seems; an opportunistic killer is using the chaos to exact revenge, but his intended victims are so mysteriously chosen that the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to find a way of stopping him. 
Using their network of eccentric contacts, elderly detectives Arthur Bryant and John May hunt down a murderer who adopts incendiary methods of execution. But they soon find their investigation taking an apocalyptic turn as the case comes to involve the history of mob rule, corruption, rebellion, punishment and the legend of Guy Fawkes. 
At the same time, several members of the PCU team reach dramatic turning points in their lives - but the most personal tragedy is yet to come, for as the race to bring down a cunning killer reaches its climax, Arthur Bryant faces his own devastating day of reckoning. 
‘I always said we’d go out with a hell of a bang,’ warns Bryant.

Bryant & May - The Burning Man

(Bryant & May 12)

In every detective’s life there are cases that can’t be discussed, and throughout the Bryant &amp; May novels there have been mentions of some of these such as the Deptford Demon or the Little Italy Whelk Smuggling Scandal. 
Now Arthur Bryant has decided to open the files on eleven of these previously unseen investigations that required the collective genius and unique modus operandi of Arthur Bryant and John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit - investigations that range from different times (London during the Great Smog) and a variety of places: a circus freak show, on board a London Tour Bus and even a yacht off the coast of Turkey. 
And in addition to these eleven classic cases, readers are also given a privileged look inside the Peculiar Crimes Unit (literally, with a cut away drawing of their offices), a guide to the characters of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, and access to the contents of Arthur Bryant’s highly individual library.

Bryant & May - London's Glory

(Bryant & May Book 13, Short Stories)

Tim Sebastian

Edward Bell’s mother had left the Soviet Union thirty years before – a political firebrand, a troublemaker. She worked as an interpreter, and to begin with she’d tried hard to be English. She’d kept her accent in check, been friendly with other mothers at Edward’s school. But gradually she returned to being a foreigner, she went to foreign shops, communicated only with foreign people. To her, England was nothing more than the view for the front window. 
 
She and Edward appear to have lived quietly enough until one day, the war over, a Russian businessman is found dead in London. Suddenly they are hunted by security agents from the major powers, unleashing a cycle of killing right across Europe and into Russia. For Edward Bell it is a nightmare journey – his past is colliding frighteningly with the present and he must extract his family from the ruins of a cold war that is still threatening their lives. 
 
The world through which he travels divides husband and wife, mother and son, twisting their destiny in violence and betrayal. In making his move, Bell must ultimately choose between the death of a principle and the life of a human being. He must struggle to break the political stranglehold on him and on those he loves – struggle for his last rights.

Last Rights

They've been given just one week to find a killer they'd caught once before . . . 
Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the trail of an enigma: a young man called Mr Fox. But his identity is false, his links to society are invisible and his home yields no clues. All they know is that somehow he escaped from a locked room and murdered one of their best and brightest. 
Now the detectives are being lured down into the darkest recesses of the London Underground where their quarry, expertly disguised, has struck again. Their search takes them into the vast labyrinth of tunnels, a subterranean world full of legends and ghost stations, which tie the city together. Edging closer to what lies hidden beneath the city - and to the madness that is driving a man to murder - Bryant and May are about to uncover a mystery as bizarre as anything they have ever encountered . . .

Bryant and May Off the Rails (Bryant and May 8)

(Bryant & May Book 8)

When a bomb devastates the office of London's most unusual police unit and claims the life of its oldest detective, Arthur Bryant, his surviving partner John May searches for clues to the bomber's identity. His search takes him back to the day the detectives first met as young men in 1940. 
 
In Blitz-ravaged London, a beautiful dancer rehearsing for a sexy, sinister production of 'Orpheus In The Underworld' is found without her feet. Bryant & May's investigation plunges them into a bizarre gothic mystery, where a faceless man stalks terrified actors and death strikes in darkness. Tracking their quarry through the blackout, searching for a murderer who'll stop at nothing to be free of a nightmare, the duo unwittingly follow the same path Orpheus took when leading Euridyce from the shadows of Hell. 
 
Back in the present day, John May starts to wonder if their oldest adversary might be the killer who took his partner's life. He must work alone to solve a puzzle that began over half a century earlier... 
 
In a war-shaken city of myths, rumours and fear, Bryant & May discover that a house is not always a home, nothing is as it appears, the most cunning criminals hide in plain sight, and the devil has all the best tunes. Dark drama and black comedy combine as Bryant & May take centre stage in their first great case.

Full Dark House

(Bryant & May Book 1)

The river Thames is London’s most important yet neglected artery. When a young woman is found chained to a post in the tide, no-one can understand how she came to be drowned there. At the Peculiar Crimes Unit, Arthur Bryant and John May find themselves dealing with an impossible crime committed in a very public place. 
Soon they discover that the river is giving up other victims, but as the investigation extends from the coast of Libya to the nightclubs of North London, it proves as murkily sinister as the Thames itself. That’s only part of the problem; Bryant’s rapidly deteriorating condition prevents him from handling the case, and he is confined to home. To make matters worse, May makes a fatal error of judgement that knocks him out of action and places everyone at risk. 
With the PCU staff baffled as much by their own detectives as the case, the only people who can help now are the battery of eccentrics Bryant keeps listed in his diary, but will their arcane knowledge save the day or make matters even worse? Soon there’s a clear suspect in everyone’s sights – the only thing that’s missing is any scrap of evidence. 
As the detectives’ disastrous investigation comes unstuck, the whole team gets involved in some serious messing about on the river. In an adventure that’s as twisting as the river upon which it’s set, will there be anything left of the Peculiar Crimes Unit when it’s over?

Bryant & May - Strange Tide

(Bryant & May Book 14)

'The most consistently brilliant, entertaining and educational voice in contemporary British crime fiction, the utterly fabulous Christopher Fowler.' Cathi Unsworth, CRIMESQUAD 
 
It's a Sunday morning, and the outspoken Speaker of the House of Commons has just been crushed under a mountain of citrus fruit . . . 
 
Bizarre accident or something more sinister? The government needs to know because here's a man who knows a thing or two that could compromise its future. 
 
Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit should be on the case, however it seems the PCU is no more with one detective is in hospital, the other gone AWOL with the rest of the team having been dismissed. 
 
But events escalate, and soon a series of brutal yet undeniably clever killings linked to an old English nursery rhyme threaten society's very foundations and out-of-the-blue the PCU is (temporarily) back in business. 
 
And if the two detectives - 'old men in a woke world' - can set aside their differences and discover why some of London's most influential figures are being threatened, they might not only save the unit but also prevent the city from descending into chaos . . .

Bryant & May - Oranges and Lemons

Originally built to house the workers of Victorian London, Balaklava Street is now an oasis in the heart of Kentish Town and ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at Number 5. Her death would appear to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water. It falls to the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London's longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, to search for something resembling a logical solution. 
Their initial investigations draw a blank and Bryant's attention is diverted into strange and arcane new territory, while May finds himself in hot water when he attempts to save the reputation of an academic whose knowledge of the city's forgotten underground rivers looks set to ruin his career. In the meantime, the new owner of Number 5 is increasingly unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, the particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water . . . 
Pooling their information to investigate hitherto undiscovered secrets of the city, Bryant and May make some sinister connections and realize that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there's still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for - and kill again to protect. With the PCU facing an uncertain future, the death toll mounts and two of British fiction's most enigmatic detectives must face madness, greed and revenge, armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home.

The Water Room

(Bryant & May Book 2)

In Which Mr May Makes A Mistake And Mr Bryant Goes Into The Dark 
 
Three deaths, seemingly unconnected but for one thing: each happened at precisely four a.m. - the lonely hour . . . 
 
At four in the morning outside a run-down nightclub in the wrong part of London, four strangers meet for the first time. A few weeks later a body is found on Hampstead Heath, hanging upside down and surrounded by the paraphernalia of black magic. Then a young man is killed on a London bridge and a woman is attacked in her modern (and secure) luxury apartment. 
 
To catch this killer, Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit switch to working nights. While John May takes a technological approach, Arthur Bryant calls upon sundry eccentrics and misfits for help solving what seems an impossible case. 
 
But impossible is what the PCU does best. As they draw back the curtain on a city at night, Bryant and May follow a trail of murder, arson, blackmail, kidnap, loneliness and . . . bats. 
 
‘The most consistently brilliant, entertaining and educational voice in contemporary British crime fiction’ 
CATHI UNSWORTH 
 
‘One of our most unorthodox and entertaining writers’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 
 
‘I love the wit and playfulness of the Bryant &amp; May books’ ANNE CLEEVES

Bryant & May - The Lonely Hour

(Bryant & May Book 17)

Abbie Taylor

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
That was how she saw him, mostly, in the weeks that followed. Standing there in the doorway with his toothy little grin, his crooked fringe, his blue fleece with the smiley elephant on the front. 
 
Life as a single mother is hard. Emma loves her thirteen-month-old son Ritchie, she really does – but sometimes, she dreams about what life would be like without him. But when Ritchie is abducted from the London Underground, Emma’s dream becomes a nightmarish reality. 
 
So why don’t the police seem to believe her? Why do they think that she would want to harm her son? 
 
If Emma wants Ritchie back, it looks like she’ll have to find him herself. She hasn’t been the best mother in the past – but she’s willing to go to desperate lengths to bring her little boy home . . .

Emma's Baby

The Sunday Times bestseller

One night, Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunk middle-aged lady coming out of a pub in a London backstreet. The next morning, she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbing, the pub has vanished. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they were over a century before, but the elderly detective has already lost the funeral urn of an old friend. Could he be losing his mind as well? 
 
Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs. It seems a silent, secret killer is at work, striking in full view...and yet nobody has a clue how, or why - or where he'll attack next. The likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient with a reason for killing. But knowing who the killer is and catching him are two very different propositions. 
 
As their new team at the Peculiar Crimes Unit goes in search of a madman, the octogenarian detectives ready themselves for the pub crawl of a lifetime, and come face to face with their own mortality...

The Victoria Vanishes

(Bryant and May Book 6)

Lee Child

Jack Reacher is a former major in the US Military Police who, since leaving the army, has drifted round the wide open spaces of America, hitchhiking or on buses, wherever the whim takes him. He has no permanent address, no job, no family ties, no car, no luggage, no mobile phone, no credit card - all he carries with him is a folding toothbrush. 
Reacher is never looking for trouble, but somehow trouble always find him. He is the ultimate hero for our troubled times, with a keen moral compass and sense of justice, even if he is often prepared to take the law into his own hands: he says he doesn't want to put the world to rights, he just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs.

'If anyone can put down Worth Dying For after the first few pages, then they shouldn't really be reading thrillers at all' Independent 
 
There's trouble in the deadly wilds of Nebraska . . . and Reacher walks right into it. He falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire country into submission. 
 
But it's the unsolved case of a missing eight-year-old girl that Reacher can't let go. 
 
Reacher - bruised and battered - should have just kept going. But for Reacher, that was impossible. 
 
What, in this fearful county, would be worth dying for? 
 
_________ 
 
Although the Jack Reacher novels can be read in any order, Worth Dying For follows on directly from the end of 61 Hours. 
 
And don’t miss Reacher's newest adventure, No.30, Exit Strategy! ***OUT NOW***

Worth Dying For

(Jack Reacher 15)

James Becker

AN OLD ENEMY 
 
Poland, 1945. A special Evacuation Kommando arrives at the Wencleslas Mine, site of the Nazis’ most secret weapon development project. A device known as Die Glocke is removed from the subterranean factory, loaded on to a transport aircraft and spirited out of war-ravaged Europe. No witnesses are left alive. 
 
A DESIRE FOR REVENGE 
 
London, today. Chris Bronson is working undercover for the Metropolitan Police. What begins as a routine investigation into a group of hooligans vandalising sites in North West London, takes a very sinister turn when Bronson discovers the attacks are being masterminded by a Far Right group. 
 
A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF FEAR 
 
What if the prototype for a devastating new form of super-weapon survived the end of the war? What if sixty years later it has been perfected? Now imagine an old enemy who has been hiding in the shadows and is still fighting a war most thought had ended with the fall of Hitler. 
 
Chris Bronson has less than ten days to stop the biggest and most destructive terror attack the world has ever seen.

Echo of the Reich

A Chris Bronson Thriller

Dennis Lehane

Tie-in to the major motion picture, released on 12th March 2010. 
 
US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murderer named Rachel Solando. 
 
As a killer hurricane bears down on the island, the investigation deepens and the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what really goes on in Ward C? 
 
The closer Teddy gets to the truth, the more elusive it becomes. And the more he begins to believe that he may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive him insane...

Shutter Island

A Washington woman asks Reacher for help. Her job? Protecting the Vice-President. Discover the action-packed thriller from the global bestselling author. 
 
'Lee Child's protagonist, Jack Reacher, is a hero in the Dirty Harry style, a man who lives by his own principles . . . Produces a surprising twist when it's least expected.' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'If there is a more iconic character in modern fiction than Jack Reacher, I'd like to meet them.' Daily Mirror 
 
_________ 
 
Jack Reacher walks alone. 
 
No job, no ID, no last known address. But he never turns down a plea for help. Now a woman tracks him down. A woman serving at the very heart of US power. A woman who needs Reacher's assistance in her new job. 
 
Her job? 
 
Protecting the Vice-President of the United States. 
 
Her problem? 
 
Someone wants the VP dead. 
 
_________ 
 
Although the Jack Reacher novels can be read in any order, Without Fail is the 6th in the series. 
 
And be sure not to miss Reacher's newest adventure, no.29, In Too Deep! **OUT NOW** 
 
 
Lee Child, Sunday Times bestselling author October 2024

Without Fail

(Jack Reacher 6)

'Fast, taut, tense, accurate. A terrific read' FREDERICK FORSYTH 
 'Authenticity seeps from every page . . . this is a promising start' DAILY MAIL 
 
 Introducing Luke Carlton - ex-Special Boat Service commando, and now under contract to MI6 for some of its most dangerous missions. 
 
 Sent into the steaming Colombian jungle to investigate the murder of a British intelligence officer, Luke finds himself caught up in the coils of a plot that has terrifying international dimensions. 
 
 Hunted down, captured, tortured and on the run from one of South America's most powerful and ruthless drugs cartels and its psychotic leader thirsting for revenge, Luke is in a life-or-death race against time to prevent a disaster on a truly terrifying scale: London is the target, the weapon is diabolical and the means of delivery is ingenious. 
 
 Drawing on his years of experience reporting on security matters, CRISIS is Frank Gardner's debut novel. Combining insider knowledge, up-to-the-minute hardware, fly on the wall insights with heart-in-mouth excitement, CRISIS boasts an irresistible, visceral frisson of authenticity: smart, fast-paced and furiously entertaining, here is a thriller for the 21st century. 
 
 Readers are gripped by Crisis: 
 ***** 'An excellently written page turner, full of intrigue.' 
 ***** 'It kept me engrossed and on the edge of my seat.' 
 ***** 'Superb writing style. Gripping story line.' 
 
 Luke Carlton returns in Frank Gardner's third, explosive thriller OUTBREAK. Available for pre-order now.

Crisis

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