A highly original and chillingly suspenseful journey through the darkest alleys of international espionage. Micah Dalton isn't paid to ask questions. He's a cleaner, a CIA fixer sent in to mop up the mess when an agent or situation goes bad. But when his close friend and colleague Porter Naumann turns up dead in an idyllic hill town in Tuscany,...

Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics is an unforgettable debut novel that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock: a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit. 'I wrote this account one year after I'd found Hannah Dead. I thought I'd managed to erase...

From the bestselling author of Star of the Sea and Shadowplay, a thrilling novel about a father who takes the law into his own hands. 'Gripping and moving...a taut, expertly crafted plot' Guardian Dublin, June 1995: the hottest summer since records began. But Billy Sweeney, a middle-aged salesman with a failed marriage, a faltering career and a tumbledown house, has...

‘I wondered if I was dying. I wasn’t afraid to die but, such was the pain in my gut, I wished it would happen soon.’ The night before the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a prestigious black-tie Gala dinner. It is a fitting testament to the glamour of the...

Gabriel Allon, art restorer and spy, is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. An al-Qaeda suspect is killed in London, and photographs are found on his computer – photographs that lead Israeli intelligence to suspect that al-Qaeda is planning one of its most audacious attacks ever, straight at the heart of the Vatican. Allon warns the Pope’s...

The New Girl Friend was published in 1985, and the title story earned Rendell her second Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award. 'Every tale is carefully crafted and climaxed, her feel for lurking malevolence is as assured as ever.' -The Times Then came The Copper Peacock in 1991, a collection of nine short horror stories in which 'the...

When a teacher is found dead, having apparently committed suicide, his friend Pierre Hoffman takes over class 4F and finds himself responsible for a group of strangely subdued, well-behaved and yet menacing pupils. Assuming their behaviour to be a response to the trauma of their teacher's death, Pierre Hoffman at first takes it easy with the precocious class, refusing to...

'A breath of fresh cold air . . . a dangerous edge to gladden fans of Lisbeth Salander' Boyd Tonkin The first in the Rebecka Martinsson series from the million-book bestselling author, for fans of Stieg Larsson, The Bridge and The Killing TV series. A church in the glittering frozen wastes of northern Sweden. Inside, a sacrifice: the body of...

He thought he had it easy, until he fell into the middle of a murderous drug war . . . 'This one you'll have trouble putting down' New York Times Nick Breakspear thought he had opted for the easy life, but acting as nursemaid for the idle rich aboard the luxury yacht Wavebreaker in the Bahamas does have its downside....

Los Angeles is full of actors. For psychologist Alex Delaware, finding out what's real and what's not is about to become a matter of life and horrific death ... Called in to evaluate an aspiring actress accused - along with her boyfriend - of staging her own abduction, Alex is indifferent when the case seems to go nowhere. But then...

Under a searing Calabrian sky, detective Daniel Wright is shown the world’s most famous stolen painting – Caravaggio’s Nativity. As a Caravaggio lover and expert in art recovery, he is determined to rescue it from the mafia bosses who use it as payment for drug deals and assassinations. Risking his marriage, his career and his life, Daniel defies his superiors...

Some secrets are too devastating to be told... When Natalie Moore is killed in a freak accident in France her mother - the very poised and elegant Jessica - knows instinctively there is more to it.However, Natalie's father - the glamorous, high-flying Charlie - is so paralysed by the horror of losing his daughter, that he refuses even to discuss...

The son of an English father and Russian mother, Charlie Doig is a big man - big in stature and big in spirit. A naturalist, he roughs it around the world collecting birds and insects for museums. In 1914 he is on a mission for the Academy of Sciences in Russian Turkestan when war breaks out. His pay is stopped...

In less than an hour, Sean has a meeting with a mestizo gangster. On the other side of town, Rosa listens for her husband’s car, and thirteen-year-old Vincente is watching for the man who pays money for street-kids’ dreams. Tonight, these disparate lives will violently collide . . . ...

Two prostitutes are murdered in Tokyo. Twenty years previously both women were educated at the same elite school for young ladies, and had seemingly promising futures ahead of them. But in a world of dark desire and vicious ambition, for both women, prostitution meant power. Grotesque is a masterful and haunting thriller, a chilling exploration of women's secret lives in...