Italy in 1819. Emilia Barton and her mother, Sarah, live a nomadic existence, travelling from town to town as itinerant dressmakers to escape their past. When they settle in the idyllic coastal town of Pesaro, Emilia desperately hopes that this time they have found a permanent home. But when Sarah is brutally attacked by an unknown assailant, a dea...

'She's not worth more than tuppence, that child!' Those are the words that haunt Sadie Linthorpe. She is the talk of Ryhope when she arrives there, aged 17, alone, seeking work and a home in the pit village. But Sadie is keeping a secret - that she is searching for her baby girl who was taken from her at birth to be sold by the child's wicked, batt...

Skinner is plunged into a web of politics and enemies in State Secrets, the 28th mystery in Quintin Jardine's best-selling crime series. Former Chief Constable Bob Skinner is long out of the police force, but trouble has a habit of following him around. So it is that he finds himself in the Palace of Westminster as a shocking act befalls the nation...

Quintin Jardine's 26th Bob Skinner mystery sees the Edinburgh sleuth plunged into a gruelling new case in which no score will go unsettled. Former Chief Constable Bob Skinner has uncovered his fair share of crime scenes over his 30-year career. But few have affected him quite as much as the horrifying sight he finds stowed in the back of a stolen c...

A golden summer, and six talented teenagers are looking forward to the brightest of futures—until a daredevil game goes horribly wrong, leaving three strangers dead. 18-year-old Megan takes the blame for the crime, leaving her friends to get on with their lives. In return, they each agree to a 'favour', payable on her release from prison. Twe...

Getting a life isn't always easy. And hanging on to it is even harder.... Jodi Taylor brings all her comic writing skills to this heartwarming tale of self-discovery. Known as The Nothing Girl because of her severe stutter and chronically low self-confidence, Jenny Dove is only just prevented from ending it all by the sudden appearance of Thomas, a...

The hunt is on for Jaeger. Ruth - his wife - has been kidnapped, and after a secret Nazi cache of uranium goes missing, it seems the enemy is on the move once more. That much uranium in enemy hands could devastate the world. It's up to Jaeger and his team to stop them before their worst fears are realised. But they are always one step ahead, pushin...

IRELAND AD 672. The abbey of Muman at Imleach Iubhair is being renovated when its guests' hostel burns to the ground. There is one fatality: Bishop Brodulf of Luxovium, a distinguished visitor and cousin to the King of Franks. Sister Fidelma is asked by Abbot Cuán to investigate the unfortunate incident and soon finds that the bishop had bee...

Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Rite, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family lives in prosperity and offers Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers, within their herder communi...

April 1940, and Britain is in turmoil. A body, wearing the uniform of a Luftwaffe captain, is found in the grounds of Trent Park - a stately home and now a prison to house high level German POWs. Trent Park's true purpose, however, is intelligence, gathered covertly from prisoners by secret listeners.The morning after the discovery of the body, one...

Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis' most ruthless detective. They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two counte...

The last time Tess de Vere saw William Benson, she was a law student. He was a 21-year-old, led from the dock of the Old Bailey to begin a life sentence for murder. Sixteen years later she walks back into Benson's life. The price of his rehabilitation - and access to the bar - is an admission of guilt to the killing of Paul Harbeton, whose family h...

A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick James is 34 and fed up. His six-year relationship with Adam has imploded, he hates his job making up celebrity gossip, and his best friend Bella has just announced she's moving to Russia. Adrift and single in loved-up London, James needs to break out of his lonely, drunken comfort zone. Encouraged by Bella,...

There is something peculiar about the hour after midnight. It is the time when darkness reigns. And strange things roam the earth. In this dazzling collection of original haunted tales, thirteen bestselling and much-loved authors bring the old superstition of the witching hour to new and vivid life. Transporting you from the smog of London to the f...

When an operational catastrophe puts a gun in the hands of a young man, who then breaks into South Oxford Nursery School and takes a group of hostages, teacher Louise Kennedy fears the worst. But Jaime Segura isn't there on a homicidal mission, and he's just as scared as those whose lives he holds as collateral. As an armed police presence builds o...

From the author of A Deadly Education and His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik.'A great heroine, new takes on old myths and legends, and surprising twists and turns. A delight' – Cassandra Clare, author of Sword CatcherAgnieszka loves her village, set deep in a peaceful valley. But the nearby enchanted forest casts a shadow over her home. Many h...

Two sisters. An intense bond. A bitter rivalry.Margo is a solitary live-in nanny for an upper-class Kensingon family. Cora is a promiscuous dancer on the cusp of a big break, living hand-to-mouth in a run-down London flat.Different though they are, an unspeakable incident from childhood haunts them both. When the terrible secret comes to light, the...

Brought to you by Penguin.STOP PRESS! The Stranger Times wins the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio Work!Vampires do not exist. Everyone knows this. So it's particularly annoying when they start popping up around Manchester . . .Nobody is pleased about it. Not the Founders, the secret organisation for whom vampires were invented as an alleg...

Brought to you by Penguin. The epic conclusion to the bestselling Empire of Salt series from master storyteller Conn Iggulden.The news from the north is grim.An army is massing under the new king of Feal. They head towards Darien - city of the Twelve families -demanding allegiance, or war.Tellius, Speaker to the Council, knows this divided city wil...

Brought to you by Penguin. STOP PRESS! The Stranger Times wins the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio Work!There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the g...

Brought to you by Penguin.Get ready to be spellbound by the new, fantastical novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy sensation The Book of Doors . . .The world of unknowable objects - magical items that most people have no idea possess powers - has been quiet for decades . . .But three current members of a secret society have rema...