Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland — to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancee he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer. So hypnotic are the faded charms of the Majestic, the Major is almost unaware of the gathering storm. But this is Ireland in 1919 — and the struggle for independence is about to explode with brutal force.

Three muffled thuds ring from the partially filled grave of the newly wed girl. Only the verger hears them and he dismisses the noise as his imagination. But over the next few days others also hear faint sounds. An exhumation order is granted. Reporter Kate Hemingway sneaks into the small suburban churchyard when the coffin is opened, and the scene she witnesses is so horrific she can never forget it. As she starts work on the story, Kate finds herself caught up in a sinister and macabre cover-up. At the centre is a respected anaesthetist who has a secret obsession. He believes people can exist outside their bodies and that if he can prove it he will provide the answer to the question that has haunted mankind through the ages: is there life after death? Nothing — and no one — is going to stand in the way of his driving ambition...

It's the spring of 1968, the sun shines down on an America on the brink of civil war. Martin Luther King preaches in vain for non-violent protest and the ghettos of Washington DC seethe with anger. In the middle of this powder-keg is thrust a young black cop, barely out of school himself. Derek Strange believes passionately that he can make a difference, but his friends and family think he's a traitor and a patsy of the white establishment. On April 4th, 1968, Dr King is assassinated on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee. And black America rises as one to condemn the slaying of their hero. For one week, it seems that the whole country will fall. And Derek, his brother, his father, his mother and his whole community find themselves at the heart of a battle for the heart and soul of the new world.

Best mates Sandie, Emily and Grazia thought they'd be friends forever, but they reckoned without the dividing effects of men and money... Shopping guru Sandie is on a roll, with a baby on the way and Toby, her posh totty partner, proposing every five minutes. But when she realises the legendary Garnett's Department Store is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, she knows she's the only one to save it, even though Toby's mother seems determined to scupper the rescue bid. For Emily, Sandie's apparently perfect life is a bitter pill to swallow, especially as Emily's been banned from having a second child by her boyfriend, Will, who is more interested in saving the planet than her. As the rifts grow, will she learn to stand on her own two feet, or give in to a new temptation? Glamorous Grazia tries to play peace-maker but she's facing her own big decision: whether to develop her new career as an erotic embroidery artist... or give up on her talent for the sake of her new, needy lover? Can the magic of retail bring the secret shoppers back together, or is it time to shut up shop for good?

Gaul was divided into three parts. No, four parts — for one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the Roman invaders. BOOK 23 Julius Caesar has devised his most cunning attack yet on the indomitable Gauls — he sends Caius Preposterus, a bright young graduate of the Latin School of Economics, to corrupt them by introducing them to big business. But do wealth and success bring happiness?

Anna and Natasha are two friends in their 20s sharing a tired flat in Bradford. Sick of the local grotty club Apollo they decide to go uptown in the search for a better class of man. They begin to frequent the Bartok where they meet Richard and Geoffrey and love blossoms. But Richard is already married and Geoffrey isn't all he seems... Sharp and acerbic, this is a refreshing take on the single life and the hunt for men whose idea of romance goes beyond a curry and a sixpack!

Once he was Sierra Lane, hero to countless youngsters in a series of B-movie westerns. Now, after two years in prison, John Ray Horn lives on the margins of post-World War II Los Angeles. His wife has left him, and, blacklisted by the studios, he makes ends meet by collecting debts for his old Indian co-star, Joseph Mad Crow. Then an old friend, Scotty, contacts Horn. He has come across some obscene photos, including one, several years old, of Horn's stepdaughter, Clea. Within days, Scotty is dead, and Clea has run away. Horn's search takes him from neon-lit ocean-front piers to wooded canyons, from rich homes in the Hollywood Hills to Central Avenue, the Harlem of LA, a street rich in jazz and corruption. But will the on-screen tough-guy hero be able to sustain his role off-screen?

Greece, 1930s. A young British diplomat and his wife have been posted to Athens. But while Hugh Timberlake thrives on the endless parties and socialising, his spirited and unconventional wife Evadne finds her life as an embassy wife stifling. When they go to Crete on holiday to stay in a run-down house owned by Hugh's family, Evadne falls in love with the place, deciding to stay on when Hugh returns to his duties. As she tries to rebuild the ramshackle home, Evadne makes firm friends with Anthi, a woman from the village, and Christos, the handsome and charismatic man employed to work on the house. But the dark clouds of war are gathering, and the little island will become a crucible of violence and bloodshed in the days to come. For Evadne, her friends and family, it will be the greatest test they have ever known.

Samuel 'Sailor' Doyle has transferred from Vice to Homicide in the Virginia State Police. He has a mistress, an alcohol problem, a prescription drug dependency, and a burgeoning self-loathing that alienates his wife and family. On Friday 3 July, the rookie investigator is assigned to a double homicide on a rural farm some 15 miles outside Richmond. One of the victims has been interred in a makeshift tomb, while the other is stuck half-in, half-out of a hope chest overflowing with cat litter. And the farm is covered with dead bodies: dozens of cats, sheep, goats, cows, and one dead horse. The mentally handicapped daughter of the victims, Carl and Claire Bruckner, is missing. Doyle soon discovers that Bruckner was a Marine captain who lost his leg in Vietnam thanks to the incompetence of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lake — now retired General Robert Lake, and Republican Party presidential hopeful, who will be speaking in Richmond on July fourth — the following evening. What Doyle fails to realise as he follows the various clues is that wherever he goes, he is spreading disease — and not just any disease, but Yersinia pestis. The plague. Is the dead Marine planning revenge, even from beyond the grave?

England, 1911. The Reverend Albert Canning, a vicar with a passion for spiritualism, leads a happy existence with his naive wife Hester in a sleepy Berkshire village. As summer dawns, their quiet lives are changed for ever by two new arrivals. First comes Cat, the new maid: a free-spirited and disaffected young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the law. Cat quickly finds a place for herself in the secret underbelly of local society as she plots her escape. Then comes Robin Durrant, a leading expert in the occult, enticed by tales of elemental beings in the water meadows nearby. A young man of magnetic charm and beauty, Robin soon becomes an object of fascination and desire. During a long spell of oppressive summer heat, the rectory at Cold Ash Holt becomes charged with ambition, love and jealousy; a mixture of emotions so powerful that it leads, ultimately, to murder.

After caring for his mother in her last days, Alex has gone off round the world — with no plan other than to travel and maybe recapture some of his lost youth. Beginning his travels in Indonesia, the idea of finding himself sounds appealing... but soon, he finds himself in real trouble. It starts with a bus crash on a terrifying mountain road. Lucky to escape with his life, Alex loses everything else — even his identity. But then he meets Domino, a beautiful girl who takes Alex under her wing. At first it's an intoxicating adventure, but Alex starts to realise that danger seems to follow her around. As they approach the magnificent Lake Toba, and head to the remote community of free spirits that Domino calls home, it seems there's trouble in paradise. The ideals of the camp seem honourable — a simple life, shared by friends in a beautiful place hidden from the world. But Domino has no answers for the questions that are forming in Alex's mind: Why do the local villagers hate them so much? Why are people leaving the camp in the dead of night? And what are the strange shapes lurking just beyond the clearing? A taut, atmospheric and emotive thriller, DARK HORIZONS transports you to the lush landscapes of Sumatra, and the twisted ideals and deadly secrets lying in wait there...

5 August 2005. While conducting a secret mission thirty miles off the remote cost of Kamchatka, the Russian Navy submarine AS-28 became snared in the thick cables anchored to 60-tonne concrete blocks. Without power the stricken boat sunk to the seafloor. Trapped 600 feet down — too deep to escape — her crew of seven now had just seventy two hours before the air onboard ran out. Twenty-four hours later — still haunted by the loss of the Kursk — the Russian Navy requested assistance. And on their side of the world, Commander Ian Riches, Boss of the Royal Navy's Submarine rescue team got the call: there was a sub down. With their expertise and specialist equipment, he knew his team had a chance to save the men, but Kamchatka was at the very limit of their range. And the clock was ticking. As Riches and his men prepared to deploy to Russia's Pacific coast aboard a giant Royal Air Force C-17 airlifter, rescue teams from the United States and Japan were also scrambled to the area. After the failure of the Russian Navy's own attempts to resucue them, the crew of the AS-28 shut down all of their boat's non-essential systems, climbed into thick thermal suits to keep the freezing cold at bay and waited, desperate to eke out the stale, thin air inside the pressure hull of their submarine. But as the first of them began to drift in and out of consciousness, they knew their time was running out... 72 Hours tells the story of an extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat real-life drama. It's the gripping, inside story of one of the most dramatic rescue attempts of recent years. And there were no guarantees of success.

Lily Bard has started over in the quiet town of Shakespeare, Arkansas, where she works as a cleaning lady. But she's about to go back to where she came from, and where Lily goes, danger follows... Determined to move beyond her violent past, Lily heads to Bartley, her hometown, for her sister's Christmas Eve wedding. But there's something in the air besides festive cheer: the town's doctor and nurses have been bludgeoned to death, and Lily's detective boyfriend has followed an eight-year-old kidnapping case straight to Bartley. It just might have something to do with the murders... and with her sister's fiance. With only three days to the wedding, Lily must work fast to clean up the messy case before her sister promises to love, honour and obey a killer.

Over the years, Myron Bolitar has walked a tight rope between sports agent, friend, problem solver and private eye. When former tennis star Suzze T and her rock star husband, Lex, encounter an anonymous Facebook post questioning the paternity of their unborn child, Lex runs off, and Suzze — at eight months pregnant — asks Myron to save her marriage, and perhaps her husband's life. But when he finds Lex, he also finds two people he wasn't looking for: his sister-in-law, Kitty, wife of Myron's estranged brother, and her teenage son, Mickey, who is achingly familiar. But this boy that he has never met blames Myron for everything that has happened to his parents... As Myron races to locate his missing brother while their father clings to life after a savage heart-attack, he must face the lies that led to the estrangement long ago — including the ones told by Myron himself. He must also answer the questions that Mickey's arrival has thrown up. Who is Myron Bolitar really? And can he heal the damage of the past?

The Straits of Gibraltar, 1940. In the heart of a storm at sea, Captain Gonzalez rescues a group of German castaways. When the storm subsides, their leader gratefully offers the captain a strange-looking emblem made of gold and diamonds, in exchange for safe passage to the coast of Portugal.

An Autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attache from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, with war coming to Europe, and French and German operatives locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attache, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters — Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence, last seen in Furst's The Polish Officer; the mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed. The Spies of Warsaw is Alan Furst's finest novel to date — the history is precise, the writing evocative and powerful, more a novel about spies than a spy novel — exciting, atmospheric, erotic and impossible to put down.

Clair lives in the leafy suburbs and has worked hard to create the perfect life for her husband and two children. She knows it's a big bad world out there and her beautifully painted garden fences keep that world out. While her children are young, Clair is determined to do everything she can to keep them safe. But then a new family moves in next door. The first time she sees Chelsea, Clair has her pegged as a spoilt only child who is used to getting her own way from her doting parents, beautiful yet spiteful. As Chelsea befriends Clair's children over the fence, Clair's unease increases. The girl is not a good influence, and she has Clair's son in her sights. Soon the children are running in and out of each other's gardens. But then events take a tragic turn. A terrible event shatters the cosy suburban community, proving Clair was right to remain vigilant. To protect her family, Clair tightens her grip on her children. The more she reins them in, the more they rebel. And the less control she has. Teetering on the edge of madness, Clair will do anything to save her family, and in doing so risks destroying all their lives. Powerful, compelling and utterly unflinching, Camilla Noli again explores the darker sides of a mother's love.

A seemingly sleepy Devonshire village, Burracombe is in fact full of intrigue and drama. Family secrets, budding romance, cruel twists of fate and amazing friendships all play out against the backdrop of the beautiful countryside. It's autumn 1953. The village is delighted when Joe Tozer — who left Burracombe as a young man in 1919 — returns to visit his family. His life since emigrating to the States has been a world away from rural Devon — but coming home, he falls in love with the place (and one particular person) all over again. With him is his eldest son, Russell. He sets hearts fluttering in the village — but will there be anyone on his arm when he catches the boat back to America?

Onetime underground journalist Sandy Blair has traveled far from his radical roots in the 60s-until the bizarre and brutal murder of a millionaire rock promoter draws him back. As Sandy sets out to investigate the crime, he finds himself on a magical mystery tour of the pent-up passions of his generation. For a new messiah has resurrected the once legendary rock band Nazgul-but with an apocalyptic new beat that is a requiem of demonism, mind control, and death only Sandy may be able to change in time...

This is not a story about a girl who disappears. This is the story of a little girl who comes back. As if from nowhere, she appears one day on a seaside promenade, with a black flower and a horrifying story about where she's been. But telling that story will start a chain reaction of dangerous lies and deadly illusions that will claim many more victims in the years to come. Neil Dawson has grown up wanting to be like his father — a writer. When his father commits suicide, he is devastated. But through his grief, Neil knows something isn't right. Looking through his father's papers, he finds a copy of an old novel, The Black Flower. Opening it will take Neil into an investigation full of danger, pain and subterfuge. Hannah Price is also mourning her father. She followed his footsteps into the police force, and knows she has a big reputation to live up to. When she gets assigned to Neil's father's case, it will lead her on a journey into her own past and to the heart of a shattering secret.