British Fiction

The table is set for family dinner; roast chicken, wine for them and juice for their darling boy, a vase of fresh daisies from the garden for decoration. But the food is cold, and the flowers are wilting. You might think they were sleeping in the next room, if it wasn’t for the blood dripping crimson onto the carpet.

Minerva Kenny is a dear woman, but her tendency to "borrow" things without asking has finally caught up with her. William Barrett has learned Minerva's shameful secret, and he's holding it over her head. Mrs. Jeffries and the staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens have hatched a scheme to save her - but when they try to recover the damning evidence from Barrett, they discover something more shocking: Barrett's corpse. Considering the victim's wicked ways, Minerva is far from the only suspect.

Nine-year-old Samuel lives alone in a once-great estate in Surrey with the family’s housekeeper, Ruth. His father is dead, and his mother has been abroad for months, purportedly tending to her late husband’s faltering business. She left one night while Samuel was sleeping. Beyond her sporadic postcards, Samuel hears nothing from his mother. Samuel’s life is otherwise regulated by Ruth, who runs the house with an iron fist. As rumors in town begin to swirl, Samuel wonders whether something more sinister is afoot. Perhaps his mother did not leave but was murdered - by Ruth.

There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with an investigation into a car sales fraud - nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With Richard behind bars, Kate must look after his eight-year-old son - who proves even more troublesome than his father. Kate finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters, and violent gangland enforcers in the most terrifying investigation of her career.

St Michael’s Church may be derelict but it’s not deserted. Someone still comes here to worship on nights when the moon is full. Arnold Landon should know. He’s seen the grisly evidence for himself. Blood among the roses. The butchered remains of a man, tangled in the undergrowth. The victim was a traveler. How did he come to be in the churchyard? Arnold has a theory that leads back centuries, all the way to the cult of the Raging Wolf. Everyone tells him it’s impossible, that the cultists are dead and buried. But the devil wears many faces.

DCI Lesley Clarke is a busy woman. She's dealing with the reopened investigation into DCI Mackie's death, supporting DS Dennis Frampton through recurring mental health problems, and making plans for her own future. And then prominent crime boss Arthur Kelvin is found dead at a local beauty spot. Who killed him? Could it have been a member of his own gang? A rival, from within Dorset or further afield? Or maybe one of Kelvin's many victims? When Lesley starts to suspect that someone close to her might be involved, her world turns on its head.

The Susannah Ramsay and Sadie Dawes cases are solved and DCI Lesley Clarke's team is back together. But there are tensions. Is Dennis hiding more than just mental health problems? Did Superintendent Carpenter cover up the details of DCI Mackie's death? And does Lesley's girlfriend Elsa know more about Mackie than she's letting on? Just as Lesley feels she is getting closer to answers, she's forced to work on the other side of Dorset after a body is uncovered by a landslide at Lyme Regis's beach. Who is the body and is there a connection to DCI Mackie, Arthur Kelvin, and Elsa's law firm?

DCI Kett is back, heading Norfolk Constabulary’s brand-new Extreme Crime Task Force. And it’s just in time. The body of a woman bound in thorns has been discovered in Norwich’s historic Cow Tower. In her mouth is a severed finger wrapped in a scrap of red cloth, and the first few lines of a fairy tale. “Once upon a time, a young maiden waited to be saved from a hideous monster.” The finger belongs to another missing woman, and if Kett, Porter and Savage want to find her alive they must follow a chain of blood-drenched riddles, each victim leading to the next.

1809. After his heroic actions during the retreat to Corunna, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is the toast of London society. Here he falls in with the legendary frigate captain Lord Thomas Cochrane. So begins a relationship, professional and personal, that will be unlike any that Kydd has known: a relationship that will lead him, almost simultaneously, to first glory, then ruin.

World War Two vet Art Kenning is the alcoholic first-aid man in an isolated sawmill village in the interior of BC, where he dreads the sound of the five whistles that summon him to the mill floor whenever a worker is hurt. Traumatized by an incident in Holland, when he stood by while members of his unit committed a horrific act, he loses himself in drink, and in memories of the love affair he had with a woman in wartime Paris. Then one of the most powerful men at the mill arrives at his door late one evening to ask for his help.

DCI Kate Young never meant to shoot Superintendent John Dickson at the reservoir that night—even if, as a scheming corrupt cop and head of the shady syndicate, he probably had it coming. But now Kate has photographic evidence that someone else knows her terrible secret… Tormented by guilt and the voices of the dead, Kate is desperate to unmask the rest of the corrupt officers before her own sins catch up with her. When DI Harriet Khatri, awaiting trial for the murder of Kate’s mentor, claims she was framed by Dickson’s syndicate, Kate reluctantly agrees to help in the hope of finding answers.

Still grieving the death of his long-time partner, Chase reunites with his dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau for a seacoast holiday of historic sightseeing. Assigned a pair of guides from the tour company Wanderers, Chase and Billie join seven other like-minded Americans looking forward to an English getaway. All except for Ronald Gretz. The wealthy entrepreneur behind the international Golden Sunset nursing-home chain doesn’t like anything about walking, touring, or England.

Un roi qui perd son fils de sang a-t-il le droit de pleurer comme un être de chair ? Si je cède à l'éploration, on va me suspecter de me distraire du malheur du peuple. Et si j'ai les yeux trop secs, on va me réputer insensible au malheur de ma famille. Tant pis. Je m'abandonne à mon chagrin qui emporte mon royaume, mon État, ma charge, ma vie. Je pleure comme un petit enfant du Bon Dieu qui ne comprend pas l'amputation si soudaine, si cruelle.

I had a plan: Sign a contract, and board a plane to Ibiza. The anonymous deal would salvage the smoldering wreckage of my life. It would not involve billionaire Harrison King, the reason I need saving in the first place. He’s as beautiful as he is cruel. A British business titan who makes a living getting what he wants. The man flies private. Dates supermodels. But the crisp accent and cocky smirk don’t fool me. He’s a gentleman on the outside, a savage beneath. Dangerous, rough, and brutal.

Georgiana returned to Pemberley fresh from a highly successful London season, yet unmoved by any of the young men who lined up for introductions. Then, out of a terrible storm, there arrives a young French count with the face and address of an angel. Is this the one for which her heart has waited?

1956: In a quiet English village, the smoldering ruins of Rosemont Abbey have set the residents’ tongues wagging, and everyone is quick to accuse troublemaker Paul Everly of the crime of arson. Paul has vanished without a trace, leaving only his plucky twin sister, Louisa, certain of his innocence. Fueling her conviction is an inexplicable connection—she felt her twin’s death an hour before the abbey went up in flames.

In the winter of 1811, the war seems lost. All Spain has fallen to the French, except for Cadiz which is now the Spanish capital and is under siege. Wellington and his British army are in Portugal, waiting for spring to spark the war to life again. Richard Sharpe and his company are part of a small expeditionary force sent to break a bridge across the River Guadiana.

Jane Austen's most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, is brought to sparkling life in this new unabridged recording by AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator Alison Larkin. A witty and always original voice, Alison Larkin is the perfect vessel to bring Jane Austen's classically satirical second novel to a new audience. This fresh and hugely entertaining listen from 'the English American' joined with Austen's deft satire, results in pure, boundless fun.

Young, happy and deeply in love, the future looks rosy for local beauty Lilliana Parker and her beau Robert, the dashing Earl of Sherborne. Their friends and family wait with baited breath for news of their inevitable engagement, certain that nothing can harm the charmed life of this golden couple. However, fate has other plans and the Earl is called to rejoin his Regiment in India on a mission that is both dangerous and vital to Queen and country.

When a film shoot on Wharfedale’s vintage railway turns into a grisly crime scene, DCI Oldroyd’s idyllic visit to the countryside with his partner Deborah is well and truly stopped in its tracks. One of the film’s stars has been shot dead in a train carriage while the cameras rolled outside. But nobody else went in—or came out. Has the killer really pulled off the perfect, impossible crime?