British Literature

When the body of an old man is found lying in the ruins of St Benet’s Abbey, his throat cut, a knife resting in his open hand, DI John Tanner and DC Jenny Evans are given no choice but to accept a ruling of death by misadventure. But when the body goes missing from its tomb, after a priest is found nailed to a cross, and another impaled on a stake, everything begins to point back to the murder of a teenage girl, thrown from the top of a church tower, some 43 years before.

May 1912. After the previous year’s deadly heatwave, it’s been an uneventful spring in Littleton Cotterell. Though for Lady Hardcastle and her fiercely loyal lady’s maid Flo, at least there are the provincial delights of the village’s inaugural art exhibition—and bicycle race—to look forward to. But at the exhibition opening, there’s a panicked shout of ‘Fire!’ In the confusion, the main attraction—an extremely expensive book—is stolen from under everyone’s nose, as is a valuable painting lent by Sir Hector Farley-Stroud.

A dead man on the beach. A detective with everything to prove. And a secret that won't stay buried. When a man’s body washes up on the North Yorkshire coast with a gunshot wound to the chest, DCI Tom Raven is handed the case. The only clue to the victim’s identity? A ring engraved with two names. Raven hasn’t set foot in Scarborough for over thirty years. Now he’s back – leading a murder investigation and facing ghosts from his past.

Struggling with his new role as a detective chief inspector, John Tanner is warned of a convicted psychopath’s early release. When a couple is found later that day; the man stabbed to death, the woman with her throat cut, he's forced to assume the convict is responsible. But when the male victim turns out to be heir to a global pharmaceutical company, and his twelve-year-old son is nowhere to be found, he has to start looking closer at the victim’s family, and their sprawling stately ancestral home.

Fitzwilliam Darcy is a powerful mage and master of illusions. His abilities make him the perfect man for a dangerous mission to end the devastating war with Napoleon—a mission that would leave him little chance of returning alive. When he meets the enchanting Elizabeth Bennet, whose magical talents are as deep as they are inexplicable, he knows he needs her help. There's only one way to get that—marriage. Immediately.

Bernard Samson is a spy on the run, forced to abandon his life and job and plunge into hiding. But in the murky, dangerous streets of Berlin, he knows where to hide. Wanted for an act of treachery he has not committed, he must not only escape the grasp of London Central, but get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy that is about to change everything. In the thrilling penultimate installment of the Hook, Line, Sinker trilogy, Bernard's personal and professional life collide with devastating consequences.

This extended edition of Stardust includes a special introduction from the author as well as “Wall: A Prologue,” the prequel story from which Stardust was born. ""A twisting, wondrous tale full of magic that only Neil Gaiman could have written."" —Chicago Tribune ""Beautiful, memorable...

When an American tourist is murdered with a scone in Gemma Rose's quaint English tearoom, she suddenly finds herself apron-deep in a mystery involving long-buried secrets from Oxford's past. Armed with her insider knowledge of the university and with the help of four nosy old ladies from her local Cotswolds village (not to mention a cheeky little tabby cat named Muesli), Gemma sets out to solve the mystery - all while dealing with her matchmaking mother and the return of her old college love, Devlin O'Connor, now a dashing CID detective.

The most fearsome enemy he ever faced. Of all the enemies that our hero has shrunk away from, there was one he feared above them all. By his own admission they gave him nightmares into his dotage. It was not the French, the Spanish, the Americans, or the Mexicans. It was not even the more exotic adversaries such as the Iroquois, Mahratta, or Zulus. While they could all make his guts churn anxiously, the foe that really put him off his lunch were the Ashanti.

When a body is discovered floating in a Thames river lock one dreary morning, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are summoned from Scotland Yard to Chiltern Hills. The dead man is Connor Swann, son-in-law of two of London's most renowned opera personalities. And prints on the corpse's neck suggest that Swann was strangled.

From the award-winning novelist, a ravishing new novel set between London and rural Australia, both a love story and a ghost story Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend, Hannah, lost in...

DS George Cross has always wondered why his mother left him when he was a child. Now she is back in his life, he suddenly has answers. But this unexpected reunion is not anything he's used to dealing with. When a disturbing case lands on his desk, he is almost thankful for the return to normality. The body of a monk is found savagely beaten to death in a woodland near Bristol. Nothing is known about Brother Dominic's past, which makes investigating difficult. How can Cross unpick a crime when they don't know anything about the victim? And why would someone want to harm a monk?

Buckingham Palace, 1981. Her engagement to Prince Charles is a dream come true for Lady Diana Spencer, but marrying the heir to the throne is not all that it seems. Alone and bored in the palace, she resents the stuffy courtiers who are intent on instructing her about her new role as princess of Wales. But when she discovers a diary written in the 1800s by Princess Charlotte of Wales, a young woman born into a gilded cage so like herself, Diana is drawn into the story of Charlotte’s reckless love affairs and fraught relationship with her father, the prince regent.

In Jeffrey Archer's bestselling First Among Equals, Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength-and the will to realize his destiny... Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now...

Claire Barclay, owner of a mystery book tour company, collects three women at the Manchester airport who have flown in from Tucson, Arizona, then starts on a tour of Yorkshire and the sites of mystery novels. She meets the rest of the tour in York: two British couples and Phillip, a single man.

Alles beginnt, sogar das Ende, als Lajos von Lázár, das blonde Kind mit den wasserblauen Augen, zur Welt kommt. Seinem Vater, dem Baron, wird der Sohn nie geheuer sein, als ob er dessen Geheimnis ahnte. Mit Lajos’ Geburt im Waldschloss bricht auch das 20. Jahrhundert an, das das alte Leben der Barone Lázár im südlichen Ungarn für immer verändern wird. Der Untergang des Habsburgerreichs berührt erst nur ihre Traditionen, aber alle spüren das Beben der Zeit, die schöne Mária ebenso wie der geisterhafte Onkel Imre.

With the Cold War drawing to a close in the East, Bernard Samson is still haunted by the events that have turned his life upside down over the last ten years. But when he takes a train from Moscow to Berlin, he stumbles across a clue that may lead him to the truth at last—even though, in finding the answers, he could lose everything. Bringing the Faith, Hope, and Charity trilogy and Bernard Samson's story to a stunning conclusion, this final volume brilliantly shows the human cost of the spying game.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore are as different as England and America themselves, and yet almost two centuries later these two iconic tales remain an important part of Christmas tradition all over the world. Now they are brought together in this very special holiday recording.

Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.

Recent college graduate Lauren Charleston heads to London for a prestigious media graduate internship that is part of a well-laid plan for career success. Falling for a playboy billionaire with the nickname of Icky Ollie? Not part of said plan. Tech developer Oliver Pratt makes tabloid headlines for his wild ways, seen with a myriad of women - including a princess. He's exactly the type of man Lauren detests - especially in light of her past with men. But Lauren might find exactly what she needs in Oliver if she can see beyond the surface - and face her own past, too.