Vanessa Alexander's new novel brings Restoration London to raucous life, telling the vibrant story of the love affair between Samuel Pepys and a lively, exuberant lady-in-waiting to Charles H's queen.

Samuel Atkins is deeply in love with Maria Eleanora, a beautiful young woman from the court of Queen Catherine. But Atkins is a poor clerk, and Maria Eleanora a foreigner, so their love must remain a secret. When an important judge is found murdered, Samuel Pepys' followers are suspected, and Atkins is arrested. Suddenly, Maria Eleanora realises that to save her lover and discover the hideous truth behind the crime, she must thread her, way through both the dreachercus alleys of London arid the murky and murderous politics of those seeking to destroy the king.
Based on historical events, The Loving Cup not only probes one of the great murder mysteries of English history but also recounts a love story as passionate as it is secretive.

As autumn draws to a close in Moose County, four hundred miles north of everywhere, Qwilleran and the other inhabitants of Pickax are awaiting The Big One -- an annual three-day snow storm which marks the official start of winter. Buy. this year the storm. is particularly significant. After months without rain the county is so parched that bush fires are starting with alarming regularity and without the storm it is only a matter of time before one; of them gets out of control.
But as the fires continue it is soon evident they are following a pattern which defies any force of nature and when Edd's Editions, the community's much-loved boob store, is destroyed in a clear case of arson, the inhabitants of Pickax are forced to accept that. They are facing a very human enemy..
Luckily for them all, Qwilleran & Co have no intention of leaving this crime unsolved arid it's not long before the intrepid investigator and his feline friends sniff out the rat responsible.
Qwilleran -- a prize-winning reporter with a nose for crime, Koko -- a Siarnese cat with extraordinary talents and a flair for mystery. Yurn Yurn a loveable Siamese adored by her two male companions. The most unlikely, most unusual., most. delightful team in detective fiction!

Lilian Jackson Braun began writing her Cat Who... detective series when one of her own Siamese cats mysteriously fell to its death from her apartment block. Since then twenty-three Cat no... novels have been published, all featuring the very talented Koko and Yum Yum, Siamese cats with a bent for detection. She is currently working on the next in this internationally bestselling series. Lilian Jackson Braun lives with her husband in the mountains of North Carolina.

Sarah Jensen is more than capable of taking care of herself. She runs away from the one man who has touched her heart, rock star John Redford. When her son is born, she keeps the identity of the father secret. Then she is asked to return to her old investment bank to investigate a new client.

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In the village of Melford a spate of vicious killings goes unchecked. Five years previously, a local lord was executed for the crimes. But now other young women have been found garrotted, and the dead lord's son insists that a miscarriage of justice has taken place.
Hugh Corbett, with his faithful servants Ranulf and Chanson, faces the difficult task of unveiling the secrets of a distrustful community tormented by murder....

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Latest Egyptian crime thriller

Lord Amerotke, Pharaoh's Chief Judge, is already in the middle of a murder case when it seems that there is another grave murder to investigate. One of Egypt's great heroes has been brutally killed and Pharaoh Hatusu herself has decided to intervene. She believes that General Balet's murder is only the beginning and she calls on Judge Amerotke for help. There is more to link the deaths than originally meets the eye - but can Amerotke track down the killer before he strikes again?

`A good feel for understated humour, a nice ear for dialogue' The Times
`You'll soon be addicted' Woman and Home

Ann Granger - author of the acclaimed English village Mitchell & Markby mysteries shifts gear to the city with no problem in Risking It All, the latest outing; for young amateur sleuth, Fran Varady.

When Fran Varady is approached by Private Detective Clarence Duke, she nlistt-usts him on instinct. But she can't ignore what he has to say. Her mother, Eva, who walked out on Fran when she was only seven, has hired Clarence to find her daughter. And for good reason. Eva is dying. So Fran is reunited with the mother she hasn't seen for fifteen years, and is soon to lose again. But the biggest bombshell of all is still to come. Eva has another child -- a daughter she gave up soon after her birth -and she wants Fran to find her. It's not an easy task when her mother has sworn her to secrecy and the only clue Fran has is an out-of-date address. And matters aren't helped by the fact that slippery Clarence Duke seems intent on discovering what she's up to. But it's when he's found dead in his car outside Fran's home that the trouble really begins...

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Chief Inspector Michael Haggerty asks Richard Jury to prove brewing magnate Oliver Tynedale's granddaughter is an impostor. Excavation of Tynedale's bombed London pub, the Blue Last, has turned up two skeletons - was the child found his real granddaughter? Meanwhile Melrose Plant reluctantly poses as an under gardener to investigate the nanny who purportedly saved the baby's life.

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Roving reporter Nick Madrid finds himself in New York covering a fencing tournament between Britain anal the USA When he stumbles over a murder plot involving big money sports sponsorship, lie knows he's on to a hot story. And when he discovers a link to an old mystery from the thirties involving Nazi gold and Oswald Mosley's blackshirts, he can't resist trying to foil the; villain's plan.

Peter Guttridge is a freelance journalist who for the past ten years has written about literature, film and comedy for a range of national. newspapers and magazines. Currently he writes a monthly column. for the BBC's Bookcase website and is the director of the literature programme for the Brighton Festival.

It is early 1989. In China, civil war is brewing. And archaeologist Dr Sally Parsons is about to discover a secret that could alter the course of history - if it doesn't kill her first...

Humphrey Hawksley has been a BBC correspondent specialising in Asia for over ten years and now lives in London.

Fizz and Buchanan are up against Edinburgh's most influential advocate in this delightful sixth novel in the highly praised Scottish crime series.

In Rome, the Easter crowds of the devout watch in horror as the Pope is assassinated. In Canada's frozen north a lake is suddenly turned into a cauldron of radioactivity. In the Middle East the search for water ends in a bloodbath. Three events with no connection, no apparent purpose. Except in the minds of an extreme millennial cult hidden deep in the mountain fastnesses of North Carolina, a cult for whom man's abuse of the planet has called down God's punishment, a cult dedicated to initiating a final battle between the forces of good and evil. With a terrifying combination of modern technology, military organisation and religious dementia, they are about to unleash a last crusade that could mean the end of man's reign on earth. And only one man can stop them...

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These days, Tresco in the Isles of Scilly is an expensive holiday hideaway. But it wasn't always so. One hundred and fifty years ago, it was a treeless hummock and a nest for pirates until Sam Llewellyn's ancestor, Augustus Smith began its transformation into the tropical garden paradise we know today.

Sam drew on his maternal ancestors in the Isles of Scilly for his highly acclaimed novel, The Sea Garden which we published last year. And his knowledge of life lived in the microcosmic world of a private estate and his love of landscape and the natural world certainly informs his new book, The Malpas Legacy too. Sam Llewellyn was actually born at Tresco Abbey, his mother's family home, and spent the long summers of childhood there. And The Malpas Legacy, published this year in August, was inspired by three years Sam spent living in a semi-detached castle on a crag above the estuary of the Blackwater, one of the great rivers of Ireland.
A captivating novel of intrigue, madness and desire, The Malpas Legacy will appeal to lovers of both the thriller and the serious novel.

David Walker is a professor at the Faculty of Further Psychology at Helmstone University. One night, he rescues a drowning swimmer off Helmstone Pier. She is Helen Costelloe, a beautiful woman with a past that does not add up and a present that quickly gets tangled with Walker's - until one night he finds her gone.
Two years later; Walker receives an astonishing letter. Helen has inherited Malpas, a vast, crumbling Georgian house on one of Ireland's great rivers. She is the owner of thousands of acres of tangled forest, two ruined abbeys, a derelict private gasworks. Malpas, its estate and its inhabitants are a world of their own. beautiful world.
But a world with chilling secrets, where madness stalks the riverside oak-woods.
Helen's new husband has drowned himself in the river - the latest in a string of bizarre suicides stretching back nearly eighty years. Darkness is rising around her. She needs company. More than that, she needs help.
David Walker has rescued Helen once. As he begins to delve into Malpas's tormented past, he begins to realize that this time it may not be so easy.
And that he is in danger too...

Sam Llewellyn is the author of The Sea Garden:
'A dark, romantic thriller stuffed with history, sex and the kind of cliff-hanging perfected by Daphne du Maurier' Literary Review
'A dazzling creation .' The Time
'An exciting, action-packed, elegantly plotted novel' Harpers And Queen
'Remarkable... this rich, ambitious and intricate novel has immense appeal' Good Book Guide

To Bath in its Georgian heyday come colourful visitors. Not the least curious is Colonel Sir James Delabole - wealthy, gouty and seeking to make amends for a disreputable past. His daughter, Caroline, has been brought up by her stern grandfather, who seems less inclined to forgive the past than Caroline herself. When flamboyant Sir James is found poisoned, Robert Fairfax, tutor and amateur sleuth, is engaged by the local magistrate to unmask the culprit. He soon discovers there is no shortage of suspects - from the handsome young officer whom the Colonel publicly befriended only to humiliate him most cruelly, to his browbeaten second wife. Investigating the mystery surrounding Sir James's death, Fairfax enters a murky world of greed, scandal and deception - and he soon finds that the elegant spa is not such a healthy place to be.

Praise for Hannah March's Mysteries:
'March has created a felicitously realised Georgian mystery, and setting a detective novel in the age of Moll Flanders is a masterstroke' The Times
'She is particularly successful in displaying the attitudes and mores of the period' Sunday Telegraph

Redmayne and Bale find themselves embroiled in the hunt for the murderer of Nicholas Cheever, a repentant rake. Overcoming setbacks and attempts on their lives, Christopher and Bale pursue their enquiries throughout London and beyond, finding their way through a maze of corruption, political intrigue and religious dissension.

When the peasant wife of Turkey's biggest Arabesk music star is murdered, aristocratic Inspector Suleyman's at a loss. More familiar with Arabesk, even his mentor Ikmen's astonished by Tansu, the idol's ageing girlfriend, a manipulative monster of vulgar rapacity.

Barbara Nadel lives in Essex.

James Patterson makes his money from fear, murder and, sometimes, insanity. He's not a gangster, but gambled his hard-earned wealth and career when he gave up his prestigious position as chairman and creative director in New York of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, to write. He joined one of the most hotly contested brands on the market - the thriller - and is now one of its top-selling authors. Only John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell outsell him in the paperback market, according to the Guardian's top 100. His most recent paperback, Pop Goes the Weasel, went into The Sunday Times bestseller list at number 2. Last summer When the Wind Blows was number 1 on The Sunday Times for four weeks, and in the top ten for 16 weeks.

'Pop Goes the Weasel is probably the finest outing yet for Alex Cross.' The Times
'...a novel which makes for sleepless nights.' The Express

His hero is Alex Cross, played by Morgan Freeman in the film of Kiss the Girls. Morgan Freeman is playing the same role in Along Came A Spider, now being shot by Paramount in the States. He's a black, single dad, whose life at home and romantic involvements are as much a part of the plot as the criminals he's hunting down. The five Alex Cross thrillers so far

Roses are Red is James Patterson's new Alex Cross thriller. It's another gripping read, psychology as much a part of the criminal hunt as the blackmail and death left in its trail, and the home life of Cross, beset with worry, involving the reader even more with his character. With James Pafterson's track record so far, it's set to be another instant bestseller.

Book editor Katie is in love with poet, Matt Harrison. He seems to share her feelings, but his refusal to talk about his past makes her suspicious. All she knows is that Matt was once married. One evening, he suddenly ends their relationship, leaving Katie devastated. A few days later, he sends her a notebook that he promises will explain everything. Katie opens the book to find it is the diary that Matt's wife, Suzanne, wrote for their baby son. It tells the story of her love for Matt and...

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Despite the lack of a convincing motive, evidence presented by 'Thomas Pitt leads to the conviction for murder, and execution, of John Adinett, a distinguished soldier and scholar. But the hanged man was a member of the Inner Circle, a secretive group of men whose power extends further than Pitt realizes is possible, and their retaliation is swift and vicious. Unable to save Adinett from death, his friends use their influence to punish his accuser Within days, Pitt loses command of Bow Stir cot, and his life could be in danger. To protect himself from the Inner Circle's hated, Pit, must leave. his family and friends to work undercover in the-, dangerously volatile East End. Furious at the unjust treatment of her husband, Charlotte Pitt realises that the only way to bring him home safely is to find Adinett's motive for murder -- something even Pitt could not do ....

"Give her a good murder and a shameful social evil and Anne Perry can write Victorian mystery that would make Dickens' eyes pop out' New York Times
`Painstakingly researched acid redolent of vanished moral certainties' Times
`Has a totally contemporary feel and is admirably well-written' Guardian
`Perry's narrative is as stately and elegant as a loyal barge on the Thames' Washington Post
A complex plot supported by superb storytelling' Scotland On Sunday

When Perennis Felix, favorite of the Roman Emperor and. would-be enemy of all, heralds his arrival in Glevurn (modern Gloucester) with the arbitrary execution of a, slave, there are few who dare question his actions. Indeed, a feast in the Roman's honour is universally approved in the cause of self-preservation
Libertus, freedman arid mosaicist -- and, therefore, an expert in puzzles and patterns and his patron, Marcus Septimus, are among the reluctant citizens at the evening celebration. Libertus, who is a freed Celtic slave, and thus an outsider to the brutalities of the conquerors, is thankful for his lowly status as he is sequestered to the back of the room while more esteemed guests, his patron among them, are: subjected to the trials of Felix's misplaced humour.
But the festivities come to a sudden and disturbing end when the Roman appears to choke on a nut and dies in front of a stunned gathering. And it is not long before the ever- vigilant Libertus notices the mysterious disappearance of two guests - one of whom he has very good reason to suspect is not all he seems to be

Praise for The Germanicus Mosaic & A Pattern of Blood
`A traditional country house mystery translated to the Roman world ,even featuring the mandatory body in the bibliotheca. . . There are charming details about life on the fringes of the empire' Independent
'.A considerable achievement' The Times
'The: story is agreeably written, gets on briskly with it`. plot, and ends with a highly satisfactory double-take' Gerald Kaufman Scotsman

What happened the night that Mattie died? When Carl returns from World War I he finds his sister-in-law Amanda looking after his daughter and his wife mysteriously drowned. For years that night and the truth, when it is finally revealed, will reverberate dramatic and far-reaching consequences

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Kate Ivory, researching her latest historical novel, unearths a story of exploitation and violent death during the last year of the war in Oxford, regarded by trusting parents as a place of safety for evacuated children. Shockingly, the story implicates her new partner's family. Will the secrets of the past affect her present life?

'Stallwood is in the top rank of crime writers and can produce shivers even in a heatwavel Daily Telegraph
'Stallwood delves into chilling psychology' Independent
'Stallwood's speciality is adroit plotting set in a vividly realised Oxford locale' The Times
'Irresistibly readable' Financial Times
'Stallwood deserves to much better known among British crime writers... she can combine a lightness of touch with a genuine talent for making the flesh creep' Birmingham Post
'... absolutely compelling' The Scotsman

Writer Kate Ivory has new neighbours on either side of her terraced house. On one side lives Jeremy Wells, a retiring, charming Oxford Academic. On the other live the Fosters a couple living hedonistically in retirement. They all seem perfectly respectable so when the Fosters are shot in what looks like a contract killing, it's surely a case of mistaken identity.
Then Jeremy starts behaving increasingly oddly. When he asks Kate to help him go into hiding, it's clear there's more goi.ng on than meets the eye. If Jeremy has been leading a double life then perhaps the Fosters were too. With both of her neighbours out of the picture it's up to Kat to uncover the truth.

Now that the medieval Glenstal Book of Prayer is topping the bestseller charts in Ireland, read Smoke In The Wind, the latest adventure of Sister Fidelma, nun and skilled detective as she sleuths in seventh century Ireland...

Smoke In Tbe Wind is the latest adventure of Sister Fidelma, the historical detective who sleuths in seventh-century Ireland - the legendary Golden Age of saints, kings and scholars. A qualified dalaigh, or advocate of the ancient law courts of Ireland, sister to the real (historical) King of Munster, nun and skilled detective, the good sister would put Brother Cadfael to shame as she shows an uncanny talent for treading the right path amid a myriad of false trails, dead ends and pitfalls.

The seventh-century in Ireland it seems was also very much the Golden Age for women. The perceived wisdom is that women had to wait until the latter stages of the twentieth century to achieve something like parity with men. Yet, it is a little-known f act that the ancient hish Brehon laws gave more rights and protection to women than any other western law code, then or since. Women could and did aspire to all offices and professions as the co-equal with men. They could be political leaders, command their people in battle as warriors, be physicians, local magistrates, poets, artisans, lawyers andjudges.
Women were protected by law against sexual harassment, against discrimination, against rape. They had right of divorce on equal terms from their husband, had equal property rights and the right of sickness benefits when ill or hospitalised. Seen from today's perspective, Brehon Laws helped to maintain an almost ideal environment for women.
In Fideh-na's world both sexes inhabited abbeys and monastic foundations - men and women living together raising children in Christ's service. And the concept of celibacy was by no means universal; the Celtic Church took years to abandon its anticelibacy attitudes and took a liberal attitude towards sexual relationships.
Unlike the Roman Church the Irish Church didn't have a system of 'confessors' who had authority to absolve sins either. Instead, people chose a soul friend out of clerics or laity with whom they discussed matters of emotional or spiritual well-being.
Sounds Utopian? Entering the world of Sister Fidehna, we might be left feeling like Ronan Bennett who said of one of Fidehna's earlier adventures, 'I left The Spidei's Web with a sense of satisfaction at a good story well told, but also speculating on what modem life might have been like had that civilisation survived.'