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Frank, no ordinary 16-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. His father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale and Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations

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The man who wakes up in the extraordinary world of the bridge has amnesia and his doctor doesn't seem to want to cure him. Does it matter? Exploring the bridge occupies his days and at night there are his dreams. Which is the stranger reality? Day or night?

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Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, the atmosphere becomes flammable.

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Daniel used to be a famous, not to say infamous, rock star. At 31 he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever. Contemplating his life, he realizes he has only two problems: the past and the future.

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By the author of "Canal Dreams" and "The Wasp Factory", this novel is about three men - Graham Park, Steven Grant and Quiss. No trio of people could be further apart, but their separate courses are set for collision.

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Alison Willets is unlucky to be alive. She has survived a deliberately induced stroke. She can hear, see, feel; she is completely aware of everything going on around her but she cannot move a muscle. In leaving her alive, the police believe a dangerous killer has made his first mistake.
Then DI Tom Thorne discovers the horrifying truth. It's the women already dead who are the mistakes. Death is this man's `appropriate margin of error', and he is keen to try again. Thorne must hunt down a killer whose agenda is terrifyingly unique and Alison Willets, the one person who holds the key to his identity, is unable to tell anybody...

Sleepyhead is not a conventional crime novel in terms of character or prose style. Billingham's influences as a writer are darkly American rather than cosily English. It is a sinister and sophisticated thriller that imposes a shocking and twisted new take on the contemporary British crime novel. Impeccably plotted and darkly compelling, Sleepyhead is essentially a story about obsession - the obsession of two men whose lives collide with fatal consequences. Their narrative is punctuated by the voice of a woman condemned to a life trapped inside her own body, but whose warped and often blackly humorous outlook give the book a unique tone.

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Why would someone who had survived a rail crash, walk away from the scene and then pretend to be dead? Amy slowly reveals why she cannot return to her beloved home, and why she can never escape from the lies she was told as a child.

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It is 1348 and the inhabitants of Cambridge are living under the shadow of the Black Death which is on its way to England. Bartholomew is distracted by a series of sudden deaths occurring in the college of Michaelhouse - deaths the University seems unwilling to have investigated. His pursuit leads him into a tangle of lies and intrigue.

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Jude Craig is having an affair; what had begun as just another gardening job has blossomed into the sort of emotions that had long been missing in her marriage to Dan. But when Jude leaves the young, handsome Lee Han asleep in bed, whispering `See you next week,' little does she know what is about to happen next.
Lee's flat is torched. His burns are so bad his body is unrecognisable.
When Detective John Bright arrives to question Jude, she realises with a shudder that she was the last person to see him alive. Whoever started the fire had been watching the house, and had been waiting for her to leave. If that isn't traumatic enough, John Bright's questions are forcing her into a corner - how can she remove herself from the list of prime suspects without revealing her affair with Lee? How can she tell the truth without Dan finding out? Or maybe the truth is that Dan already knows...
But as Bright continues his investigations, he realises that a crime of passion is only one possible motive in a myriad of possibilities. For Lee Han worked as a freelance journalist for a local newspaper, and his investigative reports have made him many enemies in the criminal underworld...

Superbly switching from London to Hong Kong and back again, Maureen O'Brien's latest novel is a brilliantly plotted tale of love, corruption, murder and revenge.

In THE RAVEN IN THE FOREGATE Brother Cadfael finds that a young man working in the Abbey's herb garden is suspected of murder.
In THE ROSE RENT Brother Cadfael believes the motive for a callous murder is all too obvious.
In THE HERMIT OF EYTON FOREST Brother Cadfael's life as a herbalist is disturbed by the arrival of a saintly hermit.

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