The Swiss-based Institute of Global Studies seems like the kind of philanthropic body any idealistic young scientist would want to work for But when Lew McBride gets involved with them, his lifetakes a horrific turn.
Something terrible is happening in Adrienne Sullivan's life, too. Her sister has died in mysterious circumstances. The only clues about what might have happened are locked away in a psychiatrist's files. And when she investigates, she discovers that the psychiatrist, while no figment of her imagination, doesn't exist.
What is it that connects Lew McBride, Adrienne Sullivan, the psychiatrist and the Institute together? What takes Adrienne and the psychiatrist on a terrifying chase across the USA and Europe? Why should the CIA get involved? And why does the body-count start to rise alarmingly?

What would have happened had America not dropped the atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War? How long would the US government have been able to hold onto the secret of one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century and retain its atomic weapons monopoly.?

In 1956, in a series of statements long since buried in obscurity, a group of highly respected aerospace engineers revealed that US scientists were perfecting ways to control gravity - a force even more powerful that the atom.
And then they made an extraordinary prediction: a breakthrough would come by the end of the decade, ushering in an era of clean, fuelless propulsion, as well as transport systems - and weapons - beyond our imagination.
But of course it never happened.
Or did it? Forty years on, a chance encounter with one of the engineers who made that prediciton forces a highly sceptical aerospace and defence journalist, Nick Cook, to confront the possibility that America did indeed crack the gravity code - and has covered up ever since.
As Cook's search for the truth begins, it rapidly becomes clear that this time around America has learned from the mistakes of the past and is determined to hold onto its secrets.

Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic - the lethal components of a deadly formula driving a psychopath in the grip of an unimaginable delusion; a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes; a tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families, and calls himself... The Red Dragon. Special agent Will Graham had been assigned to similar cases before, cases where he was able to see and feel with the madmen, anticipate their moves and, most terrifying of all, be vulnerable to their horrifying brutality. Now Graham is reluctantly lured out of retirement, to find an opening to the evil mind of the Red Dragon.
Red Dragon is quite probably the most suspenseful, utterly compelling thriller ever written.

When Lee Jackson is found dead after a party, the police believe it was an accident, but Sam Jones is convinced it is murder. Frustrated by the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" attitude of friends, she abandons the sculpture she is working on, to investigate her art tutor's death.

When one of Sam Jones colleagues at the gym turns into a corpse, she is asked to investigate. And with her extremely unorthodox methods she discovers that more than one of the staff has an unpleasant secret to hide. Not to mention her own scandalous entanglement with a very unlikely source indeed.

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It's New Year's Eve in the quiet village of Lesser Swinfold. Sam Jones – sculptor and involuntary sleuth - and her boyfriend, Hugo, have come to celebrat with her best friend, Tom, who has taken a job there as a primary-school teacher in the hope of meeting plenty of available and sex-hungry single mothers. Unfortunately, Hugo loathes the countryside, Tom has fallen in love with a single mother who is less interested in him than she would be in a frontal lobotomy, and Sam is flirting with a twenty-two-year-old with the face of a fallen angel. So the discovery of a dead body tied to the village Christmas tree, stabbed forty times with a Swiss Army knife, is an unwelcome complication, especially when Tom becomes the principal suspect. Distracted by the appalling state of her love-life, Sam's not in the best shape for tracking down the murderer before the local police haul Tom off to jail. And will Hugo ever talk to her again?

This old nursery rhyme is a favourite of Jeff Leach (if that is the name he is using at the time), a handsome ne'er do well, who sponges off women.
At least five women, unknown to each other, are his willing victims. One he even married and abandoned, while promising to marry another. But, with the cruel irony he would be the first to recognize in that nursery rhyme, Jeff, almost accidentally, becomes the victim of one of his female prey.

`It is not only her rate of productivity which is startling. It is also her ability to tap into registers of feeling which range from the commonplace to the psychopathic. She is to be treasured.' Anita Brookner, Spectator
`Rendell is not only irresistible because of the brilliance of her descriptions of contemporary life and the sad truth of her characters. She is a great storyteller who knows how to make sure that the reader has to turn the pages out of a desperate need to find out what is going to happen next.' John Mortimer, Sunday Times
`One of the greatest novelists presently at work in our language.' Scott Turow

Stella Rimington writes: 'Nothing in my life ever turned out as expected. Having originally chosen a safe career, I ended up as leader of one of the country's intelligence agencies and a target for terrorists. Having conventionally married my schoolfriend, I ended up a single parent. Having begun work in the days when women's careers were not taken seriously, I ended up advising ministers and Prime Ministers. I have experienced all this from an unusual position, inside the secret state. 'In the 1980s I was seen by some as Mrs Thatcher's stooge, the leader of an arm of the secret state which was helping her to beat the miners' strike and destroy the NUM. I was portrayed as the investigator of CND and even as the one who had ordered the murder of an old lady peace campaigner. In 1992, when I first emerged into the public gaze as Director-General of MI5, I became a female James Bond, 'Housewife Superspy', 'Mother of Two Gets Tough with Terrorists'. And finally, with the writing of this book, I have become, to some, 'Rickless Rimington', careless of our national security. I don't recognize myself in any of those roles. 'The unexpected course of my life has involved me closely with some of the significant issues of the late 20th century: the rise of terrorism, the end of the Cold War and some of the big social questions: women's place in society - how can work and family be combined? Civil liberties - how far should the state intrude on the citizens' privacy to ensure their safety? Open government - how much should the public know about the secret state and how should it be controlled? These are some of the issues that concerned me throughout my career in MI5, and which I discuss in this book.'

England 1371. A solemn procession winds out of York Minster, part of the funeral of Sir Ranulf Pagnell, patriarch of a powerful Yorkshire family. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, has escorted the knight's remains north after his death in France, but he is shunned by the family. They hold him responsible for failing to negotiate Sir Ranulf's ransom.
Only a few days later, Wykeham's townhouse is found ablaze. The bishop has been staying with John Thoresby, Archbishop of York and is safe. But when the body of a young woman is discovered in the undercroft, scandal threatens.
Owen Archer is troubled. Was the fire an accident or arson? Was the woman left there to die or the fire intended to conceal her body? Stationing guards in front of the smouldering remains, he sets about identifying the corpse and asking questions.
When the dead woman is identified as a midwife known to many of the city's women, there is a flurry of panic. Owen has much to do if he is to discover who killed her - and why.

`Grips like a vice from the first page' Val McDermid

The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, pediatrician and medical examiner, finds Sibyl Adams, a young college professor, dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach. But it's only once Sara starts to perform the postmortem that the full extent of the killer's brutality starts to become clear.
Police chief Jeffrey Tolliver - Sara's ex-husband - is in charge of the investigation, and when a second victim is found, crucified, only a few days later, he has to face the fact that Sibyl's murder wasn't a one-off personal attack. What he's dealing with is a seasoned sexual predator. A serial killer.
But what neither Sara or Jeffrey could possibly predict is the depths this killer will sink to, the perversions of his twisted mind, or the extent to which his terrifying bloodlust will change their lives forever.

The Secret History meets The Sixth Sense: an outstanding thriller debut. In the small town of Mancanzano, buried deep in the Italian south, a teenage couple is found dead. Hidden away in one of the labyrinthine caves that surround the town, their naked young bodies are perfect except for mysterious lacerations across their faces, the result of frenzied gnawing at the underground walls.
As police puzzle over the deaths, a team of four experts arrives in Italy to investigate the breathtaking frescoes revealed by the teenagers' bloodied mouths. But when another couple is found, and then another, it becomes clear that the tragedy which brought them there was just the beginning, and as the outsiders become immersed in the odd daily life of Mancanzano, they find they are unable to leave. Weeks, then months pass, and as the intense heat,of the Italian summer descends, it seems the irresistible atmosphere of the deadly town has them all in its thrall...
Sasso is an astonishing first novel which combines erotically vivid writing with an unforgettably intense thriller.

Spectator ‘Josephine Tey has always been absolutely reliable in producing original and mysterious plots with interesting characters and unguessable endings’

On his train journey back to Scotland for a well-earned rest, Inspector Grant learns that a fellow passenger, one Charles Martin, has been found dead. It looks like a case of misadventure – but Grant is not so sure. Teased by some enigmatic lines of verse that the deceased had apparently scrawled on a newspaper, he follows a trail to the Outer Hebrides.And though it is the end of his holiday, it is also the beginning of an intriguing investigation into the bizarre circumstances shrouding Charles Martin’s death…

A classic mystery from the Golden Age of detective fiction.
Josephine Tey is one of the best-known and best-loveed of all crime writers. She began to write full-time after the successful publication of her first novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. In 1937 she returned to crime writing with A Shilling for Candles, but it wasn’t until after the Second World War that the majority of her crime novels were published. Josephine Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.

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