Grant and Kim Roxby hoped that their first dinner party at Pelling House would make an impression. And the next day it's certainly the talk of Fedborough. For their guests had been enjoying a pleasant meal before they were interrupted by a gruesome discovery. A human torso hidden in the cellar.
Jude and Carole are soon questioning the locals and learning that Fedborough works to its own rules. But why is a town so notoriously distrustful of outsiders proving so helpful to their enquiries . . . ?

Simon Brett lives near Arundel, West Sussex

'Brett is a master at subtle characterization, superb setting, and plotting in which his characters solve themselves in the process of solving murders' Booklist

Once a hotshot investigative reporter, middle-aged Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, 'plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff'. Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, might just be the stiff of jack's dreams: dead in a diving 'accident' that gives off a fishy smell - if only Jack can figure out what happened.
Of course, it won't be easy, particularly with untimely interference from (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn't fired anyone yet but plans to 'break her cherry' on Jack; the rock star's pop-singer widow, Cleo Rio, who's hiding something that requires a brutish bodyguard's protection (though he's no match for jack's frozen lizard); and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom lack once publicly humiliated at a stockholders' meeting.
With clues from the dead rock singer's own music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy Stoma's strange fate - a hilariously hard-won triumph for the greater good of muckraking journalism, and for death-obsessed Jack himself.

Sheila Malory returns to investigate the sudden death of a wealthy recluse It is twenty years since Leonora Staveley retired from her illustrious career as an investigative journalist to live as a virtual recluse on Exmoor, surrounded only by her beloved animals. With an increasing lack of concern for her own welfare and her house filled to the brim with the clutter and relics of an extraordinary life, no-one was too surprised when the elderly Leonora suffered a fatal bout of food poisoning. But Sheila Malory suspects something far more sinister was involved in the death of her friend. For there are a number of people, including Leonora's brother Vernon and her neighbours the Bamfilde brothers, who had good reason to want this wealthy lady out of the way once and for all. And aside from the obvious suspects, just who was the mysterious young man seen camping near Leonora's house just days before she died...?

The third novel in which famous Italian artist Canaletto plays sleuth in the 1740s.

' . . . how do you describe that moment when the lights go out in someone's eyes and the darkness takes over? They become something you can't reason with, something whose conscience you can't appeal to ... They look human, but they're not ... They have no moral code. They become less than human - inadequate, incomplete. And that incompleteness can make them dangerous, even deadly.'

When Ruth Gemmill's younger brother Alex fails to return her calls, she sets off to check up on him. Unable to find him in Greenwell, the town where he has been living and teaching, she begins her tentative enquiries. She soon discovers the locals to be frustratingly unhelpful, whilst the eerie town holds more questions than clues. Why are the police so uncooperative? And who is the 'grey man' the schoolchildren saw Alex with not long before he went missing?
As Ruth becomes concerned that something terrible has happened to her brother, events escalate mysteriously, dangerously out of control. Then in one fearful moment she is sure she glimpses the abusive ex-boyfriend she left behind in London, the man who caused her years of torturous pain. Too late, Ruth realizes that she is at the centre of a far darker nightmare than she could ever have imagined.

A chilling new novel in the award-winning Inspector Banks series. Number 35 The Hill is an ordinary house in an ordinary street, owned by an apparently ordinary young couple. But it is about to become infamous... For when police constables Janet Taylor and Dennis Morrisey are sent to the house following a report of a domestic disturbance, they stumble upon a truly horrific scene. A scene which leaves one dead and one fighting for her life and career. Inspector Alan Banks, currently Acting Superintendent, has been leading the hunt for the Chameleon, a serial killer who has so far abducted five young women in the Yorkshire area. Banks is immediately called to The Hill - where, it seems, the Chameleon's identity has finally and gruesomely been revealed. But the capture of the serial killer is only the beginning of a shocking investigation that will test everyone to the absolute limit...

.

When a Los Angeles construction scandal threatens to blow sky-high, a squalid torrent of blackmail, counter-blackmail and murder is unleashed. Suspicions soar, allegiances crumble, and an unlikely investigative reporter uncovers enough material to bring prominent careers crashing to an end. Behind the scenes, one woman thinks she's pulling the strings: on an adrenaline and drugfuelled high, she plots the downfall of her enemies and the survival of the one person she trusts. Herself. Let nobody underestimate the murderous Dee Storey.
Least of all her daughter, Shay. A girl with more secrets than someone of her age ought to have. A girl whose future will be forever linked with a dark night in the Mojave Preserve and a small-town Sheriff called John Victor Sully. Even if she doesn't know it yet. Even if she never will.
But who could have foreseen that the ill-fated night of 27 October 1987 would precipitate, some eleven years on, the mysterious execution of five people in San Frasquito Canyon? Certainly not John Victor Sully. At least, not until he got the taste for revenge ...