San Francisco Chronicle ‘A breathless, real-time adventure...Exciting, fast-paced, with an unusually high IQ’
Bookbrowse.com ‘Part thriller, part mystery, and all action. A highly entertaining, page turning thriller’

When a world renowned scientist is found brutally murdered, a Harvard professor, Robert Langdon, is summoned to identify the mysterious symbol seared onto the dead man's chest. His conclusion: it is the work of the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood presumed extinct for nearly four hundred years - now reborn to continue their bitter vendetta against their sworn enemy, the Catholic church.
In Rome, the college of cardinals assembles to elect a new pope. Yet somewhere within the walls of the Vatican, an unstoppable bomb of terrifying power relentlessly counts down to oblivion. While the minutes tick away, Langdon joins forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to decipher the labyrinthine trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome to the long-forgotten Illuminati lair - a secret refuge wherein lies the only hope for the Vatican.
But, with each revelation comes another twist, another turn in the plot, which leaves Langdon and Vetra reeling and at the mercy of a seemingly invincible enemy.

John Burdett's extraordinary head-spinning new novel featuring Sonchai Jitpleecheep, Thai Buddhist detective extraordinaire Bangkok, rich in history and spirituality, crowded with temples, markets and canals, is also a city shrouded in shadows. Polluted, corrupt, infamous as the sex capital of the world, it is a place where wealth, poverty and unimaginable evil walk hand in hand. In District 8, the underbelly of Bangkok's crime world, a dramatically mutilated body is found in a hotel bedroom. It looks bad: the corpse - who's been flayed - is CIA. And it gets worse when the self-confessed murderer is the beautiful Chanya - the best 'working girl' at The Old Man's Club, a brothel owned jointly by Sonchai's mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn. Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell located in a southern Thai border-town where, since 9/11, the CIA has also had a covert presence. So far so good: but the truth will be harder to come by, and it will require Sonchai to find an ever more delicate balance between his ambition (western) and his Buddhism (eastern), while he runs the gamut of Bangkok's drug-dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, even worse military generals, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart. Crowded with astonishing characters, redolent with the authentic, hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok, with needle-sharp observations about the clash of cultures when East meets West, this is a literary thriller like no other.

'A cracking East meets West thriller introducing a half-Thai, half-American cop whose Buddhist beliefs are as important as his forensic skills. Terrific.' Observer
‘Impeccably researched . . . sometimes poetic, often exotic, and totally hardcore.’ Daily Mirror
‘A stunning thriller.Suspense at its best.’ Jeffery Deaver
‘One of the most startling and provocative mysteries I’ve read in years.’ Carl Hiaasen
‘A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you’ve been blasted to Mars in the grip of a demon who won’t let you go. Read this book!’James Ellroy
‘A thriller as exotic as it is enthralling, and as provocative as it is obscene.’ Harper’s Magazine
‘A genuine grown-up work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents . . . A tour de force.’ Washington Post

A compelling whodunit set in the eighteenth century from the acclaimed author of The Grenadillo Box and The Serpent in the Garden.

Agnes Meadowes is cook to the Blanchards of Foster Lane, the renowned silversmiths. Her quiet world of culinary activity, preparing jugged hare, oyster loaves, almond soup and other delicacies for the family, is a happy refuge from the hustle and bustle of 1750s London. But in a single night everything is to change. When the Blanchards' most prestigious and expensive commission, a giant silver wine cooler destined for the house of Sir Bartholomew Grey, is stolen, a sinister chain of events is set in motion. That same night a young apprentice is murdered and a young maid, Rose, disappears. Are these portentous happenings connected? Called upon by her master, Theodore Blanchard, to investigate 'below stairs', Agnes now enters a dark world of hidden secrets, jealousy and murderous intent. Before the game is played out she will be forced to act as mouse to the infamous Thief Taker's cat as she is slowly drawn into a seamy underworld of London crime. But the truth, like the expensive tea leaves that Agnes keeps under lock and key, comes at a high price and she must decide how big a sacrifice she is prepared to make to bring the villains to justice.
Once again Janet Gleeson has produced a gripping historical murder mystery, and in Agnes Meadowes has created a heroine whom readers will love. The Thief Taker is an evocative and spell-binding novel of crime, chicanery and cooking that will delight her existing fans and win her many more.

Janet Gleeson was born in Sri Lanka, where her father was a tea planter. After taking a degree in History of Art and English she joined Sotheby's, and later worked for Bonhams Auctioneers. In 1991 she joined Reed Books, where she was responsible for devising and writing Miller's Antiques and Collectibles. She is the author of the Sunday Times non-fiction bestsellers The Arcanum and The Moneymaker. She is also the author of three novels, The Grenadillo Box, The Serpent in the Garden and The Thief-Taker.

When Dennis Milne - now living under an assumed identity in the Philippines - hears that his old friend and colleague Malik has been gunned down in a restaurant, he decides to go back to the violent city he once called home, and bring the murderer to book. Milne arrives in a pre-Christmas London which is cold and hostile. But he is no longer a policeman; no longer charged with keeping the peace and upholding the law. Although his old friends at the King's Cross station do not know that Milne is back in town, it soon becomes clear that his arrival has been expected by men who are after his blood. Hungry for revenge and determined to uphold his own very rough brand of justice, Milne's search for the person behind his friend's death leaves a trail of death and destruction that is more wide-reaching than even he could have expected...