Following their collaboration in Split Second, ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have gone into partnership and are investigating the robbery of some secret documents at the residence of the incredibly wealthy Battle family. Meanwhile, a spate of serial killings begins to terrorise the neighbourhood; the murderer kills in the manner of famous killers of the past but takes care to leave a stopped watch at each crime scene - either on the hour, or one tick off. Why? As the killing spree escalates it seems that the Battle family are somehow involved...

Welcome to Fethering, where the village gossip is of weddings, parties and a ghastly murder ...

Carole Seddon's son is about to be married. But as plans for the big day get underway, Stephen's future parents-in-law, Marie and Harold, seem desperate to keep the affair as discreet as possible. But after a quiet engagement party, Harold disappears ... only to be found dead the next day, in a burnt-out car in Epping Forest.
As the family deal with their grief, Carole begins to suspect they are hiding secrets that can be traced back thirty years, to the murder of Marie's best friend. It also transpires that the killer has recently been released from prison, and is back in his old stamping ground, near Fethering ...
Are the murders connected? Will the killer make another deadly move? And most importantly, will the wedding day go without a hitch ... ? Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. He is married with three grown-up children and lives in an Agatha Christie-style village on the South Downs. This is Simon's sixth Fethering mystery.

10 years ago Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of 15-year old Abigail Mantel. Now new evidence has proved Jeanie's innocence. But Jeanie commits suicide in her prison cell, unable to face the people who had believed her capable of killing a child. On hearing the news, Emma Bennett is haunted once more by memories of her vibrant best friend, Abigail, and by the thought that her killer is still at large. Now Inspector Vera Stanhope is making fresh enquiries amongst the residents of Elvet, the small East Yorkshire village where Emma and Abigail grew up. Everyone is feeling vulnerable and uneasy, even guilty. And when a second body is found, the investigation takes a frightening new turn...

The rules never much mattered to Frank Corso, rogue reporter, true crime writer and honorable loner with a dangerous edge. So when the Texas police release a warrant with his name on it, it means nothing to him - except run - which he does in the company of Meg Dougherty, former lover and perhaps one true friend. But the running stops when a furious blizzard sends their car crashing to the bottom of an icy hill, and they are forced to seek shelter in an abandoned Midwestern house of horrors. In a shed outside their shelter a shocking discovery awaits Meg and Corso: human bones - the grisly remains of Eldred Holmes and his family. Corso's first move will be to somehow locate the one remaining family member - Eldred's wife, Sissy, whose face has been neatly scissored from every picture in the Holmes family album. With only eight days to solve a multiple homicide, Corso begins a hunt that will carry him through a chilling history of violence, terror and bloodshed. And his single-minded pursuit will make Corso a marked man - the target of a rage-driven maniac, a master of cunning reinvention - as he draws closer to the terrible truth that is hidden away in an isolated community, where no law protects the innocent...

After a Sudanese businessman falls ten stories from his hotel-room balcony, Paz investigates and finds a most unlikely suspect - an otherwordly creature named Emmylou Dideroff who claims to commune with the holy saints. Her "Confessions", scribbled in a series of notebooks, tell a remarkable tale of a woman from the wrong side of the tracks - a thief, a drug dealer, a prostitute - who would be called into the service of God in a most unusual way. Might this "service" include the murder of the Sudanese businessman, whose knowledge of oil reserves may be contributing to African genocide? It is left to police psychologist Lorna Wise to determine whether Emmylou is legally insane. But when people associated with the suspect start turning up dead, both Paz and Lorna begin to suspect that there's something much larger at stake than Emmylou's guilt or innocence - and that the search for justice might bring them up against an even more elemental force...

Only one quarter into the 21st century and our planet is displaying disturbing symptoms: storms, floods, mud-slides, tornadoes and blizzards afflict the globe's surface, while heatwaves, droughts and deep-freeze are regular occurrences. Not to mention volcanoes and earthquakes. Many believe that mankind's consuming Just for economic growth is fast wrecking the world, while others insist these changes are all part of the planet's natural cycle. Whatever the truth, the most alarming factor is that the Earth is beginning to tilt on its axis, and worldwide panic is looming. As governments, experts, corporations and disruptive forces squabble to be heard, it is up to individuals to seek a solution to the most horrifying geophysical scenario we have ever faced.

Philip Rees takes us into the world of e political activist and guerrilla fighters and sits us down with them at their tables

When George W Bush screamed, 'You're either with us or you're against us' in the war on terror, he eradicated the right of anyone to question his logic or challenge his new list of 'terrorist' organizations.
By infiltrating the most inaccessible political resistance groups over the past twenty-five years, Phil Rees has sought to understand what motivates the 'terrorist' or 'freedom fighter' and to balance this against the context of current world events. Through the sharing of refreshment and discussion with 'terrorists' in Colombia, Algeria, Kosovo, the UK, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Lebanon, France, Cambodia and Ireland, Rees was able to pierce the headlines and the propaganda to discover the human story behind the faceless, hooded caricature. As entertaining and intriguing as it is polemic and timely, this is the only book that challenges our preconceptions of just what the word terrorist actually means and how dangerous a weapon it is.

An award-winning journalist,Philip Rees has worked on Correspondent and Newsnight for the BBC. He has made more than thirty documentaries and has won a dozen international awards.

When he receives a mysterious and disturbing telephone call from his brother Roy, Banks heads off to London to search him out. Meanwhile, DI Annie Cabbot is called to a murder scene on a quiet stretch of road just outside Eastvale. A young woman has been found dead in her car...with Banks's name and address written on a slip of paper in the back pocket of her jeans. While Banks stays in his brother's luxurious, empty house, digging into his life and uncovering more and more surprises about the brother he didn't really know and didn't particularly like, Annie tracks down the female victim's friends and colleagues. It seems that both trails are leading towards horrific conclusions and when the cases look likely to intersect, the consequences for Banks and Annie become terrifying...

Our story begins in the year 1001 and the toddler, Thorgils Leiffson, son of Leif the Lucky and Thorgunna, arrives on the shores of Brattahlid in Greenland to be brought up in the fostercare of a young woman - Gudrid. Thorgils is a rootless character of quicksilver intelligence and adaptability. He has inherited his mother's ability of second sight and his destiny lies beyond the imagination of those around him. Virtually orphaned, he is raised by various mentors, who teach him the ancient ways and warn him of the invasion of the 'White Christ' into the land of the 'Old Gods'. Thorgils is guided by a restless quest for adventure and the wanderlust of his favoured god, Odinn. His fortunes take him into many dangerous situations as well as to the brink of death by execution, in battle, disease and shipwreck...Packed with wonderfully reimagined Viking sagas and adventures, and fascinating and unique characters, Viking - Odinn's Child gives historical novel writing a new dimension.

All night earthmovers tore at the old city and dug widening pools of light to raise a modern, vertical Moscow more like Houston or Dubai. It was a Moscow that Pasha Ivanov had helped to create, a shifting landscape of tectonic plates and lava flows and fatal missteps...So why is Pasha Ivanov - one of Russia's richest oligarch's - lying dead on the pavement outside his luxury high-rise apartment, his death an apparent open-and-shut suicide? Senior Investigator Arkady Renko has never been one to take evidence at face value and when Ivanov's wardrobe is found to be full of salt - and contaminated with radioactive cesium - his investigations take him to the notorious exclusion zone, the area around Chernobyl deserted and forgotten for almost two decades. "The Zone" is a place of mystery, danger - and sometimes unimaginable beauty. But everyone risks their life just by being there...