Introducing Sam Turner, who bluffs his way into a job as a private eye – and then discovers he’s good at it

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'Carroll orchestrates this smartly layered narrative with skill, and does force you to turn the pages...Adroit entertainment. File under 'beachwear' and use accordingly' Douglas Kennedy, The Times
'On the level of sheer sentence construction and his pellucid prose, Jonathan Carroll is among the most purely pleasing writers of the decade. Yet his elegant, entrancing novels have real depth' Kim Newman, Independent

When bestselling novelist Samuel Bayer decides it's time he wrote his 'great book', he chooses as his subject a true-life event that took place twenty years earlier in his home town, Crane's View. As a child Samuel discovered the body of teenage beauty Pauline Ostrova (commonly known as 'the beehive') floating in the Hudson river. Her boyfriend, Edward Durant, was arrested, imprisoned and died in gaol. But as he begins to examine why things happened, Samuel finds himself unearthing secrets which threaten to sour his rosy-hued childhood. This leads to devastating - and fatal - consequences for both himself and those around him...

Jonathan Carroll is a writer who infuriatingly refuges to be classified. His prizewinning novels have been consistently praised but inconsistently pigeon-holed as fantasy, twentieth-century horror, literary fiction and even crime thrillers. What most people do agree on, however, is that he is a master-storyteller, a writer with an unique ability to create something as wonderful and as crazy as anything seen on Twin Peaks
Jonathan Carroll was born in New York in 1949 to creative parents - his father was a writer whose film credits included The Hustler and his mother was an actress and lyricist who appeared in numerous Broadway musicals and films. After a rebellious youth that was curtailed when a friend was shot dead by the police, he graduated from Virginia University and then moved to Vienna to teach English. Although he has received invitations to teach in numerous cities, he continues to write, teach and live in Vienna with his wife, while his son attends college in New York State.
His novels have been translated into seventeen languages and his powerful writing and extraordinary imagination for ideas has earned him world-wide admiration. His fan base has grown steadily and includes such literary heavyweights as Pat Conroy, Stephen King, Michael Moorcock and Thomas Harris and also Jane Campion, Juliette Bincohe, Sting and the King of Poland. He has won the World Fantasy Award.

'Blending fairy tale, drama, magic realism and occult horror, the fiction of Jonathan Carroll is like no one else's. It begins with a careful sketch of 'real' life, takes a sudden 'turn into the fantastic, then careers toward ever more disorienting wonders until a final revelation or enigma' Washington Post

Returning to her class reunion after fifteen years, Miranda Romanac has her heart set on meeting her high-school sweetheart, James Stillman - the man who continues to represent the ideals of her youth. She is devastated to learn, therefore, that he had died three years before in a car crash. As she tries to face up to what has happened, her life starts to take an unexpected turn. The catalyst for this change is her meeting with the fabulously eccentric Frances Hatch, mistress of many of the great artists in Paris in the twenties. Simultaneously, she embarks upon an affair with Hugh, an art-dealer and a married man and then sees James Stillman again, waving furiously to her from across the street. Can it be possible or is it merely a figment of her over-active imagination? In one click, everything Miranda takes for granted is destroyed and her life slowly begins to spiral into a fantastical nightmare reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe.
Through a series of extraordinary events, described in that spellbinding way that Carroll is celebrated for, Miranda learns from both the living and the dead who she really is and how far her history goes back. It is not a happy discovery but it is optimistic, as there lies the possibility of redemption. If she has the courage and imagination to recapture a life she once thought her own, there is a chance. But if she fails, who knows the full consequences for both herself and for those around her.

Jonathan Carroll is a writer who infuriatingly refuses to be classified. His prizewinning novels have been consistently praised but inconsistently pigeon-holed as fantasy, twentieth-century horror, literary fiction and even crime thrillers. What most people do agree on, however, is that he is a master-storyteller, a writer with an unique ability to create something as wonderful and as crazy as anything seen on Twin Peaks.

'Blending fairy tale, drama, magic realism and occult horror, the fiction of Jonathan Carroll is like no one else's. It begins with a careful sketch of 'real' life, takes a sudden turn into the fantastic, then careers toward ever more disorienting wonders until a final revelation or enigma' Washington Post

Praise for Kissing; the Beehive:
'Carroll orchestrates this smartly layered narrative with skill, and does force you to turn the pages...Adroit entertainment. File under 'beachwear' and use accordingly' Douglas Kennedy, The Times
'On the level of sheer sentence construction and his pellucid prose, Jonathan Carroll is among the most purely pleasing writers of the decade. Yet his elegant, entrancing novels have real depth' Kim Newman, Independent

Each year she took the same trip. Always on the same date. Always to the same place. The climb to the cave and afterwards a shower under the waterfall, but now the blowflies rise above her mutilated corpse.

J. Robert Janes was born in Toronto and now lives in Ontario. A mining engineer and geologist by profession, Janes has also worked as a teacher and lecturer. Since becoming a full time writer in 1970, he has written over twenty books including novels for children and adults and a number of textbooks.

'Mon Dieu ' exclaimed St-Cyr, the breath escaping him. La Chambre du cerf' grunted their guide dispassionately. The Stag Room. She was lying on the floor, on her back but with her face turned away from them, and her long golden hair was bound by a right headband of silver brocade in which were insets of pale blue enamelled violets.
Much blood had flowed from her to pool and darken on the glazed and soldier-ravaged tiles. Arterial blood had been pumped so hard, it had sprayed across the floor and over the wall to stain the medieval fisherman and run down the long white neck of a swan that was about to be trapped for the table six hundred years ago.
Blood was spattered down her front - had she been on her knees begging God to intervene? Had she fled to here? Had she run from her assailant? Why had she been in the Palais at all?

Occupied France. World War II.
The pairing of Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surêté and Gestapo Oberdetektiv Hermann Kohler seems unorthodox but they have always been successful. Shipped hastily from Paris to Avignon they are sent to investigate the violent death of a young woman in the Palais des Papes. The victim is the scion of a fallen aristocratic family and a scholar of medieval history. She is also a singer who is desperate to join the Madrigal group for whom she already designs and makes costumes.
But the victim has left behind a coded journal which, if deciphered, may enable St Cyr to discover the truth. After much self-doubt, fear and another death, St-Cyr may just do that.
Big on local colour, noir atmospherics and historical detail, the plot is a complex mix of politics, sex, drugs and professional jealousy.