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Margaret Thomson Davis
Tangled Web
Published September 1999 by Century at £16.99
ISBN: 0712680454
Patrick is reeling with shock. A young girl has been found strangled, sexually assaulted. The place is buzzing with gossip, and everyone with children is terrified.
For Rachel and Andy Stevenson, however, it is all an exciting diversion from the more pressing problem of their mother Daisy's boyfriend, twenty-five-year-old Harry Lorrimar. As Daisy prepares to move her lover into their house, Rachel hits on a brilliant plan to get rid of Harry.
The repercussions of Rachel's plan are horrific, and as she grows up into a full realisation of the consequences of her lie, she has to cope with her guilt and begin the fight to build a new life for herself from the wreckage...
Margaret Thomson Davis has lived in Glasgow since the age of three. She is the author of eighteen previous novels, an autobiography and over two hundred short stories.
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David W. Maurer
The Big Con
Published July 1999 by Century at £14.99
ISBN: 0712684107
'Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat,' wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitively proved in The Big Con.
'A bonanza of wild but credible stories, told concisely with deadpan humour, as sly and rich in atmosphere as anything this side of Mark Twain' Luc Sante, Salon.
First published in 1940, The Big Con makes compelling reading whilst being the most authentic and utterly authoritative study on the con artist and his game.
David W. Maurer was a professor of linguistics who specialised in underworld argot and won the trust of hundreds of swindlers. These men let Maurer in on not simply their language, but also elaborated on the astonishingly complex schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty were cheated of thousands upon thousands of dollars.
The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo and rife with indelible characters such as the Seldom-Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie and Larry the Lug. Now back in print, this classic 1940 inside story of the confidence trickster was the chief source for the 1973 cult movie The Sting and is one of the most entertaining and well researched works of criminology ever written.
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Chris Ryan
Tenth Man Down
Published July 1999 by Century at £15.99
ISBN: 0712680810
When an SAS team is sent to train government troops in Kamanga, a poverty-stricken and
war-torn republic in the dark heart of southern Africa, Geordie Sharp is caught up in the
most dangerous and difficult assignment of his military career. At the outset of the
mission a juju, or witch doctor, predicts that ten whites are going to die, and as the
prediction starts to come true one by one down they go.
In the south of Kamanga rebel forces have seized the diamond mines which produce the bulk
of the country's wealth. The aim of the crack government unit is to recover these
lucrative assets, with Geordie Sharp and his squad providing much-needed back-up. When the
SAS men see that the rebels are boosted by ex-US Navy SEALs mercenaries, they begin to
sense a hidden agenda. Before they can discover what it is, Sharp and two others fall into
rebel hands. His comrade Whinger dies a hideous death, but Sharp manages to escape.
At last Sharp stumbles onto the secret which is drawing such strong international interest
- only to realise that he himself may have been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation in
the process.
Is he the tenth and last of the juju's victims?
Praise for Chris Ryan novels:
'Remarkable...gripping' Express
'Slick, polished and gut-wrenching stuff' Irish Times
'Real strength in detailing the nitty-gritty of operations' Sunday Times
Chris Ryan was born near Newcastle in 1961, and in 1984 he joined the SAS, completing three tours in many different parts of the world. For his escape from Iraq in January 1991 he was awarded the Military Medal. He left the SAS in 1994. He is the author of four bestsellers, The One That Got Away (1995), Stand By, Stand By (1996), Zero Option (1997) and The Kremlin Device (1998).