8 Crime Fiction
70192 MURDER MOST HOLY by Paul Doherty This book was previously published under the pseudonym of Paul Harding and it concerns the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan. In the early summer of 1379 in London, Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city, is invited to a great banquet at the Regent’s Palace on the Thames. There he is trapped into a wager with Signior Gian Galeazzo, Lord of Cremona, who challenges him to resolve a certain murder mystery within two weeks. Men have been found dead in the Scarlet Chamber of one of Cremona’s manors and they all have terrible expressions of terror upon their faces. Cranston seeks the help of his faithful secretarius Brother Athelstan. 243pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
70427 THEREBY HANGS A TAIL by Spencer Quinn
Chet and his human companion Bernie have both had some setbacks in life - Bernie in combat, Chet in K-9 school, but together they make a team like no other. Here they are called on to investigate threats made against an unlikely target - a petty, pampered show dog named Princess. But what seems like a joke turns into a serious case when Princess and her owner are abducted. To make matters worse, Bernie’s on-off girlfriend reporter Susie disappears too. 309pp. £15.99 NOW £2.75
72645 CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel
by Alexander McCall Smith US first edition 2010 in elegant paperback. Our inquisitive heroine comes to see that there are very few of us who are not flawed, herself included. She has been asked to help in a rather tricky situation. A successor is being sought for the headmaster of a local
boys’ school. The board has three final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet and could Isabel discreetly look into it? What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers about herself and Jamie, the father of her young son, turns out to be equally revealing. Isabel will have to explore issues of ambition, charity, forgiveness and humility. 256pp. $24.95 NOW £5
71217 A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS by Rebecca Tope
Thea Osborne and her loyal spaniel Hepzie are still pursuing their occupation as house-sitters, despite the disastrous incidents of the past. At the moment they are staying in the late Greta Simmonds’ house which is currently between ownership. But when a body is discovered in a nearby field, Thea finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation. After befriending the undertaker Drew Slocombe, she soon finds she has aligned herself with the police’s only suspect. A classic English village mystery set in Gloucester. 413pp in paperback.
£7.99 NOW £3
71219 BLOOD IN THE COTSWOLDS by Rebecca Tope
Thea and her faithful spaniel Hepzie have taken on a house-sitting assignment in the charming Cotswolds village of Temple Guiting. But as always, an idyllic village can harbour a disquieting number of secrets, and when a skeleton is discovered at the roots of an old beech tree, Thea is grateful for the presence of her partner DS Phil Hollis. It is a mystery as to whom the bones belonged and soon theories and rumours abound in the ‘quiet’ countryside. 444pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
72036 CITY OF DARK HEARTS by James Conan
It is 1893 and Anna Zemeckis, a young New Yorker, goes missing in America’s most dangerous city, Chicago. Home to the World’s Fair, Chicago is a city of glitz and razzmatazz, intoxicated by its own wealth, but beneath the sophisticated façade lies a sinister underworld of pornography, prostitution and violence. It’s a lethal place for the weak or vulnerable, and Anna isn’t the first young woman to disappear without trace. Emily Strauss, an inexperienced but ambitious reporter from the New York World, is given a treacherous assignment - to find out what happened to Anna and to the other missing women. Against a punishing deadline, alone in a dangerous and unfamiliar world, she soon discovers a powerful enemy. A rich, historical thriller with short chapters and a tight plot. 572pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
71231 FOX EVIL by Minette Walters When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, the finger of suspicion points at her wealthy, land-owning husband Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A Coroner’s inquest gives a verdict of ‘natural causes’, but the gossip surrounding James refuses to go away. Is he guilty or is it because Shenstead Village is a place of too few people and too many secrets? Why have James and Ailsa cut their children out of their wills and what happened in the past to create such animosity within the family? And why is James so desperate to find his illegitimate grandchild? 557pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50
72117 FALLEN ANGEL by David Hewson When British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa rapidly comes to realise that there is much more to the accident than he had first thought. It also becomes apparent that Malise’s family, mysterious and tragic daughter Mina, stoic wife Cecilia and troubled son Robert, may be keeping vital information hidden. Nic becomes obsessed with the case and especially intrigued by Mina’s story which seems to be linked with the 16th century legend of a young Italian noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci. As the investigation deepens, Rome’s dark and seedy side is uncovered and Costa realises that the key to the truth lies with the Gabriel family. 523pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3
72613 INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS by Imogen Robertson
TESS GERRITSEN Sunday Times Bestsellers 72949 IN THEIR
FOOTSTEPS: Sunday Times Bestsellers
by Tess Gerritsen
The quiet scandal surrounding her parents’ deaths 20 years ago has always haunted Beryl Tavistock and now she has decided that the only way to exorcise the ghosts of the past is to search for the truth, but answers are proving that old secrets die hard. Caught in a game of cat-and-mouse, her quest takes her from the rain-slick
streets of Paris to the sun-drenched isles of Greece. As she gets pulled into a world of international espionage, Beryl quickly discovers that she needs help. Richard Wolf, an ex-CIA agent and a man she’s only just met is her only hope in this double-edged sword of a world, where friends become enemies and enemies become killers. 329pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50
72950 STOLEN: Sunday
Times Bestsellers by Tess Gerritsen
The sinking of a cargo ship and the slaughter of its crew seemed a senseless act of violence, but Clea Rice knows the truth and is determined to expose the culprits. When Jordan Tavistock is asked to steal the indiscreet letters of a friend, he reluctantly obliges only to be caught red-handed by another burglar. That burglar is
Clea, looking for something else entirely. Only together can they find the answers to the sinister questions surrounding the sinking of the ship, answers that some are prepared to kill for to keep buried. A thriller in the vein of Harlan Coben. 330pp in paperback with fairly large print. £6.99 NOW £3.50
72956 NEVER SAY DIE:
Sunday Times Bestsellers by Tess Gerritsen
20 years after her father’s plane crashed in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Willy Jane Maitland was finally tracking his last moves. Without knowing who to trust, Willy turns to ex- army officer turned mercenary Guy Barbard who knows the jungles like the back of his hand. As deadly assailants chase them, Willy and Guy realise they are
investigating secrets that people will kill to protect. A compelling thriller. 277pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50
73490 TESS GERRITSEN: Set of Three by Tess Gerritsen
Buy all three paperbacks and save more. £20.97 NOW £9
72136 HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF by Karin Fossum
A boy arrives breathless and aghast, at his police station, to report the discovery of a horribly maimed body outside an isolated house in the woods. There was another person in the woods that day though, standing nearby. Was the mysterious figure that of the local misfit Errki? The next morning a bank in the nearby town is robbed at gunpoint. The gunman takes a hostage and flees. As his plans begin to unravel he, unlike his passive hostage, rapidly loses control. Meanwhile the search for the killer has developed into a manhunt. 387pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.75
72257 MURDER MUST ADVERTISE: A Lord
Peter Wimsey Mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym’s Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry, until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions. Disguised as his disreputable cousin Death Bredon, Lord Peter Wimsey takes a job, one that soon draws him into a vicious network of blackmailers and drug pedlars. Five people will die before he unravels a sinister and deadly plot. Dorothy L. Sayers first published this novel in 1933 and here it has been reissued with a new introduction in 388 page paperback.
£7.99 NOW £4
72378 PRAGUE FATALE: A Bertie Gunther Thriller by Philip Kerr
Featuring the wartime German Kripopolitzei (Criminal Police) detective Bernie Gunther treading the fine and deadly line between doing his job and not upsetting the increasingly paranoid and deranged Nazi leadership. It is September 1941 and, returning to his hometown of Berlin from the horrors of the Eastern Front, he finds that things have changed decidedly for the worse, with blackouts, RAF bombing, rationing and terrorism making his already difficult job even harder. But no sooner is he settled than he is obliged to travel to Prague to stay for the weekend at the country house of his old boss Reinhard Heydrich of the Sicherhietsdienst (SD), the chief intelligence-gathering organisation of the SS. The weekend is already looking pretty grim, his fellow guests being loathsome senior SS and SD officials, but things get worse when a body is found inside a room that was locked from the inside. 439pp. £17.99 NOW £4.50
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In the year 1780, Harriet Westerman, the unconventional mistress of a country manor in Sussex, finds a dead man on her grounds. In his pocket is a ring bearing the crest of Thornleigh Hall, seat of the Earl of Sussex and home to a once-great family now shrouded in mystery. She recruits the reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer, and an unlikely but formidable partnership begins. Moving from drawing room to dissecting table, the dark streets of London to the gentrified countryside, here is a tale of a fallen family and the forensic duo who set out to uncover its deadly secret. 372pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4
72665 RETURN OF CAPTAIN JOHN EMMETT: A Mystery by Elizabeth Speller
Post-World War I England in the 1920s is still devastated by violence and loss. In the aftermath of a devastating family tragedy, Laurence has turned his back on the world, but then an old love of his asks for his help. Her brother has apparently killed himself while in the care of a remote veterans’ hospital, but she does not believe that he would do such a thing. With the help of his friend Charles, who has learnt all his detecting skills from mystery novels, Laurence begins asking awkward questions. What connects a group of war poets, a bitter feud in the dead man’s former regiment and a hidden love affair? Was the death a missing piece in a puzzling series of murders? As more veterans turn up dead, Laurence is forced to face the darkest corners of his war experiences and it becomes clear that his own survival may depend on uncovering the truth. 442 pages. $26 NOW £5
71694 BLACK ICE by Michael Connelly The corpse in the hotel room appears to be that of a missing LAPD Narcotics Officer. Rumours abound that the cop had crossed over, selling a new drug called Black Ice that had been infiltrating LA from Mexico, and the LAPD brass are quick to declare his death a suicide. Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch isn’t so sure. Prompted by odd, inexplicable details at the crime scene, and an undeniable attraction to the cop’s widow, Bosch starts his own maverick investigation that soon leads him over the border to Mexicali and into a dangerous labyrinth of shifting identities and deadly corruption. 377pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3
72054 LOSS by Tony Black
Michael Dury is found dead with a bullet hole beneath his heart. His brother Gus is a washed-up hack who has been living on a knife-edge, but he has turned the most unexpected corner and is off the Edinburgh streets and back with his wife Debs. He has promised her he won’t get involved in any more dodgy cases which the police can’t or won’t solve and above all he is off the drink. He hasn’t so much as loosened the cap on the half bottle of scotch he carries everywhere, but with Michael’s death, Gus’s life beings to unravel all over again. How can he keep those promises and still avenge his brother’s murder? Strong language. 277pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.50
71532 SOMME STATIONS: Sometimes the
Enemy Lies Within by Andrew Martin It is little known that, during World War I, the North Eastern Railway raised its own battalion. It was called the 17th Northumberland Fusiliers. The battalion really did go to war in 1916 and the first day of their experiences in the Somme is based closely on fact. The hero of the tale, Jim Stringer finds himself trapped in a too-shallow shell hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the bullets and the blazing sun. Even before they depart for France, a member of Jim’s unit has been found dead, the body horribly battered. 287 pages. £12.99 NOW £5
72012 ZERO DAY by David Baldacci War hero John Puller is known to be the top investigator in the US Army’s CID. So when a family with military connections is brutally murdered in a remote area of West Virginia, Puller is called in to investigate and soon suspects the case has wider implications. As the body count rises, he teams up with local homicide detective Samantha Cole. When the web of deceit is revealed, it becomes apparent that there is much more to this case and nothing can be taken at face value. The pair discover a dangerous situation in the making. In a race against time, Cole fears for the community in which she was raised. In the end, you can’t kill what you can’t see coming. 612pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4
71834 FAITH by Peter James
Perfection is more than just an ideal, it’s a living to Ross Ransome. He is one of the richest plastic surgeons in the business and even his wife is perfect - after all, he has spent enough hours in surgery to getting her that way. So when she becomes ill and turns her back on conventional medicine and seeks help from a charismatic alternative
therapist, Ransome feels bitter and betrayed. Why should anyone have his wife when he can’t. A terrifying thriller which shows what happens when our belief in people gets out of control. 465pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3
71998 PERFECT PEOPLE by Peter James John and Naomi Klaesson are grieving the death of their four year old son from a rare genetic disorder. They desperately want another child, but when they find out that they are both carriers of a rogue gene, they realise the odds of their next child contracting the same disease are high. Then they hear about geneticist Dr Leo Dettore who has methods that can spare them the heartache of ever losing another child, even if his methods are more than they can afford. At his clinic is where their nightmare begins. Choices of eye colour, hair, sporting abilities - they can literally design their own child. Now it is too late to turn back as Naomi is pregnant, and already something is badly wrong. 597pp in chunky paperback. £7.99 NOW £4
EARLY LEARNING
Why a four year old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four year old child. I can’t make head nor tail of it.
- Groucho Marx
73222 DISNEY PUZZLE MANIA by Disney
Enterprises and Pixar A chunky spiral bound softback with blue gel pen attached in a plastic wallet, this is a fun packed activity book bursting with Disney magic with characters from Toy Story, Winnie the Pooh, The Little
Mermaid, 101 Dalmatians, Pinocchio, Bambi and more. Try Buzz Lightyear mazes, Pooh word searches and Pirates of the Caribbean crosswords and if you are a HUGE Disney fan, test your knowledge in the Awesome Quiz with 317 questions ending with What was the name of Jack Sparrow’s ship. Wicked word searches get you looking forwards, backwards up and down and diagonally to find Disney-themed words hidden. With answers. 192pp in softback. £3.99 NOW £2
73051 10,000 ZOMBIES: Create More Than 10,000
Zombies and 10,000 Stories by Alexander Cox
Keep well away if you are of a nervous disposition - this gory, grisly book is not for you. It features a ghoulish gallery of the un-dead. It is impossible to estimate how many pages there are, but we assume about 10,000, because the split-page format divides the figures at the neck and
waist, so that Zombie heads, torsos and legs can be chopped and changed at will. Flip the top and you have a ghoul with his eye hanging out. Lift the middle and reveal its skeleton body and bloody stomach. Cautiously peek under the bottom to find its decomposing lower half and mechanical legs. Every time you turn a page a new story is revealed, since the text is completely interchangeable, and every time you flip part of a picture, a new zombie is created. You can do this 10,000 times if you have the courage, because the book is printed on tough cardboard in a spiral-bound cover. But be careful how often you are tempted to reveal yet more rotting, maggot-filled, brain-dead creatures, because their sole purpose is to eat you! £10.99 NOW £4
72989 GUESS WITH JESS:
Wipe Clean Activity Book by Egmont
Jess the black and white cat and her lovable animal friends will be very well known to youngsters aged 3-5. Join Jess and his friends in this wipe-clean activity book and use the wipe clean pen to play games on the shiny pages like funny faces, dot-to-dot, spot-the-
difference, mazes, messy painting, object matching, drawing balloons and much more. Large softback. £3.99 NOW £2
72844 MEERKAT MAZES by Kate Overy and Samantha Noonan
Meet the Meerkat family who have a huge burrow with lots of different rooms. Mr and Mrs Meerkat, Grandad Maurice, Aunty Myrtle, Matt who loves to play sports and games, Mickey who loves to explore and Milly, the fearless.
Spot-the-difference and mazes, we are taken to scenes like Mount Olympus, on holiday, under the sea and a fine feast. The Meerkats become pirates for a day, get chased by Egyptian mummies and visit the Meerkat Robots of the future. Lovely cartoon colour illus on every page which makes learning fun. 96pp in large softback.
£6.99 NOW £3
72563 A CHILD’S BOOK OF MYTHS
retold and illustrated by Margaret Evans Price Here is a unique opportunity for children to experience the marvel and splendour of 19 ancient Greek fables. The format allows the younger ones to have the option of reading along or simply listening to the recorded narrative while looking
at the charming pictures. One story tells of Icarus, who disobeyed his father Daedalus by flying too high with his artificial wings so that the wax attaching them to his shoulders melted in the heat of the sun, and he came to a sticky end. Another relates how Bellerophon, not satisfied with having a fabulous winged horse, longed to ride to the towering summit of Mount Olympus and visit the gods. They were understandably angry and engineered his downfall. All the tales, from Jason and the Golden Fleece to Pandora’s box and The Twelve Labours of Hercules are guaranteed to thrill - as they have done, of course, for hundreds of years. 131 paperback pages with 88 colour images and FREE CD. £14.49 NOW £4.50
72103 ULTIMATE FIRST BOOK GUIDE edited by Leonie Flynn et al
Michael Rosen, Tony Ross, Nick Sharratt and dozens more guide us through 500 board books, bath books, novelty books, pop-up books, picture books, fiction and non-fiction. Here is Room on the Broom by Julia
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