The end of the First World War saw the rise of an insatiable public appetite for clever and thrilling mystery fiction and a new kind of hero – the modern crime writer. As the genre soared in popularity, so did the inventiveness of its best authors, ushering in a “Golden Age” of detective fiction – two decades of exemplary mystery writing: the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.
The Golden Age still casts a long shadow, with many of the authors who were published at that time still hugely popular today. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although many have been republished in books over the last 100 years, Bodies from the Library collects the ones that are impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print; ephemeral works such as plays not aired, staged or screened for decades; and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author’s archive when they died . . .
Complete with fascinating biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, this latest volume in the annual Bodies from the Library series once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown, and is an indispensable collection for any bookshelf.
Nell Sweeney has led an ordinary life. Every day she walks to and from the hospital where she works as a nurse, believing that no harm can befall her.
Until one day she is taken.
Because someone out there has a secret. Someone out there has been watching Nell – and they’ve been watching others like her too.
Nell is the unlucky one – she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if she isn’t found soon, someone will make sure that she isn’t the last woman to disappear…
When you think you're all alone,
That's when he'll come for you...
A silent killer stalks the city, targeting those home alone at night, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the victims.
As panic spreads, Detective Inspector Helen Grace leads the investigation, but is herself a hunted woman, her every step shadowed by a ruthless psychopath bent on revenge.
As she tracks the murderer, Grace begins to suspect there is a truly shocking home truth that connects these brutal crimes. But what she will find is something more twisted than she could ever suspect...
Elise King moves into the sleepy seaside town of Ebbing. Illness has thrown her career as a successful detective into doubt, but no matter how hard she tries to relax and recuperate, she knows that something isn't right.
Everyone lies about their friends.
Tensions are running high beneath the surface of this idyllic community: the weekenders in their fancy clothes, renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes. A town divided, with the threat of violence only a heartbeat away.
Everyone knows a secret.
This peaceful world is shattered when two teenagers end up in hospital and a local man vanishes without trace. Elise starts digging for answers, but the community closes ranks, and the truth begins to slip through her fingers. Because in a small town like this, the locals are good at keeping secrets...
Everyone's a suspect when a local goes missing.
He's looking forward to meeting up with his eldest child, Jo, who has graduated naval college and taken a summer job working on a billionaire's yacht in the Red Sea. But then he receives a call informing him that Jo's boat is missing, likely abducted by Somali pirates.
Mason must call in favours from old contacts as he follows Jo's trail. She isn't the abduction target, she won't be worth the pirates keeping for long. But she is still Matt Mason's daughter, and she knows she needs to survive to fight.
In Nicola Tanner and Phil Hendricks, Thorne has good friends by his side. He finally has a love life worth a damn and is happy in the job to which he has devoted his life...
He has everything to lose.
Hunting the woman responsible for a series of grisly murders, Thorne has no way of knowing that he will be plunged into a nightmare from which he may never wake.
And he'll do anything to keep it.
Finally, Thorne's past has caught up with him and a ruinous secret is about to be revealed. If he wants to save himself and his friends, he must do the unthinkable.
THEY SAY YOUR BABY DOESN'T EXIST. BUT YOU KNOW HE DOES. DON'T YOU?
_______
WHAT IF EVERYONE YOU LOVE IS LYING TO YOU?
When Megan wakes up in a hospital bed, her first question is: where's my baby?
But her husband, her sister and her doctor say he doesn't exist.
Megan's not in a maternity ward, she's in a psychiatric unit.
Convinced that they're lying to her, Megan is determined to find out the truth.
But how can you prove your baby exists when you can't trust your own memories?
When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in church, the parish is suddenly (and unexpectedly) divided: as lines are drawn, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of the village.
And then Anthony Bowness - cousin to Bernard de Floures, patron of Champton - is found dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs.
As the police moves in and the bodies start piling up, Daniel is the only one who can try and keep his fractured community together... and catch a killer.
The lives of the people of Scarborough have always been tied to the sea. Often their deaths too. And when the body of a young man is pulled from the harbour, the police investigation has to dive into the tightly knit fishing community there. But DC Donna Morris, halfway through her probationary period in the town, finds very little is at it seems.
Is the killing to do with old rivalries or more contemporary enmities, or is it somehow linked with a shocking murder which took place in the town twenty years ago? Donna does her best to navigate the tides and currents of the place she calls home for now, but finds people are prepared to muddy the truth if it means preserving the past, and old reputations.
When underworld loan shark Davie Saunders is gunned down at his daughter's wedding, his loved ones are sure that a rival East End crime family is responsible. Davie's widow and daughters must now step up and take control of Davie's empire, but from the beginning it's clear they're in way over their heads.
Shy bride Mia has no experience of giving orders, self-centred middle-child Kelsey is more concerned with keeping her affair with bodyguard Todd a secret, and baby of the family Scarlett is very firmly kept out of the business while she finishes her education.
But all three sisters, as well as ex-model mum Amanda, are determined to do whatever it takes to get what they're owed.
Underestimate them at your peril...
When Alexis ‘Lexi’ James falls out with her best mate Nicole over ‘bad boy’ Ryan King, it’s just the beginning of a chain of events that go from bad to worse to deadly.
Returning home one night to her high-rise flat, she is faced by a terrifying scene that changes her life forever, and matters are made worse when she is put into care in another town.
Years later, Lexi has left school and is back in Manchester. A chance meeting with Nicole and her so-called ‘other half’ Ryan ends in disaster, and she vows never to see them again. Then one night she is saved from a vicious attack by a charming stranger. He takes her home and their acquaintance blossoms into something much deeper.
When her new man receives a call in the middle of the night and leaves in a hurry, she is horrified when he returns with someone she never thought she would see again. It soon becomes obvious that Lexi doesn’t know her new lover as well as she thought, and she is forced to make a decision that will have devastating results . . .
It's a crisp spring morning when Cass drops her husband, a respected lecturer, to the beach for his medically prescribed swim. While waiting for him, something catches her eye. A young woman runs towards her husband and embraces him - until he holds his hand over her face and she falls down on the stones, dead.
In the backseat of the car, their seven-year-old son sits quietly. When her husband returns, he says nothing. Neither does Cass. Afraid to speak up in the immediate aftermath, Cass embarks on a solitary quest to unravel what has taken place.
Cass is quickly drawn into a web of lies that pulls her back to the previous autumn, when a beautiful Italian postgraduate student finds herself subsumed by an inescapable desire. It's visceral. It's destiny. But sometimes destiny can kill...
Amateur sleuth Lady Hardcastle and her trusty lady’s maid, Flo, suddenly have a juicy case on their hands. Might the mysterious stranger they recently met in the village be to blame?
When a second cider-related murder takes place, it quickly becomes clear that there’s more to these mysterious deaths than meets the eye. The daring duo uncover whispers of an ancient order and moonlit rituals. And evidence points to a macabre secret in the village stretching back years. A secret someone will do anything―anything at all―to keep hidden.
Something is rotten, that’s for sure. With the local constabulary baffled, Lady Hardcastle and Flo must use all their powers of wit and whimsy to get to the bottom of the dastardly deed. But can they catch the killer before any more people drop dead?
A death in custody. A life in jeopardy.
When Ben Holdsworth dies alone in a police cell, riots erupt in Manchester. But after a post mortem, the authorities have decided nobody was to blame.
DI Ridpath is asked to investigate by the coroner before an inquest, and immediately uncovers some discrepancies in the witness statements.
Why was the CCTV not working that night? Where was the custody sergeant, and did he know the victim? Wherever he turns there are lies and gaps. It's a dangerous game and the net is closing... On Ridpath himself.
There is only one way out: uncover what really happened in the prison cells on that dark Manchester night.
But is that the end, or just the beginning?
It's been a hard couple of years, but things finally seem to be looking up for Danielle. Her boyfriend Matteo has inherited a dilapidated old farmhouse in Tuscany, complete with olive groves, vineyards and – most importantly – a pool. They will swim, drink wine and sit out under the stars. It couldn't be more perfect.
When she gets there, Danielle finds it's not quite as idyllic as she thought. There's a lot of work to be done on the house, but first she turns her attention to making the algae-infested concrete swamp into the infinity pool of her dreams.
As she digs up the old foundations, Danielle brings to light long-buried secrets that will shatter the tranquillity of her Tuscan dream forever – and make her question how well we ever know the people we claim to love...
It begins with a list of names – past and future victims. When struggling reporter Tom Pritchard receives it in the mail, he’s scared, though he knows this could be the story he needs to save his career.
Especially if he can help the police to catch the killer.
But this isn’t a typical murderer. This is someone patient and ruthless, someone who’s been planning for years. Soon, the tables are turned and Tom finds himself trapped on a terrifying road trip across the US, racing from victim to victim. His only hope of saving his family is to understand the killer but, to do that, he’ll need to be close. And although he doesn’t know it yet, that’s exactly where the killer wants him to be.
Jo Lawless is still grieving her husband when his oldest friends invite her to a weekend houseparty in France. She’s always felt like an outsider in the group but she decides to go, hoping their shared loss will bring them closer together.
An unexpected guest
But the weekend is disrupted by the arrival of an unexpected guest, whose presence brings old tensions to the surface. Long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and it’s clear that at least one person is bent on revenge…
A night that will end in murder
The cold light of morning reveals a horrifying discovery. And the killer isn’t finished. A storm is coming, and no one at this party is safe…
Rose is moving. For her and her son, Noah, this is going to be a fresh start.
She’s almost finished packing but Noah is determined to spend one last night camping out in the garden like he used to. Rose agrees as long as he wraps up warm inside their small tent.
Four hours later she’s woken by a frantic banging on the window.
It’s Noah.
There’s someone in the garden.
That’s when Rose picks up the kitchen knife.
When Detective Jackie Cooke is called to the murder scene, she is shocked by what she sees. Missing teenager Chloe Smedley has finally been found – her body left in a cold back yard, carefully posed with her bright blue eyes still open. Jackie lays a protective hand on the baby in her belly, and vows to find the brutal monster who stole Chloe’s future.
When Jackie breaks the news to Chloe’s heartbroken mother, she understands the woman’s cries only too well. Her own brother went missing as a child, the case never solved. Determined to get justice for Chloe and her family, Jackie sets to work, finding footage of the girl waving at someone the day she disappeared. Did Chloe know her killer?
But then a second body is found on the side of a busy motorway, lit up by passing cars. The only link with Chloe is the disturbing way the victim has been posed, and Jackie is convinced she is searching for a dangerous predator. Someone has been hunting missing and vulnerable people for decades, and only Jackie seems to see that they were never lost. They were taken.
Jackie’s boss refuses to believe a serial killer is on the loose and threatens to take her off the case. But then Jackie returns home to find a brightly coloured bracelet on her kitchen counter and her blood turns cold. It’s the same one her brother was wearing when he vanished. Could his disappearance be connected to the murders? Jackie will stop at nothing to catch her killer… unless he finds her first…
DS George Cross's father, Raymond, always takes an annual holiday in a local care home. He enjoys the company it brings him. He busies himself repairing the residents' wheelchairs and has become their self-appointed tech guru. But this time it's different. A new arrival causes a stir – he's convinced one of the older residents, suffering with dementia, is the man who killed his father decades before.
The staff say it has to be a mistake, but after Cross investigates, he discovers that a similar murder really did take place. With Cross reopening this cold case, can the truth be revealed? Or is it already lost to time and unreliable memory...
James Ritchie was looking forward to a boys' day out with his son, Wilbur – even if he was a little late picking him up from the home of his ex-wife, Anna. Annoyed by his late arrival, and competing for their son's attention, Anna leaves the two of them to their day with the promise of a roast dinner when Wilbur returns.
But Anna will never see her family again. That afternoon, James and Wilbur are found dead, the victims of a double stabbing on the beach.
DI Toni Kemp, of Sussex police, must unravel a case which has shocked the county to its core. What she discovers will lead her to Blacklock House, a grand country mansion, long ago converted into flats. Here in the middle of nowhere, where a peacock struts the lawn, and a fountain plays intermittently, seven long-term residents have seen more than they should.
But this is a community who are good at keeping secrets...
It is summer in St Denis and Bruno is busy organising the annual village concert. He's hired a local Périgord folk group, Les Troubadours, to perform their latest hit 'A Song for Catalonia'. But when the song unexpectedly goes viral, the Spanish government, clamping down on the Catalonian bid for independence, bans Les Troubadours from performing it.
The timing couldn't be worse, and Bruno finds himself under yet more pressure when a specialist sniper's bullet is found in a wrecked car near Bergerac. The car was reportedly stolen on the Spanish frontier and the Spanish government sends warning that a group of nationalist extremists may be planning an assassination in France. Bruno immediately suspects that Les Troubadours and their audience might be in danger.
Bruno must organise security and ensure that his beloved town and its people are safe - the stakes are high for France's favourite policeman.
The slaughter of the Dawson family seems to be a heartbreaking case of murder-suicide—another deeply troubled man who violently snapped and killed his wife and children before ending his own life. But DI Alec McKay doesn’t think it’s as open-and-shut as it looks. Why was a BMW parked at the Dawsons’ holiday home on that last day of tourist season—and why are its owners also now dead? Why is the new senior investigating officer acting so erratically? And most chillingly of all, who is sending out packages containing toys taken from the crime scene?
Before McKay can close the case, he will have to face down a threat from the past—and a crime that could shatter his heart.
Within seconds, the vehicle is an inferno - and the Gascoignes are trapped inside.
But when fire crews arrive, they find something impossible:
The vehicle is empty.
Cate and Aiden have vanished.
And only missing persons investigator David Raker can solve the mystery . . .
A missing girl.
Buried family secrets.
Is the truth worth searching for?
Sixteen-year-old Prue has grown up around secrets. Her gran's stern silence, her mother's teary breakdowns, her aunt's whispered assurances. But now, in the aftermath of her mum's latest 'episode', Prue's decided she's old enough for the truth. She wants to know what it is that makes the adults around her turn tight-lipped and distracted. She wants to know why her mum can't cope. Most of all, she wants to know who her dad is.
Forced to spend the summer in the Shetlands with her aunt, Ruth, and new uncle, Archie, Prue arrives determined to find some answers. But she soon finds herself caught up in a web of family secrets, betrayals and – perhaps – even murder...
Set during one long summer in Shetland, this is a beautifully drawn, psychologically astute novel about a young woman's search for truth, even as she realises the lies that surround her have been keeping her safe.
Two families run this part of Manchester: the Johnsons and the Bennetts. With the head of the Johnson family banged up, the Bennetts have made their move. But power comes at a price…
Now Charlie Johnson is out of prison and he wants his empire back. But the Bennetts have had a taste of the money and the control. Charlie’s sons want to strike now and destroy their rivals but Charlie wants to wait. He has a personal score to settle.
Charlie’s wife Janey hates that her controlling husband is home from prison and is hatching a plan to leave him, but she knows he won’t let her go easily – not with the secrets she carries. She needs allies – and through her daughter and her passionate affairs, she may have found the way out she needs.
But for all of them, getting what they want will mean risking everything.
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