Classic crime and mystery fiction

Book Synopsis‘Fear the north wind. Because no one will hear you scream…’A family is gunned down in the snow but one of the children survives. Three years on, that child takes revenge and the Snow Killer is born. But then, nothing - no further crimes are committed, and the case goes cold.Fifty years later, has the urge to kill been reawakened? As murder follows murder, the detective team tasked with solving the crimes struggle with the lack of leads. It’s a race against time and the weather – each time it snows another person dies. As an exhausted and grizzled DI Barton and his team scrabble to put the pieces of the puzzle together, the killer is hiding in plain sight. Meanwhile, the murders continue…The first in a new series, Ross Greenwood has written a cracking, crackling crime story with a twist in its tale which will surprise even the most hardened thriller readers. Perfect for fans of Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride.Praise for The Snow Killer'Move over Rebus and Morse; a new entry has joined the list of great crime investigators in the form of Detective Inspector John Barton. A rich cast of characters and an explosive plot kept me turning the pages until the final dramatic twist.' author Richard Burke'Ross Greenwood doesn’t write clichés. What he has written here is a fast-paced, action-filled puzzle with believable characters that's spiced with a lot of humour.' author Kath Middleton ‘With The Snow Killer, master of the psychological thriller genre Ross Greenwood once again proves his talent for creating engrossing and gritty novels that draw you right in and won’t let go until you’ve reached the shocking ending.’ Caroline Vincent at Bitsaboutbooks blogWhat readers think of The Snow Killer:'Absolutely brilliant!!''A crime novel with a social conscience.'' It grabbed me a few pages in and wouldn't let go''Great stuff dripping with tension and intrigue.''it was so easy to get inside each characters head and it felt almost like I was part of the story''Ross Greenwood takes us on a journey that is both full of thrills and emotion. I absolutely loved it.''It was a story which gripped me from the off and kept me glued to the page right''The book had a feeling of authenticity about it, and was full of surprises and genuine emotion'

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Book SynopsisIn New York City's work hard, play harder singles scene, a young woman looking for love can find herself the object of a deadly obsession. With each meaningless date and disappointing new boyfriend, Katie Porter is becoming more and more disillusioned. No matter how wide a net she casts she can't seem to find a guy who really understands her.But someone thinks she's special - very special. And he's following her... But it's not her boyfriend, Andy. The frat-boy who never grew up is too busy working out how far Katie will go and if her friends are hot, to stop and think whether Katie's 'the one'. But someone's already decided she is - and he's watching her. Peter sees Katie at the gym. He sees her at the coffee bar she stops at on the way to work. In fact, he sees her almost everywhere, as he quietly follows her. But most of all, he sees her in his plans for the future. He's got the proposal worked out, he's even got the ring and their happy home already bought. After all, he's had enough time to plan things to perfection - he grew up in the same small town. Surely, after all these years, he can't let anything stand in his way

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Book SynopsisSherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective ever created. The supremely rational sleuth and his dependable companion, Dr Watson, will forever be associated with the gaslit and smog-filled streets of late nineteenth and early twentieth century London. Yet Holmes and Watson were not the only ones solving mysterious crimes and foiling the plans of villainous masterminds in Victorian and Edwardian England. The years between 1890 and 1914 were a golden age for English magazines and most of them published crime and detective fiction. The startling success of the Holmes stories that appeared in The Strand magazine spawned countless imitators. This volume highlights some of those 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes'. In the fifteen tales which Nick Rennison has brought together in this anthology, readers can meet: THE THINKING MACHINE - Jacques Futrelle's dazzlingly intellectual genius Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, aka the Thinking Machine, even more capable than Holmes himself of solving the most baffling of mysteries through brainpower alone CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER - detective of the occult created by the legendary horror writer William Hope Hodgson, author of The House on the Borderlands EUGENE VALMONT - a sophisticated and urbane French detective, created by Robert Barr, who lives in exile in London and uses his Gallic wit and wisdom to learn the truth about the mysteries that regularly come his way NOVEMBER JOE - Hesketh Prichard's Canadian woodsman who uses his extraordinary powers of observation to track down villains and bring them to justice It may well be true that there never has been and never will be a detective quite like Sherlock Holmes but he did not stand alone. He did have his rivals and, as this collection of short stories shows, many of their adventures were as exciting and entertaining as those of the master himself.Trade Review[an] intriguing anthology * Mail on Sunday *a book which will delight fans of crime fiction * Verbal Magazine *it's good to see that Mr Rennison has also selected some rarer pieces - and rarer detectives, such as November Joe, Sebastian Zambra, Cecil Thorold and Lois Cayley -- Roger Johnson * The District Messenger (Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London) *

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Book SynopsisWhy should blood on the floor make anyone mad against automobiles and telephones and desks. Why. This is what happened. There were dogs in the house but they were no bother. Listen carefully.'In the spring of 1933 Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were living in their country house at Bilignin, France. With money earned from the best-selling 'Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas' they installed electricity, had a telephone put in their house and bought a large car. But with these improvements came trouble. Servants came and went. Finally a man named Jean and his Polish wife were employed. A friend came to stay, but her car was tampered with and the telephone no longer worked. The servants were dismissed. Later that summer in nearby Belley, Madame Pernollet was found sprawled on the courtyard of her husband's hotel. Five days later she was dead. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? As Alice B. Toklas said, 'there was no denying one could become accustomed to murdering...'.

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Book SynopsisThis selection in Scottish Gaelic from Ian Rankin's crime stories is taken from the collections A GOOD HANGING (1992) and BEGGARS BANQUET (2002). Playback, The Dean Curse, Seeing Things, Auld Lang Syne and The Gentlemen's Club - and Trip Trap, Facing the Music, Window of Opportunity, No Sanity Clause and Someone Got to Eddie. Nine stories feature investigations by Inspector John Rebus. The only story that does not feature Rebus is 'Someone Got to Eddie'. That story, according to Ian Rankin, is essentially a police procedural: "It's got a killer, it's a got a murder victim and it's got a twist at the end."Trade ReviewNorman MacLean is already very well known as a brilliant creative writer in Gaelic and English. Here his translation of another famous writer's work is fresh evidence of MacLean's outstanding abilities. The Gaelic of this book always remains faithful to the spirit of the original without ever becoming a pedestrian reproduction of Ian Rankin's vivid style. For such an achievement in dealing with two languages so different from each other Norman Maclean deserves our unqualified congratulations. Review by John MacinnesTable of Contents1. CLARADH 2.MALLACHD DEAN 3. A' FAICINN RUDAN 4. AULD LANG SYNE 5. CLUB NAM FEAR-UASAL 6. FREAGAIRT CEARR 7. BALLA-CIUIL 8. UINNEAG A' CHOTHRUIM 9. BITHEAMAID GEANACH 10. THADHAIL CUIDEIGIN AIR EDDIE

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