Search results for ""Clarity Books""

Oxford, 1960. As the city of Oxford prepares itself for the inaugural Miss Oxford Honey Beauty Pageant at The Old Swan Theatre, excitement is in the air. Then, tragedy strikes the competition when one of the leading contestants is found dead. Initially, the authorities assume her death was suicide. But after a malicious series of pranks and blackmail attempts are reported, WPC Loveday and Coroner Clement Ryder are called upon to solve the case. In an atmosphere of fierce competition, the list of suspects is endless. Could what have started as harmless fun become a deadly race to win the prize? With time running out, the duo need to spot the killer before tragedy strikes again... A gripping murder mystery, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and M.C. Beaton.

Read more less

The rain was relentless. It stung Ruth Prendergast's face as she dashed towards her house, desperate to escape the cold and settle down for an early night. But upon entering her bedroom, she finds a man, lying on her bed - a knife buried in his chest.When Detective Isabel Blood and her sergeant arrive on the scene, Ruth claims she's never laid eyes on the victim before. But with no sign of a break-in, how did the killer gain access to the house?Then Ruth disappears, leaving Isabel and her team to fear the worst. Has their lead suspect escaped, or is Ruth in danger herself?

Read more less

A year has passed since DI James Walker cracked his biggest case yet, and he's hoping for peace and quiet this festive season. But across the fells, a local farmer returns home on Christmas Eve to find footsteps in the fresh snow that lead down to his unused basement - and no footsteps leading away. Days later, his body is found, alongside those of his wife and daughter. Without a neighbour for miles, there are no witnesses and little evidence. And the crime scene has strange echoes of another terrible murder committed at the farmhouse, twenty years earlier...

Read more less

As irascible scholar Professor Lidenbrock pores over a rare Icelandic tome, he discovers a scrap of parchment with cryptic writing tucked away between the ancient pages. And when his nephew, Axel, finally breaks the writing's secret code, he learns of a hidden underground passageway that may lead deep into the center of the earth. Despite Axel's misgivings, he and the obsessed Lidenbrock travel to Iceland and, with a guide named Hans, set out on a perilous expedition in the course of which the trio will encounter an extraordinary new world of extinct yet living species, an underground sea, and gigantic, battling monsters.Filled with the authentic detail and startling immediacy Jules Verne labored to bring to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth is the fantastic adventure that secured Verne's reputation as the premier writer of speculative fiction.

Read more less

Mirabelle's mother loves her. She's her 'little doll'. Mother dresses her, paints her face, and plaits her hair. But as Mirabelle grows, the dresses no longer fit quite as well, the face paint no longer looks quite so pretty. And Mother isn't happy. On Mirabelle's 13th birthday, Mother arrives home with a present - a new sister, 5-year-old Clarabelle, who Mother has rescued from the outside world. As it dawns on Mirabelle that there is a new 'little doll' in her house, she also realises that her life isn't what she thought it was. And that dolls often end up on the scrap heap...

Read more less

When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it takes everything Raymond Mathis has to bail him out of trouble one last time. Frustrated by the slow pace and limitations of the law, Raymond decides to take matters into his own hands .After a workplace accident left him out of a job and in pain, Denny Rattler has spent years chasing his next high. He supports his habit through careful theft, following strict rules that keep him under the radar and out of jail. But when faced with opportunities too easy to resist, Denny makes two choices that change everything. For months, the DEA has been chasing the drug supply in the mountains to no avail, when a lead - just one word - sets one agent on a path to crack the case open... but he'll need help from the most unexpected quarter. As chance brings together these men from different sides of a relentless epidemic, each may come to find that his opportunity for redemption lies with the others.

Read more less

Marcus Conway has come a long way to stand in the kitchen of his home and remember the rhythms and routines of his life. Considering with his engineer's mind how things are constructed - bridges, banking systems, marriages - and how they may come apart.

Read more less

In this third collection, That Old Country Music, we encounter a ragbag of West of Ireland characters, many on the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany, resignation and hope. These stories show an Ireland in a condition of great flux but also as a place where older rhythms, and an older magic, somehow persist.

Read more less

When critically ill Jacob Wilson is given a life-saving heart transplant, his parents are relieved that their loving son has been saved.However, before long, his family are forced to accept that something has changed in Jacob. Their once loving son is slowly being replaced by a violent man whose mood swings leave them terrified - but is it their fault?Jacob's girlfriend, Rosie, is convinced the man she loves is suffering from stress. But when his moods turn on her, she begins to doubt herself - and she can only hide the bruises for so long.When a terrible crime is committed, Jacob's family are forced to confront their darkest fears. Has the boy they raised become a monster? Or is someone else to blame?

Read more less

As a New Year begins in Bath, Ben Brace proposes to his long-term girlfriend, Caroline. The problem is that she's the daughter of notorious crime baron, Joe Irving, who is coming to the end of a prison sentence. And Ben's father George is Bath's Deputy Chief Constable. But mothers and sons are a formidable force: a wedding in the Abbey and reception in the Roman Baths are set in place before the career-obsessed DCC can step in.Peter Diamond, Bath's head of CID, is appalled to be put in charge of security on the day. Ordered to be discreet, he packs a gun and a guest list in his best suit and must somehow cope with potential killers, gang rivals, warring parents, bossy photographers and straying bridesmaids. The laid-back Joe Irving seems oblivious to the danger he is in from rival gang-leaders, while Brace can't wait for the day to end.Will the photo-session be a literal shoot? Will Joe Irving's speech as father of the bride be his last words? Can Diamond pull off a miracle, avert a tr

Read more less

Before becoming an acclaimed musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living.Returning to the scene of her childhood, Thorn takes us beyond the bus shelters, the pub car parks and the weekly discos, to the parents who wanted so much for their children and the children who wanted none of it. With great wit and insight, Thorn reconsiders the Green Belt post-war dream so many artists have mocked, and yet so many artists have come from.

Read more less

Nadia gets the 7.30 train every morning without fail. Well, except if she oversleeps or wakes up at her friend Emma's after too much wine. Daniel really does get the 7.30 train every morning, which is easy because he hasn't been able to sleep properly since his dad died. One morning, Nadia's eye catches sight of a post in the daily paper: To the cute girl with the coffee stains on her dress. I'm the guy who's always standing near the doors... Drink sometime? So begins a not-quite-romance of near-misses, true love, and the power of the written word.

Read more less

Attorney Olivia Sinclair is shocked when she receives an anonymous video showing her husband Richard sleeping with someone else. After years of handling other people's divorces, she thought she could recognise a marriage in trouble. She angrily throws Richard out of the home they share. But days later she's arrested - for the murder of his mistress. Olivia knows she's innocent but, with all the evidence pointing at her and an obvious motive, she must find the real killer to clear her name. She may be used to dealing with messy divorces, but this one will be her most difficult case yet. Olivia's husband has already betrayed her - but would he set her up for murder?

Read more less

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and as she is joined by hundreds of others, the authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in to play the Devil out of these women. Just beyond the city's limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. And then, as the dancing plague gathers momentum, Lisbet's sister-in-law Nethe returns from seven years' penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name. It is a secret that Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, she finds herself thrust into a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion, but she is dancing to a dangerous tune...

Read more less

A hidden community... Thirty years ago, in the English countryside, a commune was set up. Led by Uncle Saviour, it was supposed to be a place of love, peace and harmony. But what started out as paradise turned into hell. A shocking abduction... Now, two young children have vanished from their home in the middle of the night. Their parents are frantic, the police are at a loss. A twisting case... DI Ottoline is leading the search - her only clue a mask found in the woods. Could the key lie in events that took place decades ago, when a dream of a new way of life became something far more sinister?

Read more less

They thought it was perfect. They were wrong... A glamorous chateau. Aura and Nick don't talk about what happened in England. They've bought a chateau in France to make a fresh start, and their kids need them to stay together - whatever it costs. A couple on the brink. The expat community is welcoming, but when a neighbour is murdered at a lavish party, Aura and Nick don't know who to trust. A secret that is bound to come out... Someone knows exactly why they really came to the chateau. And someone is going to give them what they deserve.

Read more less

In the glorious sunshine of Oxford, on a day when everyone should be celebrating, tragedy strikes when a university student is found floating in the river, dead.Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday finds herself paired with coroner Clement Ryder to investigate and it soon becomes clear that this case is not going to be easy.The witnesses all refuse to give a straight answer, each new lead sends them in a new direction and tales of other missing youngsters add further mystery to the investigation.

Read more less

After dating the hottest man on the planet, Dillon O'Hara, Libby Lomax has come back down to earth with a bump. Now she's throwing herself into a new relationship and is determined to be a better friend to best pal, Ollie, as he launches his new restaurant.Despite good intentions, Libby is hugely distracted when a newly reformed Dillon arrives back on the scene, more irresistible than ever. And when another unwelcome guest turns up on her battered sofa in the form of Marilyn Monroe, Libby would willingly bite her own arm off for a return to normality.

Read more less

Desperate journalist Nick Bishop takes a job profiling new mindfulness app, Clarity. Relaxing meditations are mixed with haunting 'sleep songs' where a woman's voice sings users into a deep sleep.Then the nightmares begin.Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name, whispering guidance - or are they threats?Soon, he can't escape her voice. And that's when he makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarity has any interest in his article. Their interest is in him.Because whilst he may not have any memory of it, he's one of twenty people who have heard this sinister song before, and the only one who is still alive...

Read more less

Amy is thirty-four and has just given up her glittering career in the big (Welsh) city to move back in with her grandfather, returning to work in the small-town Chinese takeaway where she spent her bookish and boring childhood. Why? That's a secret she won't tell.

Read more less

With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Bestselling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved. And he shows how the silent witness is often the one who screams the loudest.

Read more less

At seven years old, Nainoa falls into the sea and a shark takes him in its jaws - only to return him, unharmed, to his parents. For the next thirty years Noa and his siblings struggle with life in the shadow of this miracle. Sharks in the Time of Saviours is a brilliantly original and inventive novel, the sweeping story of a family living in poverty among the remnants of Hawai'i's mythic past and the wreckage of the American dream.

Read more less

The last time Tess de Vere saw William Benson she was a law student on work experience. He was a twenty-one year old, led from the dock of the Old Bailey to begin a life sentence for murder. He'd said he was innocent. She'd believed him. Sixteen years later Tess overhears a couple of hacks mocking a newcomer to the London Bar, a no-hoper with a murder conviction, running his own show from an old fishmonger's in Spitalfields. That night she walks back into Benson's life. The price of his rehabilitation - and access to the Bar - is an admission of guilt to the killing of Paul Harbeton, whose family have vowed revenge. He's an outcast. The government wants to shut him down and no solicitor will instruct him. But he's subsidised by a mystery benefactor and a desperate woman has turned to him for help: Sarah Collingstone, mother of a child with special needs, accused of slaying her wealthy lover. It's a hopeless case and the murder trial, Benson's first, starts in four days. The evidence is

Read more less

When Sophie Bennings arrives in New York, love is the last thing on her mind. Still reeling from a painful break up, she throws herself into her work as a food editor on a top-notch magazine.Columnist Todd McLennan is everything that Sophie wishes she didn't want. Like the gorgeous bakery below her Brooklyn apartment, he's as tempting as the delicious cupcakes on display. Surely a little of what you fancy can do you good?As Sophie and Todd get to know one another, a love of food isn't the only passion they share. In the city that never sleeps, has Sophie finally met the man of her dreams...?

Read more less

At first, El just watches the man behind the infamous reality TV show.It's his fault her father is dead.She starts to follow him and soon she has infiltrated every part of his life.he knows she should walk away but the grief won't let her.And so the dark games begin...

Read more less

This is the strange history of a journey into the heart of Kukuanaland; a trek into the interior of the dark continent to find a lost friend and discover the diamond mines of King Solomon.In the course of a long life of close shaves.

Read more less

Kelly Medina's son left for college a year ago and now she feels totally alone. So when she discovers that a single mother also called Kelly Medina has moved to her town, it's an unexpected reminder of the life she used to live.For days, Kelly can't stop thinking about the woman who shares her name, who has a baby son she can still hold and her whole life ahead of her. She can't help looking for her: at the grocery store, at the gym, on social media. When they happen to bump into each other outside a pediatrician's office, simple curiosity gets the better of them both.Their unlikely friendship brings Kelly a renewed sense of purpose. But the relationship quickly turns to obsession, and when one Kelly disappears the other one may know why . . .

Read more less

Maud has been at Angelton Lunatic Asylum for 5 years.She has no memory of her past or how she came to be here.They say she is violent and unstable, hysterical and untrustworthy.But when she's hypnotised, the memories come flooding back. And now it's time for revenge.

Read more less

Mykonos has always had a romantic reputation, until the body of a blonde female tourist is discovered on a pile of bones under the floor of a remote mountain church. When the island's new police chief - the young, politically incorrect, former Athens homicide detective Andreas Kaldis - starts finding bodies, bones and suspects almost everywhere he looks, he's forced to admit that the island paradise is harbouring a ritualistic serial killer. Mykonos's character is at stake, but political niceties no longer matter when another blonde vanishes. Andreas must delve into ancient myths and forgotten island hideaways as he races against a killer intent on claiming a new blonde victim - who is herself determined to out step him ...

Read more less

How much do you know about the couple next door? When Emily and Ben move in next door to Dr Burman and his wife Alisha, they are keen to get to know their new neighbours. Outgoing and sociable, Emily tries to befriend the doctor's wife, but Alisha is strangely subdued, barely leaving the house, and terrified of answering the phone. When Emily goes missing a few weeks later, Ben is plunged into a panic. His wife has left him a note, but can she really have abandoned him for another man? Or has Emily's curiosity about the couple next door led her straight into danger? A gripping, sinister thriller with a twist you won't see coming from the international bestseller Lisa Stone.

Read more less

A planet without power. When a solar storm hits the earth, the lights go out across the planet. But this time the blackout won't be over soon - it could last for years. Aubrey and her stepson now face the biggest challenge of their lives. A society without rules. Soon they hear rumours of riots, the struggle for food becomes real, and even within their small communi-ties, the rule of law is collapsing. Aubrey's estranged brother Thom, a self-made billionaire who abandoned her years ago, retreats to a gilded desert bunker where he can ride out the crisis in perfect luxury. A race to build a better world... But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of a personal reckoning long overdue...

Read more less

At dusk on a November evening in 2020 a woman slips out of her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of two weeks of isolation, but she just can't take it any more - the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And anyway, the moor will be deserted at this time. Nobody need ever know.But Kate's neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate's son, soon realizes she's missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk - a breath of open air - falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain-rescue operation . . .

Read more less

Kara Davis is a girl caught in the middle - of her Canadian nationality and her desire to be a 'true' Jamaican, of her mother and grandmother's rages and life lessons, of having to avoid being thought of as too 'faas' or too 'quiet' or too 'bold' or too 'soft'.Set in Toronto's 'Little Jamaica', Kara moves from girlhood to the threshold of adulthood, from elementary school to high school graduation, in these twelve interconnected stories.A rich and unforgettable portrait of growing up between worlds, Frying Plantain shows how, in one charged moment, friendship and love can turn to enmity and hate, well-meaning protection can become control, and teasing play can turn to something much darker.

Read more less

It is the summer solstice, but in a faded Scottish cabin park the rain is unrelenting. Twelve people on holiday with their families look on as the skies remain resolutely grey. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a teenage boy chances the dark waters of the loch in his kayak; a retired couple head out despite the downpour, driving too fast on the familiar bends. But there are newcomers too, and one particular family, a mother and daughter with the wrong clothes and the wrong manners, start to draw the attention of the others. Who are they? Where are they from? Should they be here at all? As darkness finally falls, something is unravelling . .

Read more less

When a famous music critic is found dead, Detective Inspector Bill Slider is called in to investigate the crime, but as the case drags on, Slider realizes he must solve it before the murderer strikes again

Read more less