British Literature

Jemima Jago has moved back home to the enchanting Isles of Scilly. Ready for a fresh start in a quaint coastal village, she can be found in the stacks of Cornwall’s oldest library by day and stargazing in the cove at night. Jem finds the slower pace of life suits her perfectly, until she stumbles across a very curious crime.....

In a windswept British seaside town, single mum Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside. Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, 21-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left alone in a place where she knows no one and with the police telling her that her husband never existed.

In August of 1939, as Britain watches the headlines in fear of another devastating war with Germany, three childhood companions must choose between friendship and country. Erstwhile, socialite Nora is determined to find her place in the Home Office’s Air Raid Precautions Department, matchmaker Hazel tries to mask two closely guarded secrets with irrepressible optimism, and German expat Marie worries that she and her family might face imprisonment in an internment camp if war is declared.

When Fergus tells Diana he's taking her on a flower-arranging retreat for her birthday, she should have been more suspicious. Especially when he announces that he's coming with her. After discovering the whole truth about the retreat, Diana is still considering how to murder Fergus...when one of their fellow flower arrangers is found dead - stabbed in the back with a mystery weapon. With the retreat on complete lockdown, Diana and Fergus have a mystery to solve that wasn't part of the itinerary. Will they find the killer before the clock runs out?

When eight-year-old Daisy Mason vanishes from her family’s Oxford home during a costume party, Detective Inspector Adam Fawley knows that nine times out of ten, the offender is someone close to home. And Daisy’s family is certainly strange—her mother is obsessed with keeping up appearances, while her father is cold and defensive under questioning. And then there’s Daisy’s little brother, so withdrawn and uncommunicative . . .

DC Sophie Jones was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Viciously bludgeoned one night in a dark alley, she is left fighting for her life in hospital, leaving no clues as to why she was there or what might have motivated the attack. For Detective Karen Hart, fiercely protective of her young protégée, this is already deeply personal: an attack on Sophie is an attack on the whole team. When a car workshop near the crime scene is linked to local mobster Quentin Chapman, the man Hart has spent years trying to bring down, it’s hard not to jump to the most obvious conclusion.

DCI Lesley Clarke is back in Dorset, and her world has turned upside down. One of the people she's closest to is to under arrest for the murder of DCI Mackie and a body has been found in the remote lighthouse at Portland Bill. And not just any body, but the body of someone she investigated before moving to Dorset. Can Lesley win the trust of the close-knit Portland community and find the killer? And can DI Zoe Finch of the West Midlands force help her track down potential suspects?

LADY CORA TAKES SOCIETY BY STORM . . . Lady Cora Midland, a highly-spirited country beauty, offers no pretensions, which wins her many admirers, despite her lack of knowledge on how to manage the beau monde. However, Matthew Harrington, Lord Lindmore, believes she is taking advantage of his elderly grandmother, who is assisting with the girl’s presentation, and he means to put a stop to the chit’s shenanigans. LORD MATTHEW LINDMORE IS IN DENIAL . . . So he might keep an eye on the woman, Lindmore reluctantly assists his grandmother in bringing Lady Cora out in Society. Yet, what ...

There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with an investigation into a car sales fraud - nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With Richard behind bars, Kate must look after his eight-year-old son - who proves even more troublesome than his father. Kate finds herself dragged into a world of drug traffickers, child pornographers, fraudsters, and violent gangland enforcers in the most terrifying investigation of her career.

When Inspector Witherspoon becomes the main suspect in a murder case, Scotland Yard refuses to let him investigate. But no one said anything about Mrs. Jeffries and her polished detection skills, proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crime solver's work is never done.

January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as "St. Alan the Liberator" for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte's delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but...even Alan Lewrie?

Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead - a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Together they uncover dark, complex relationships in this rural village.

DI Zoe Finch has been working in Cumbria for a year. She’s finally got to grips with her team, the area, and much of its criminal underworld. But when a body is found outside a burning barn, the investigation leads her both out of Cumbria, and closer to home. Why was the victim there? Who was he with? And is this murder linked to other cases her team has worked on? The clock is ticking, and the killer isn’t done with Cumbria yet. There’s more blood to be shed, and it might belong to someone Zoe knows.

Gary and Clare Kirk are set to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary...except they’re not. Childless, and with so little in common, the couple finally accept there’s no good reason to remain married. However, Gary’s idea of an amicable divorce settlement differs significantly from Clare’s, and tensions between the couple soon mount. Money, as is often the case, is at the root of their disagreement. As Gary explores every avenue to evade his wife’s financial demands, he inadvertently finds himself sitting opposite a relationship resolution advisor by the name of Edith Stimp.

Courting Lord Whitmire: A Regency May-December Romance At the bend of the path, an unexpected meeting. She is all May. He is December. But loves knows not time. Colonel Lord Andrew Whitmire has returned to England after spending fifteen years in service to his country. In truth, he would prefer to be anywhere but home. Before he departed England, his late wife, from an arranged marriage, had cuckolded him in a scandal that had set Society’s tongues wagging. His daughter, Matilda, who was reared by his father, enjoys calling him "Father" in the most annoying ways. Unfortunately, his future...

With his partner away on a honeymoon, Yorkshire detective Andrew Dalziel tries to beat the blues by taking a vacation of his own. But after getting caught in a torrential rain and running into a funeral procession, he winds up accompanying a crowd of upper-class mourners to a crumbling country house. Dalziel isn't known for his elegant manners, but he has bigger problems than not fitting in: The owner of the home has died under unusual circumstances, and soon more bodies are turning up.

When Caz steps onboard the exclusive cruise liner RMS Atlantica, it’s the start of a vacation of a lifetime with her new love, Pete. On their first night they explore the ship, eat, dance, make friends, but when Caz wakes the next morning, Pete is missing. And when she walks out into the corridor, all the cabin doors are open. To her horror, she soon realizes that the ship is completely empty. No passengers, no crew, nobody but her. The Atlantica is steaming into the mid-Atlantic and Caz is the only person on board. But that’s just the beginning.

In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching-the end of British rule in the south of Ireland, and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending.

Lord Langley and Minerva, Lady Standon, began their faux engagement with three simple rules set down by the baron's all-too-proper (and utterly unlikely) bride-to-be....

A MANCHESTER CRIME THRILLER CHARGED WITH POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND WITH A LOVE STORY AT ITS HEART When Mark meets Ian near his south Manchester home he has no idea of Ian's past as the member of a loyalist paramilitary gang back in his native Northern Ireland. Nor does he know why his former comrades have put a price on his head, or of the deadly agreement Ian made with the British security services that has led to him having blood on his hands. But when Mark discovers the loaded gun that Ian keeps in his bedside drawer at night, he wants to know what the Hell is going on. And when does learn ...