Showing results by narrator "James Lailey Lailey" in All Categories

On a warm spring evening, guests gather in a perfectly manicured garden to celebrate Maggie and Len’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Maggie leans against the apple tree, watching her fun-loving husband and darling children as her heart swells with pride. As the joyful party atmosphere disappears into the night, close by, the lifeless body of a young woman is pulled from a river. Slipping upstairs to find the special gift for her adoring husband, Maggie stumbles across something else hidden amongst the dusty boxes of family keepsakes.

Ever since I met my handsome husband Dr Gabe Bonneville, I started playing the role of the perfect housewife. He works hard as a surgeon, so I look after our home, and throw elaborate dinner parties with champagne cocktails for his best friends Hugh and Anita. He’s my safe place and my chance to have the family I’ve always wanted. I’ve managed to hide the mornings when I wake up and see a face in the shadows. I haven’t told Gabe the truth about the woman who raised me, or told him about the therapy I’ve been getting so my secrets stay hidden in the dark.

When Nigel Baxter, a middle-aged married banker with an unremarkable past, is found dead in the bath of a plush hotel suite, his wrists slit, it looks as if he's taken his own life. At first. But when Detective Inspector Daniel Riley is assigned to the case, he soon realises all isn't as it first appears to be. When a postmortem shows Baxter was poisoned, Riley suspects foul play. And then there's the odd addition of a teddy bear left at the crime scene....

Daisey Garrett wakes up in a hospital bed. She remembers her boyfriend has left her for another woman, but she doesn’t remember what happened to her the night she was attacked in her own home. Daisey shouldn’t be alive but against all odds, she’s survived an ordeal most would never recover from. But Daisey’s mind is broken. She’s on edge, drinking too much and, despite the painful breakup, finds herself in bed with her ex, Luke. And while she desperately tries to keep herself together, she can’t shake the feeling that she is being watched.

In a beautiful house surrounded by woodland, the Drayton family and their dearest friends are enjoying dinner together. The wine is flowing, the meal has been lovingly prepared, and it’s going to be an evening none of them will ever forget.

Millions of pounds have gone missing, and the Department have sent agent Bernard Samson to Washington to track them down. But this mission is just the start of something far deeper and darker. It will take him from the English suburbs to Berlin, the South of France to Los Angeles and the heart of a maelstrom. In the first part of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, friends become enemies, pursuer becomes victim and no one - not even Bernard himself - is above suspicion.

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number one has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation 19 years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl.

What kind of woman would leave her husband, her children, and her home to live behind the Iron Curtain and work for the KGB? From the brilliant Oxford graduate who understands the espionage game better than her male colleagues, to the beguiling woman who uses her charm and brains to deceive everyone around her, Fiona Samson presents a complex puzzle. She is by no means alone.

In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and the Duke of Westminster pays less tax than you do. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous authorxshows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind.

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He’s willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA’s Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn’t kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

In 1987, as the Cold War reaches a climax, British agent Bernard Samson confronts difficulties at home and on the job as he copes with an affair with a coworker, his wife, ethical conflict, and high-level government scandal.

What Bernard Sampson, protagonist of Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match, is about to know may hurt him. When word gets to London Central that a cache of millions of pounds has disappeared inside the Service, Samson is determined to learn the truth. But not even that discovery will help if the Department itself wants his blood....

Alexander Blix is a broken man. Convicted for avenging his daughter's death, he is being held in one of Norway's high-security prisons. Inside, the other prisoners take every opportunity to humiliate the former police investigator. Outside, Blix's former colleagues are hunting for a terrifying killer. Walter Kroos has escaped from prison in Germany and is heading north. The only lead established by the police is that Kroos has a friend in Blix's prison ward. And now they need Blix's help.

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. But as the quarry is pursued from grimy Soho to the other side of the world, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister. With its sardonic, cool, working-class hero, Len Deighton's sensational debut The IPCRESS File rewrote the spy thriller and became the defining novel of 1960s London.

It is 1941 and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed, and the King imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down. But when a body is found in a Mayfair flat, what at first appears to be a routine murder investigation sends him into a world of espionage, deceit, and betrayal.

Beth and Cath are leaving their husbands. This is a story about two very different women. One is wealthy and having an affair with a man who gives her the kind of love that her cold, detached husband does not. One is living hand to mouth, suffering at the hands of a violent partner who would rather see her dead than leave him. You may think you know these women already and how their lives will unfold. Beth will live happily ever after with her little girl and her soulmate. Cath will go back to her abusive husband. And these two women will never cross paths. But you will be wrong.

Berlin Game begins with a plea from “Brahms Four,” one of Britain’s most valuable agents stationed in East Germany: He wants to cross the Iron Curtain and come to the West. Bernard Samson, the former field agent now stationed in London, is tasked with the rescue. But before he even sets out on the mission, suspicions arise that there is a traitor in the MI6, likely one of his closest colleagues.

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him...until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman. Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name.

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped, and a secret British intelligence agency has just recruited Deighton’s iconic unnamed protagonist—later christened Harry Palmer—to find out why. His search begins in a grimy Soho club and brings him to the other side of the world. When he ends up amongst the Soviets in Beirut, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister.

One sunny August afternoon, the residents of Cedar Close throw their annual summer barbecue. Children play in the cherry-tree lined street, tables are laden with food, and the wine is flowing. For Laurie Mills, it’s her first time meeting the neighbours. And it’s the first time she discovers her husband, Robert, is having an affair. Cedar Close has always been a nice place to live - a quiet suburban street where everyone looks out for one another and bad things don’t happen. Until late one evening, when Robert Mills is found dead in his bedroom.