Showing results by author "Stephen Leather" in All Categories

What goes around comes around. Jack Nightingale learned that as a cop and discovered that it was just as true in the world of the supernatural. His life changed forever on the day he failed to stop a young girl throwing herself to her death. Ever since, he’s been haunted by thoughts that he could have done more to save her. Now her cries for help are louder than ever. Is she trapped in eternal torment? Or are the forces of darkness torturing and deceiving him in order to regain the ultimate prize – his soul?

"Dan 'Spider' Shepherd shifted position slightly, trying to ease the pressure from the rocks beneath him and the ammo belt pressing into his chest. He lay prone, scanning the terrain through his sniper scope." After the Taliban unleash an attack on a military checkpoint, Spider Shepherd suspects foul play. He was too late to stop the attack, but he’s determined to find out how they knew where to strike. With the help of a local boy named Karim, he decides to investigate.

"It isn’t a part-time job, it’s a full-time, unrelenting commitment, and to become one of the inner elite you must expect to make sacrifices at the expense of family, friends, and your career.” Dan Shepherd is on a jungle training course in Belize as part of his SAS selection. Along with Liam, Geordie, and Jimbo, he is chosen for further training to see if he makes the cut for the Sabre Squadron Troop. Taken out on real operation patrol, the men run into trouble with Guatemalan troops in the disputed province.

Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate a case of stigmata. A young girl is bleeding from her hands and feet and claims to be talking to the Virgin Mary. But Nightingale soon realises that all is not as it seems - and the girl is in mortal danger.

Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop. Now he needs to save a soul – his sister's. But to save her he has to find her and they’ve been separated since birth. When everyone Jack talks to about his sister dies horribly, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart. If he's going to save his sister, he's going to have to do what he does best - negotiate. But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price.

"So the men you will train as my bodyguards will be selected not on the basis of their physical fitness but purely on their loyalty to me. The men outside are all Bedu, of my own tribe. Their loyalty to me is absolute and unquestioning.” Spider Shepherd and his team are sent to the Middle East to train tribesmen as bodyguards for the ruling sheikh. He is slowly trying to modernise, but his rule is being threatened by his cousin, whose father was deposed in a bloodless coup.

"So if you can’t find a helicopter anywhere in Sierra Leone for a lift-out, you’d better order up four body bags instead.” Spider Shepherd and his SAS mates are stranded, low on rations and ammunition, waiting for a ride to Freetown before they are overrun by rebels. Upon their return to the capital, they are pressed into service by MI6, tasked with destroying a rebel arms dump. But to do this, they must wade through infested swamps and face rebel soldiers. Many of the soldiers are boys.

"The bosun explained that E & E was so important to the regiment that every badged soldier and officer must do an E & E every couple of years.... It was the ultimate test: You were good, or you were caught." The final hurdle in the SAS selection process - the E & E exercise. The aim is to evade capture and to resist interrogation when finally caught. So when Spider Shepherd is captured, he doesn’t immediately think anything is wrong.

Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate when an old man appears to have been hit by a train on an abandoned railway line. But there hasn't been a train there in more than 50 years. So what killed the old man? As Nightingale investigates, he realises that there are dark forces at work and his own life is on the line.

"Sorry, boys, my hands are tied. The order comes from Special Force HQ, and I can’t countermand it. So I’m giving you a warning order for an imminent active service operation. You’ve got forty minutes to call your wives and girlfriends and sort your kit." After the tragic loss of one of his patrol on an ill-advised training exercise in the Arctic Circle, Spider Shepherd and his comrades are angry at their incompetent commanding officer.

"Spider Shepherd squatted on his heels outside his tent, drinking his first brew of the day from a battered mug as he watch the wind stirring dust devils from the dirt floor of the compound." When an inexperienced officer sends out innocent paratroopers to be betrayed by a surrendered Taliban sniper, Spider Shepherd is the man chosen to clean up the mess. With his old friends Jock and Geordie to help, along with SAS hopeful Lex, can they take their revenge? Or are they just putting themselves in the kill zone?

Detective Jack Nightingale fights his battles in the shadows, in the grey areas where demons and monsters seek their prey. In this collection of nine short stories, Nightingale matches wits against demons from Hell, monsters created by humans, and Satanists who have done their own private deals with the devil.

Hong Kong: The British administration is preparing to hand the capitalist colony back to communist China with the minimum of fuss. But Colonel Joel Tyler has other plans for the British Colony, plans which involve four Vietnam War veterans and a spectacular mission, making use of their unique skills. Vietnam was the one thing the four men had in common before Tyler moulded them into a team capable of pulling off a sensational robbery. But while the vets are preparing to take Hong Kong by storm, their paymaster, Anthony Chung, puts the final touches on an audacious betrayal.

She put her life on the line for her family. But now it’s time to pay the price. All Malee wanted was a better life for herself and her son. And the only way she could make that happen was to sell her body. But her plan falls apart when she arrives in London at the start of the COVID pandemic. She risks everything to support her family - but as the country goes into lockdown, she runs into Russian gangsters who have their own plans for her. Before long the Russians are forcing her to work for them. If she refuses, they’ll kill her.

Would you kill to write a best seller? Well, Adrian Slater says that he's prepared to do just that - and announces the fact in a creative writing class. Lecturer Dudley Grose is convinced that Slater is a psychopath and means what he says. But the Dean of the university doesn't believe him, and neither do the cops. But when a student on the course vanishes and her bathroom is awash with blood, the police wonder if Slater has actually carried out his threat...and if the book he's writing contains the evidence that will put him away.

From best-selling writer Stephen Leather comes an utterly addictive all-action thriller in which a huge terrorist threat to the capital can only be stopped by one man. From the best-selling author of the Spider Shepherd and Jack Nightingale series comes First Response, the utterly addictive new thriller by Stephen Leather. London is under siege. Nine men in suicide vests primed to explode hold hostages in nine different locations around the city, and are ready to die for their cause.

Als ein fünfzehnjähriges Mädchen kauernd und blutverschmiert über der Leiche eines Mannes gefunden wird, dessen Kehle herausgerissen wurde, kann es Polizei-Psychologe Jamie Beaverbrook kaum glauben, als ihre psychologischen Tests unauffällig sind. Auch wenn Beaverbrook nicht an Vampire glaubt, sieht er sich mit der Möglichkeit konfrontiert, dass die Schatten von Los Angeles eine Welt bergen, die denjenigen Zuflucht bietet, die nie altern und für die Blut mehr wert ist als Gold.

Temprato dalla vita di guerriglia nelle giungle del Sudest asiatico, lo straniero era un tempo un sicario silenzioso e letale, al soldo prima dei vietcong poi degli americani. Un uomo duro, inaridito dalla violenza e abituato a guardare in faccia la morte. Dal giorno in cui fu ritrovato il cadavere della prima figlia, brutalmente stuprata e uccisa, la sua esistenza ha però intrapreso un corso fin troppo ordinario per uno come lui, costretto a cancellare il proprio passato e a reinventarsi come uno dei tanti uomini d'affari di Londra, veterano della guerra del Vietnam.

When career criminal Terry Greene is sentenced to life for a murder he didn't commit, his wife has two choices: to walk away from the criminal empire he'd built up, or to take it over - to become as big a gangster as her husband. So far as Samantha "Sam" Greene is concerned, there is no choice. All the family's assets are tied up in the business, and the family means more to her than anything else.

Il barone della droga Gerry Carpenter è detenuto in un carcere di massima sicurezza in attesa di giudizio, ma non è del tutto fuori gioco. Negli stessi giorni in cui la polizia ne celebra la cattura, il pericoloso criminale scatena una vera e propria campagna di terrore: i testimoni che dovrebbero deporre al suo processo vengono minacciati, gli uomini delle forze dell'ordine coinvolti nel caso uccisi, le prove raccolte contro di lui distrutte.