There's no way to soften this, so I'll say it outright. I already have a wife.' In a single sentence, Walter Radcliffe destroyed everything Kate Sullivan had lived for up to their wedding day. Conventional family life in 1920s rural Somerset left her totally unprepared for the shame and disgrace of being jilted. Desperate to escape, she accepts the insulting gifts of Walter's money and his sham wedding ring and flees to the honeymoon hotel in Bournemouth to try and forget.

George and Lennie are itinerant farm workers - one of nimble wits, the other of huge physique - whose simple arrangement keeps them in work. Labouring from dawn until dusk they both have a dream to keep them going. That one day, they'll have enough money to buy a small ranch of their own and keep cows and chickens and rabbits. But even his best friend and mentor can't save Lennie from his worst enemy - his own strength ...

The Lincolnshire fens are the setting for Superintendent Richard Jury's latest case. This landscape is one that can easily deceive, volunteering nothing - much like the locals of the only pub for miles around, the Case Has Altered. There's been a double murder. The body of one woman is found on the Wash; another woman lies floating in a canal in Windy Fen. Both are connected with the same manor house.

Douglas focuses his expertise on predatory crimes, primarily against women. With a deep sense of compassion for the victims and an uncanny understanding of the perpetrators, Douglas looks at the obsessions that lead to rape, stalking and sexual murder through such cases as Ronnie Shelton, the serial rapist who terrorised Cleveland; Joseph Thompson, New Zealand's South Aucland rapist; the stalking and killing of television star Rebecca Schaeffer; and New York's notorious 'Preppie Murder'

Paula Grey 'witnesses' the murder of Norbert Engel, key German statesman, in Vienna. A veiled woman entered and left the building. Is she a member of the insidious Sisterhood? In a leaderless Europe, its few strong men are assassinated. Tweed fears an Eastern power - not Russia - is planning to take over the Continent. Tracking the mastermind, he suspects Captain Wellesley Carrington, Dorset landowner, his neighbour Amos Lodge, eccentric strategist, and Tina Langley, Carrington's 'friend'

Samantha Laschen, a doctor specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, has moved to the Essex Coast with her small daughter, Elsie, to escape the problems of her London life, or so she thinks. Fiona McKenzie barely survived the savage, murderous attack which left her parents dead. Now she is in need of sanctuary and the police see Sam as the ideal person to offer her a safe house. Already overburdened with the demands of a new job and her mercurial lover Danny, Sam reluctantly agrees to take her in. But as Fiona makes her way into the hearts of her hosts, Sam discovers that the risks she has foreseen are nothing compared to the terrifying danger she actually faces.

A macabre recurring dream.....revenge against a blackmailer....jealousy, infidelity and a tortured conscience....a stolen gemstone....the haunting attraction of an ancient relic....a race against time......a tragic love triangle......a body in a box....an unexpected visitor from beyond the grave....Here are nine quintessential examples of Agatha Christie's brilliance

Witnessing a Mafia hit is no recipe for a long and healthy life. High-class call girl Nicole Bass is nobody's fool, and she's a woman with good reason not to trust lawman Jack Kirby. So she disappears. And now The Mob and the cops are looking for her. But Nicole has eighteen million five hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars worth of reason to stay hidden.......

The Shepherd: It is Christmas Eve 1957. Flying home, on leave from Germany, he is alone in the cockpit of The Vampire. Then, out over the North Sea, the fog begins to close in. Radio contact ceases and the compass goes haywire. Suddenly, out of the mist, appears a WWII bomber, flying just below The Vampire, as if trying to make contact. The Odessa File: The life and death hunt for a notorious Nazi criminal unfolds against a background of international arms deals.

At once humorous and dramatic, Three Dollars is about Eddie, an honest, compassionate man who finds himself, at age thirty-eight, with a wife, a child and three dollars. How did he get that way? And who is Amanda? He cared about people; he was, Amanda notwithstanding, a good husband, father and son. At any other time the world would have smiled on him. But this was the nineties and the world valued other things.