Tags:historical
An Eye for an Eye (William Warwick Novels)
The unputdownable new rollercoaster read from the Sunday Times bestseller Jeffrey Archer – a must read book of 2024! ‘An absolute page-turner’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review ‘Impossible to put down’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review ‘So many turns and twists’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review 'Master of the pager turner' – Daily Mail 'Compelling' – David Baldacci Selected as one of Waterstones’ Best Books for 2024 *** In one of the most luxurious cities on earth... A billion-dollar deal is about to go badly wrong. A lavish night out is about to end in murder. And the British government is about to be plunged into crisis. In the heart of the British establishment... Lord Hartley, the latest in a line of peers going back over two hundred years, lies dying. But his will triggers an inheritance with explosive consequences. Two deaths. Continents apart. No obvious connection. So why are they both at the centre of a master criminal's plot for revenge? And can Scotland Yard's William Warwick uncover the truth before it's too late... The ultimate race-against-time is about to begin.
The Qing Dynasty Mysteries: Books 1-3
Murder. Love. Duty.During the Qing Dynasty, betrayals, secrets, and lies often lead to murder. And only one man can solve the empire's most desperate cases - if he can convince the one woman he can't resist to help him.Books 1-3 of the Qing Dynasty Mysteries featuring Inspector Gong and Lady Li are now available in this exciting boxed set!Murder in the Forbidden City - Book 1When one of the Empress’s ladies-in-waiting is killed in the Forbidden City, she orders Inspector Gong to find the killer. Unfortunately, as a man, he is forbidden from entering the Inner Court. How is he supposed to solve a murder when he cannot visit the scene of the crime or talk to the women in the victim’s life? He won’t be able to solve this crime alone.The widowed Lady Li is devastated when she finds out about the murder of her sister-in-law, who was serving as the Empress’s lady-in-waiting. She is determined to discover who killed her, even if it means assisting the rude and obnoxious Inspector Gong and going undercover in the Forbidden City.Together, will Lady Li and Inspector Gong be able to find the murderer before he – or she – strikes again?Murder in the British Quarter - Book 2When a young Chinese woman is murdered within the British Quarter of the foreign legation, Inspector Gong is ordered by the Imperial Court to solve the crime before the incident escalates into war between China and the foreign powers. The only problem? Inspector Gong doesn’t speak English. And he is hardly the type of man to be accepted by the British elite living in Peking.Once again, he must turn to the one woman who can help him. The woman he can’t stop thinking about.Lady Li is trying to forget about Inspector Gong. He’s a danger to herself, her position, and her children’s future. But when he comes once again knocking on her door and asking for her assistance in solving a case, she can’t resist, despite her better judgment.Lady Li’s language and diplomatic abilities allow her to freely enter the world of the Western visitors, but tensions between the foreigners and local people are increasing by the hour.Will Lady Li and Inspector Gong be able to solve the crime without the answer leading China to war?Murder at the Peking Opera - Book 3After helping Prince Kung avert an international disaster and negotiating with Inspector Gong's mother for his betrothal to Concubine Swan, Lady Li takes a well-deserved evening to enjoy the first public performance by a female Peking opera performer. But her relaxing night out takes a dramatic turn when a murder is committed on stage during the performance.Inspector Gong's attempt at finding a distraction from the troubles in his heart is thwarted when he and Lady Li attend the same opera performance. Thankfully, a murder in front of hundreds of people plunges him into a world usually hidden behind curtains and costumes.The empress has decreed that women can now play female roles in Peking's beloved operas. But few women have been willing to undertake the challenge and risk the wrath of the more conservative opera patrons. When the first woman willing to step into the role of the "dan" becomes the prime suspect in the murder of her co-star, Lady Li begs Inspector Gong to delay in arresting the actress and find the real killer before the woman is executed for the crime. With the future of Chinese theater hanging in the balance, Inspector Gong must try to find the truth among people who mask their real faces for a living.
Dead Beside The Thames
#1 NYT-bestselling author Stephanie Laurens returns with a confounding case that sees her favorite sleuths acting to save a friend wrongly accused of murder.When a detested viscount is found murdered by the banks of the Thames and Charlie Hastings becomes the prime suspect, Barnaby and Penelope Adair join forces with Stokes to discover the real story behind the unexpected killing. Charlie Hastings is astonished to find himself accused of murdering Viscount Sedbury. Admittedly, Charlie had two heated altercations with Sedbury in the hours preceding the man’s death, but as Charlie is quick to point out to Stokes – and to Barnaby and Penelope – there are a multitude of others in the ton who will be delighted to learn of Sedbury’s demise.As Penelope, Barnaby, and Stokes start assembling a suspect list, Charlie’s prediction proves only too accurate. Yet the most puzzling aspect is who on earth managed to kill Sedbury. The man was a hulking brute, large, very strong, and known as a vicious brawler. Who managed to subdue him enough to strangle him?As the number of suspects steadily increases, the investigators are forced to ask if, perhaps, one of their suspects hired a killer capable of taking Sedbury down. With that possibility thrown into the calculations, narrowing their suspect list becomes a futile exercise.Their pursuit of the truth leads them to investigate the many shady avenues of Sedbury’s life, much to the consternation of Sedbury’s father, the Marquess of Rattenby. Rattenby does not want Sedbury’s distasteful proclivities exposed for all the world to see, further harming the other family members who Sedbury has taken great delight in tormenting for most of his life.In the end, the resolution of the crime lies in old-fashioned policing coupled with the fresh twists Barnaby and Penelope bring to Scotland Yard’s efforts.And when the truth is finally revealed, it raises questions that strike to the very heart of justice and what, with such a victim and such a murderer, true justice actually means. A historical novel of 62,500 words interweaving mystery and murder with a touch of romance.
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (Poirot)
A wheelchair-bound Poirot returns to Styles, the venue of his first investigation, where he knows another murder is going to take place... The house guests at Styles seemed perfectly pleasant to Captain Hastings; there was his own daughter Judith, an inoffensive ornithologist called Norton, dashing Mr Allerton, brittle Miss Cole, Doctor Franklin and his fragile wife Barbara , Nurse Craven, Colonel Luttrell and his charming wife, Daisy, and the charismatic Boyd-Carrington. So Hastings was shocked to learn from Hercule Poirot’s declaration that one of them was a five-times murderer. True, the ageing detective was crippled with arthritis, but had his deductive instincts finally deserted him?...
The Olympian Affair
The fate of the Cinder Spires may be decided by crossed swords in the next exhilarating fantasy adventure in the New York Times bestselling series of noble families, swordplay, and airships.For centuries the Cinder Spires have safeguarded humanity, rising far above the deadly surface world. Within their halls, aristocratic houses rule, developing scientific marvels and building fleets of airships for defence and trade.Now, the Spires hover on the brink of open war.Everyone knows it's coming. The guns of the great airship fleets that control the skies between the last bastions of humanity will soon speak in anger, and Spire Albion stands alone against the overwhelming might of Spire Aurora's Armada and its new secret weapon--one capable of destroying the populations of entire Spires.A trading summit at Spire Olympia provides an opportunity for the Spirearch, Lord Albion, to secure alliances that will shape the outcomes of the war, and to that end he dispatches privateer Captain Francis Madison Grimm and the crew of the AMS Predator to bolster the Spirearch's diplomatic agents.It will take daring, skill, and no small amount of showmanship to convince the world to stand with Spire Albion--assuming that it is not already too late.
Killing Commendatore
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—from one of our greatest writers. • “Exhilarating ... magical.” —The Washington PostWhen a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he secludes himself in the mountain home of a world famous artist. One day, the young painter hears a noise from the attic, and upon investigation, he discovers a previously unseen painting. By unearthing this hidden work of art, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances; and to close it, he must undertake a perilous journey into a netherworld that only Haruki Murakami could conjure.
1Q84: Book 3
Book Two of 1Q84 ended with Aomame standing on the Metropolitan Expressway with a gun between her lips. She knows she is being hunted, and that she has put herself in terrible danger in order to save the man she loves. But things are moving forward, and Aomame does not yet know that she and Tengo are more closely bound than ever.Tengo is searching for Aomame, and he must find her before this world's rules loosen up too much. He must find her before someone else does.
1Q84 Sampler
A FREE SAMPLER OF HARUKI MURAKAMI'S NEW MASTERPIECEThis sampler contains the first two chapters of Haruki Murakami's magnum opus, 1Q84, introducing the reader to the hero and heroine of the story, Tengo and Aomame.The full ebook of Books One and Two will be available in one volume on 18th October 2011, followed by the ebook of Book Three on 25th October.The year is 1984. Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo.Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.Meanwhile, Tengo is leading a nondescript life but wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true?Both Aomame and Tengo notice that the world has grown strange; both realise that they are indispensable to each other. While their stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, the two come closer and closer to intertwining.
1Q84: Books 1 and 2
*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*Read this imaginative masterpiece from the internationally bestselling author of Norwegian WoodThe year is 1984. Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo.Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.Meanwhile, Tengo wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true?Both Aomame and Tengo notice that the world has grown strange; both realise that they are indispensable to each other. While their stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, the two come closer and closer to intertwining.'It is a work of maddening brilliance and gripping originality, deceptively casual in style, but vibrating with wit, intellect and ambition' The Times
1Q84
The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky.In this world, the fates of two people, Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined. They are each, in their own way, doing something very dangerous. And in this world, there seems no way to save them both.Something extraordinary is starting.*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*'1Q84 has a range and sophistication that surpasses anything else in his oeuvre.' Independent on Sunday‘Murakami's magnum opus’ Japan Times‘Vibrating with wit, intellect and ambition’ The Times
Norwegian Wood
*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*'A masterly novel' New York Times'Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility' GuardianRead the haunting love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar.When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.'Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but then Murakami is one of the best writers around' Time Out'Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and loss of faith' Sunday Times'This book is undeniably hip, full of student uprisings, free love, booze and 1960s pop, it's also genuinely emotionally engaging, and describes the highs of adolescence as well as the lows' Independent on Sunday
Morning, Noon and Night
The Stanford family is one of the most respected in America – but behind the facade of fame and glamour lies a hidden web of blackmail, drugs and murder... When Harry Stanford, one of the wealthiest men in the world, mysteriously drowns while cruising on his yacht off the rugged coast of Corsica, it sets off a chain of events that reverberates around the globe. At the family gathering following the funeral in Boston, a strikingly beautiful young woman appears. She claims to be Stanford's daughter and entitled to a share of the tycoon's estate. Is she genuine, or is she an imposter?