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The 9/11 Connection
In the years since the events of The Odessa Connection, Isaac Menshive and Will McIntosh have settled into new and contrasting roles. Isaac, with his priorities firmly centred on his young and growing family in London, has taken a back seat in running the Menshive Trust, the vast and burdensome business enterprise he inherited. It is Will who oversees the trust’s day-to-day administration full-time alongside Isaac’s daughter Ruth, to whom he is becoming ever more attached.
As part of their researches, Will and Ruth discover that Isaac’s father, a university professor in New York who died under mysterious circumstances, had been working on his own ambitious project, based in the North Tower of the World Trade Center before the attacks of September 11, 2001. They call in experts to examine the Professor’s papers, including those scattered over the city when the towers collapsed, in the hope of learning more about his intentions. At the same time, Isaac’s grasping ex-wife and her two daughters suddenly come back into his life. Is this more than coincidence? Could they perhaps be in league with the sinister figures who have been harassing Isaac over the last several years?
The 9/11 Connection brings the story of Will and Isaac to a satisfying conclusion as it continues to develop the relationships between the familiar protagonists while introducing some highly colourful new characters. With the same flair for detail, psychological nuance and sophisticated geopolitical understanding as its predecessors, the novel displays an uncanny prescience about the current political situation in Eastern Europe.£16.99 -
That Afternoon
Michael Talbot has spent the last twenty-five years working at the tax office, where he is known ironically to his colleagues as Old Sunbeam. Behind the mask of surly efficiency, Michael is in fact a highly sensitive person who was once a charming and lively little boy of six, until the terrible day when his mother unaccountably disappeared, leaving him to the mercies of his father, Eric, a bully of a man with little sympathy for children who indulges his boisterous sense of fun at his son’s expense. Despite this profoundly unsatisfactory relationship, Michael remains attached to Eric in a dutiful slavish sort of way, continuing to meet him occasionally for lugubrious drinks. And so life might have continued indefinitely until early one morning the phone shrills with a frightening message from the local hospital, galvanising him into frenzied and panic-stricken action and launching him into an extraordinary and terrifying adventure. Michael freely admits that his description of this adventure beggars belief, but however real or unreal it may have been, it has freed him from the stranglehold of the past, so that at last he can move forward into fulfilment in a future full of promise.
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Terminal Descent
In Terminal Descent, the fine line between ambition and obsession blurs, as the magnetic pull of wealth and the libertine allure of promiscuity weave a culture veering on the precipice of moral decay. The path once tread in pursuit of lofty ladders now morphs into dark, enigmatic alleys leading to a slippery slide of relentless descent.As the veils of societal decorum thin, the narrative plunges into a whirlpool where unchecked desires and unrestrained indulgences set the stage for a haunting spectacle of human nature stripped bare. Terminal Descent is an evocative exploration of how the seductive dance between aspiration and moral compass can spiral into a fall from grace, narrating a tale where every choice made casts a long, indelible shadow.
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Taken in by the Lights
Laura and her family love the little cottage in the village from the day they move in and it seems the perfect place for a happy family to grow up. When the lights appear across the field the children have no idea what they are or where they have come from and, despite their foreboding, they are almost forgotten as the years go by.
Then, after Laura has moved out, the lights reappear to her brothers… with devastating effect. Some years later Laura discovers that the cottage is up for sale and, despite the lingering memories of those past events, Laura wants to live there again, so she and her boyfriend, Rob, decide to buy it bringing the happenings of the past full circle.
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Take Two Tablets
“If people think I’m bad, then I’ll be good at that!”
Macy Lord is living her worst life: victimised at home, vilified at school.
When novice Religious Studies teacher Mr Fairclough asks his class to re-interpret The Ten Commandments, Macy resolves, for the sake of authenticity, to break them. Blaming, blaspheming, coveting, dishonouring, lying, stealing, and worshipping shiny stuff all come easy, but then she kills – and kills again.
Traumatised by her potential parricide, Macy goes on the run: faking adulthood in London, blurring art and death in Paris, escaping undercover in Arabia, raising the bar in Brooklyn.
Pursued by a coterie of vengeful cast-offs, Macy craves her calm, cool Mr Fairclough, but having lost his star pupil, he too has eschewed education for misadventures of his own.
If nurture is absent, will nature take its course? Can Macy find redemption in the chaos of her life? And how will she ‘complete the set’ with The Seventh Commandment still unbroken?
£10.99 -
Suicide or Murder
Mina, a Lufthansa flight attendant, and Adam, a trainee police detective, establish a loving relationship formed around an astounding story (purported to be true) that boggled police investigators and medical examiners in LA. The story investigates the legal ramifications associated with a bizarre death that was chosen as the most unusual case on record for presentation at the 25th Anniversary dinner of the American Association of Forensic Scientists.
It may be difficult to envisage a growing romance within the confines of a murder mystery; however, the unusually volatile pressures and emotions that surround this case are, in fact, the perfect vehicle to exhibit the unique personalities of the involved characters. This story is sometimes bizarre and sometimes amusing and it becomes quite difficult to keep in mind that a large part of it is claimed to have really happened.
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Stumped
The brutal murder of a young married woman during an annual cricket match in the sleepy countryside village of Bundary near Bristol forms the backdrop to a novel of illicit affairs, an escort agency and the attempted break-up of an international drug smuggling ring based in the Balkans and operating in Britain and Eastern Europe.
Solving the murder involves cooperation between the Avon and Somerset Police and officers from the West Midlands who are working with The National Crime Agency to discover how drugs are being imported into Britain from The Balkans.
The visiting cricket team captain is a known drug dealer from the Wolverhampton area who is offered amnesty of a potential prison sentence if he will go undercover to try to break up the drug ring.
This brings him into contact with one of the suspects for the murder as he travels to Dubrovnik and Montenegro, where he meets up with the operators of the drug cartel who own a vineyard near Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.
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Storm Force
Matt Bradley, former street gang teen, now a tough operator with an elite mountain rescue team.
His wife Amanda vanishes in plain sight. There are no clues, no obvious motive.
With the team leader stranded in a plane crash, he must lose his emotions and focus.
His mission to find her pits him against criminal thugs working with a shadowy offshore network of killers.
Where is she and why was she targeted?
To save her, he must ‘fly blind’ against the clock in steep, remote wilderness.£10.99 -
Stars Aligned
When Emily moves halfway across the country to escape her abusive ex, Jason, she ends up landing her dream job and meeting her CEO and ideal man, Alex. Things are starting to look up for her and life is good. That is until she discovers Jason has followed her and is set intent on destroying everything she has achieved. She finds herself unwillingly working alongside Jason, and both under the management of Alex, who is oblivious to their previous life together. She must remain strong, out his dark secrets and protect her man to win her freedom.
But Emily has some dark, twisted secrets of her own, secrets Jason owns entirely, and Alex seeks.
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South Island Slaughter
When Detective Superintendent Cully returns to South Island for a long-awaited school reunion, little does he know that the event will swiftly turn into a nightmare. A devastating mass shooting unfolds, and Cully is thrust into the role of leading the investigation. However, amidst the chaos, he battles his own demons, fearing that past abusive behavior will resurface with deadly consequences.
The victims, all connected to Cully’s school days, include Sophie Cairns, a former classmate and his ex-girlfriend, who miraculously survives the tragedy. In her book, a trauma therapist boldly suggests that fatal violence is the only solution to unbearable agony.
As the relentless police team hunts down the shooter, Cully’s path intertwines with that of DC Indah Kasali, forging a close bond. Sophie and Indah find themselves entangled in a battle to win Cully’s affections.
South Island Slaughter is a gripping thriller that explores the harrowing aftermath of tragedy, the complexities of human relationships, and the haunting effects of a troubled past.
£12.99 -
Sons and Mothers
The year was 1939 and soldiers were about to go to war. Constance Cummings, a sixteen-year-old beautiful but naïve young girl, was taken in by a conniving and duplicitous junior army officer who was already married with a family using a false identity.
With the false promise of later marriage and following a wager with his colleagues he lured the girl into a seedy room where he raped her.
She found herself to be pregnant and in 1940 she had a baby with an unknown father. Even though she had been duped and raped this was considered to be a disgrace and the child, a boy, was taken from her without her even being aware of his sex.
Meanwhile, some miles away the offender’s real wife gave birth to a son.
This is a story of their lives from that point on. Will Constance ever meet up with her son? Will the offender’s real wife ever realise what a dreadful man she had married? Will the two half-brothers ever meet and become friends?
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Some Service to the State
The year is 1925. In the borderlands of a newly partitioned Ireland, a doctor new to Northern Ireland begins a search for a missing patient, a young girl who has fallen pregnant.Meeting a wall of silence, she enlists the help of a local, a former IRA volunteer recently released from jail. Their enquiry brings them into contact with a community still suffering from the wounds of civil war. More worrying for them, they find they are beginning to rattle skeletons that some powerful people would prefer went undisturbed.As they slowly begin to unravel the truth of the girl’s fate, they find that the traces they are following lead to some crimes more monstrous that they ever previously considered.“Some Service to the State is a superb book with dialogue that would not be out of place on the stage of the Abbey Theatre. Mick McAlinden is a former IRA man caught on the wrong side of the border and the wrong side of history: a law student who ends up working in an abattoir. Aidan McQuade has created a character whose travails highlight the thwarted dreams and the tragedy of partition for so many people in post-revolutionary Ireland.”- Ronan McGreevy, journalist and author of Great Hatred: the Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.“Like Graham Greene, Dennis Lehane, and Louise Penny before him, McQuade takes the humble crime story and uses it like a scalpel to probe and expose the darkness in human souls and human society.”- Martin W. Sandler, National Book Award-winning author and historian.“The sparring sparky dialogue is a delight and never fails to vivify the darkness. McQuade shows prodigious skill in shining a spotlight on the scandal of mother-and-baby homes and in brilliantly imbuing the past with his own potent blend of heart, soul and wit.”- Rosemary Jenkinson, multi-award winning playwright and author of Marching Season.
£9.99