12 Presents

It is December 2019, and preparations for Barbados Prime Minister Jeffrey Motby’s annual Christmas reception have been thrown into disarray when a close and dear friend of his dies in a vehicular accident. One week later, another long-term friend dies by drowning. Motby becomes concerned. Was this coincidence, or were his two friends’ deaths connected? He is unable to comprehend their untimely deaths and his friendship with them going back over 30 years as Mango Club members.

While not strictly a national security matter, Motby quietly asks the Barbados Intelligence Bureau (BIB) to investigate the deaths to see what, if anything, connects either or both deaths to him, his family, or his government. The apparent suicide of a third friend makes the investigation official. BIB operatives and Barbados police officers review the three deaths in different Caribbean countries. Other Mango Club members' lives are also threatened.

Can the Chaos Theory help? Are the killings being made due to anger, envy, jealousy, revenge, or elements of all four of these factors? The Barbados crisis has the potential to ripple across the Caribbean Sea and beyond. Long-held personal secrets are exposed and friendships fray. Only hard work, cooperation, trust, ingenuity, and some luck help in solving the 12 Presents puzzle.

A Case of Gravity

To Christian Simpkins, time was of the essence. His old friend, a rather eccentric rotund scientist had been abducted from his own facility in Cornwall, England.

Simpkins was on the trail, piecing together tiny snippets of information to steer him onward into the unknown. Others also desperately wanted this scientist, they wanted his knowledge and they wanted a particular little prototype that could seemingly defy gravity.

Slowly, too slowly, Simpkins begins to unravel the workings of those that took his friend and their murderous intentions. Highly skilled in their deadly arts, they turned their attention to this worrying thorn in their side. Simpkins’ survival plan was based on luck, circumstance and very little else except his strangely tuned mind, a strategy somewhat lost to the seasoned professionals on their deadly errand.

A fast-paced windmill of twists of thought and cryptic subterfuge.

A tale of intrigue, death, love and unerring friendship set in today’s world of unforgiving hard truths.

A Conspiracy of Serpents

The brutal murder of an Oxford undergraduate in the City of London. The trial of the prime suspect. The theft of a research paper from an Oxford laboratory. A deadly pandemic, and a desperate cover-up by the British establishment to suppress the truth.

A story of love, loss, hope and redemption, from the spires of Oxford to the streets of London, from the Kremlin in Moscow to the port of Shanghai, and beyond. 

And the story of the integrity of one jaded lawyer pitted against the ruthless forces of international politics which will stop at nothing to get its way – even murder.

A conspiracy, breath-taking in both its scope and ambition.

A Conspiracy of Serpents.

A Fall to the Top

Colin MacKinnon MP is leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and is nearing the end of a general election campaign that hangs in the balance when he receives an unexpected telephone call. The unknown caller knows of a dreadful incident from his past. What’s on offer by the caller sets MacKinnon’s career alight – his rise on the stage of politics is meteoric, at home and abroad. He lets nothing get in his way as he sets out to restore the United Kingdom’s standing in the world. He enlists the aid of two former SAS colleagues to help: Alan Croudace, his conscience, and Jack Somerton, his do-anything lieutenant.

Where is it all going to end? And who is really pulling the strings? As you read this book, put yourself in MacKinnon’s shoes and ask yourself, ‘What would I do in the circumstances given the opportunity?’

A Mindful Afflatus

Based on a true story of a very strange two-week eerie phenomenon that took place in an old flat in south London. Live my thoughts and feelings around the scary happenings as the uninvited guest gradually consumes my daily life.

A Shoelace, a Paperclip, and a Pencil: The Reckoning

Tom Cooper had two strange events during his younger days which it seems might be interconnected. One of them, in Bonn in the mid-seventies, involved his temporary custody of a briefcase containing a shoelace, a paper clip and a pencil. The other was in Belfast in the mid-eighties. Tom begins to believe there might be something hidden in the briefcase: a coded message, maybe for the IRA, especially with Tom being the virtual double of an IRA operative.

Tom and his wife Liz start trying to piece together the links, at first focusing on the contents of the briefcase.

What unfolds is a chain of events which threaten Tom’s and Liz’s lives. Tom twice nearly loses his life and on one occasion his wife Liz does too. All, it seems, because someone, or some people, do not want them to discover the code and try everything to ensure they don’t. From being hunters, Tom and Liz are now the hunted.

Those implicated in the secrets held by the briefcase continue to want Tom and his wife silenced. Meanwhile, Tom has decided “enough is enough” and hatches a plan to reckon with those wanting Liz and him dead. The problem for those around him – including not only Liz, but also the police who have a keen interest in the case – is only Tom knows what the plan is.

A Smuggler's Snare

Tracey Foley leads an adventurous, suspenseful life, smuggling marijuana to the USA. The trails and tribulations of this dangerous and challenging lifestyle include attacks by pirates intent on killing and looting what they could. Shootouts, threatening to ram the attacking boat, the thrill of the chase and hope of the winds and seas picking up. One danger over, the next was the weather being typhoon season. Every risky day was forgotten when Mother Nature demonstrated its beauty in the calm, serene sailing days with albatrosses, dolphins, humpbacks and killer whales and playful sea otters. Hearts were in mouth when making landfall to offload, the coastguard being a smuggler’s snare. Read about the ingenious diversion plan and missions accomplished. Also, all hope was with the off-loaders making the rendezvous, escaping detection so the mother load made it safely. Many, many what ifs. Payday was also another risk. Will they be able to smuggle luggage loads of $100 greenbacks safely offshore or be intercepted? Job completed or 25 years in jail? A Smuggler’s Snare. 

A Story to Tell; A Secret to Keep

Family secrets are never a good thing – or are they?

A Story to Tell: A Secret to Keep is the compelling debut novel by Fiona Rich. This domestic noir is full of emotional depth, that slowly builds suspense leaving the reader hungry to delve deeper into the complex and challenging lives of Tim, Libby and Josh and learn more about the secrets that the family hold. It is a story full of intrigue and plot twists that will keep you guessing until the end.

Each of the main characters have faced something traumatic in their lives, they all have their own dark secret that impacts on them psychologically; a secret that could damage the relationships of those closest to them. But will the choices that each of them make to resolve their personal crisis and overcome their psychological traumas release them from their inner turmoil, or lock them in an endless conflict of guilt and deception?

Amanda – a Would-Be Killer

This tale is about the lives of three people who became friends at university and how their lives became a nightmare.

The beautiful Amanda was torn between Harry and Simon, but was she right to marry Harry when Simon took a job in Norway?

When Simon returned from Norway, he had a great idea and went into business with Harry, maintaining the services of a major hotel group.

One night, Harry was called out as the air conditioning in their client’s major hotel had failed and guests were complaining. On this visit, he saw Simon followed by Amanda coming out of a hotel suite. They were gone before he could get his wits together.

Harry finds out from the hotel’s night porter that this is a regular occurrence so he sets about investigating what is going on. He sets up surveillance cameras and is dismayed what he discovers about Amanda and Simon’s undercover relationship.

When Amanda is told how Simon has been using her, she sets out for revenge and her plan nearly works. At the same time Harry has found out how Simon came into money and set up a disreputable ‘Gentleman’s Club’ where they recruited women from abroad to satisfy their members.

What follows is quite dramatic.

An Open Verdict

Dr David seeks to establish the truth behind the unnatural cause of death of Stephen, one of his patients. He promises Stephen’s parents, that he would search out the explanation, having a strong suspicion that Stephen’s death was caused by a new psychiatric medication. Dr David did not realise that his quest for answers would lead to him being the target of an assassination attempt, and also endanger the lives of others. The story has many twists, unfolding to reveal a major pharmaceutical company’s cover up plot and attempt to conceal the truth using deadly force. Police involvement in the case introduces Dr David to a soulmate and romance.

Anna

Anna returns to her old job in an insurance claims department after having children with her loving husband, Matt. She struggles to settle in with time keeping issues. When most of the office is away on a team-building weekend, Anna ends up making a terrible mistake. She tries her best to sort everything out, but even with the help of her friends, Rita and Lauren, the harder she tries, the more mistakes she seems to make. Can Anna sort everything out and get her life back on track?

Astrid Book II: Good people do bad things

Astrid has been through ten years of fighting, ten years of killing, and is exhausted. She doubts whether she now even has the strength to fight any more but is desperate to find a way to bring the conflict to an end.Her country is sophisticated and technologically advanced but is bordered to the north by a belligerent dictatorship that has made threats of war. She was an actress and had been filming on the day an unprovoked attack took place; she witnessed friends being killed, and on that day, she gave up her dreams and became a nurse. However, another incident a couple of years later changed her, and she joined the military and became an assassin. She now uses her acting skills to move through enemy territory becoming different characters to avoid detection, blending in and hiding in plain sight.Then an enemy general becomes aware of her and pursues her as she makes her way out. Will she survive?