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.

Bag of Dolls

I hope those of you reading this book who require it will find courage through the strange and sometimes exciting world of Julia Darby, she will lead you to unexpected avenues.

Delany's Progress

Delany left the army after becoming seriously injured whilst on active duty in foreign parts. He was repatriated to England and when he was fully recovered, and because of his admiration for the positive actions of a police officer friend, he joined the Constabulary.

His new employers soon became aware that he would make an excellent officer and that he was particularly adept at deep undercover work.

This book covers some of his, at times death defying, adventures.

Devil's Tumble

MY COUSIN BEFORE THE STRANGER. MY BROTHER BEFORE MY COUSIN…

The Scud missile did not bring the dreaded sarin gas but it did point the way to the first dead body. The first in a trail of blood that would lead Kuwaiti homicide detective Riad al Ajmi from the world of the rich to the slums of the underworld as a war rages on the horizon and old wounds are opened once more. Kuwait City, March 2003. The Iraq War—the city swarming with American troops as refugees start streaming in, bringing with them tales of horror. Some going all the way back to the earlier rape of the city and uncovering old secrets—terrible secrets—that some would do anything to keep hidden.

Even murder.

Then there’s the ritualistic slaughter of a young nurse at Kuwait’s Armed Forces Hospital, the killer dressed in the Class A uniform of a ranking American officer—shades of a serial killer previously encountered in Seoul.

Enter CWO Sally Kendrick and WO Troy DuBois, American Military Police CID, flown in to find this killer before it threatens to spill into the realm of civilian Kuwait, straining the uneasy relationship between host city and foreign troops.

A second murder on the military compound raises the possibility of Kuwaiti involvement and soon the duo find themselves working with a reluctant Riad, who prefers to do things his way, which is not quite the army’s way. As the body count mounts, the scene is complicated by the unexpected arrival of Riad’s uncle, the scion of a well-known Lebanese crime family. What is he doing there? How did he even manage to get into a city in total lockdown? Could he be linked to what was happening on that hospital compound and on the streets of the city?

Still struggling to deal with the violent death of his wife at the hands of a jihadist, leaving him the sole carer for a young daughter, Riad finds himself drawn into the circles of the city’s rich and the arms of a sultry seductress, whose motives might just hold the key to the biggest secret of all.

As the hunter becomes the hunted, this fast-moving thriller builds to a shattering climax, where Riad faces the fine line between the law and that most elusive entity of all—justice.

Dezzie and the Historian

A black teenager with a criminal record absconds from a council children's home, moves in with a failed academic old enough to be her grandfather, and discovers that dreams really can come true – up to a point.

Flicker of Hope

After the events in Richmond Victoria, Lindsay returns to District Eighteen, and back under the protection of her uncle. Even though she is surrounded by people, she feels so alone. All she wants is Jason, but nothing can prepare her for what she must do to get him back. This time her journey will take her across the ocean to the fallen country of America. There she will uncover more than she bargained for and come face to face with Henry Gordon, the devil himself. Lindsay will face so much more than she did on the road to Richmond. Things will come for her that seek to tear her apart. Will Lindsay ever find Jason, or will she fall prey to the evil that has consumed the world?

Forgetting the Dreamtime

Sixteen-year-old Kristen has had quite enough of following her evangelical parents’ copious rules. But although up to her neck in both disobedience and discipline, she, nevertheless, suddenly finds herself at the heart of a mystery more profound than anything her willful imagination could have conjured. A challenge so deep that it will affect not only her own fate, but that of the species itself. And, ironically, it will require all of the power of her remaining faith in attempting to overcome it.

A coming-of-age story in the widest and most important sense, Loewen’s characters will, at first, dismay and then inspire as we follow his plucky and precocious heroine and her intellectual beau straight into the abyss of life’s meaning in our own time.

Harry

Fifteen-year-old private schoolboy Harry Hughes has been exchanging messages on an internet chat-room site with someone he thinks is a boy of his own age, but is actually a middle-aged Arab, who is part of a gang operating out of a Middle-Eastern embassy in London. The police are aware of them, but they are operating with impunity because they have diplomatic immunity.

Harry foils their plans and the police take the gang into custody. To bring about a successful prosecution, the police need to put Harry in the witness stand. Acknowledging that the abductions must be stopped, Harry’s parents agree to this. But when the Arab’s lawyers fail to get their clients released from custody, Eastern European thugs emerge from the woodwork and start to threaten and intimidate the family, leading to four people losing their lives.

Harry, Malcolm Roscow’s third novel, is a gritty tale full of suspense and intrigue. This is an expertly crafted thriller which is informed by the classics of the genre but has its own, singular personality.

I Feel Safe in the Church

Would little Annie ever be happy again, after losing her mother and father who hated her? She was so frightened of them that she ran away and hid in her local church, slept on a bench with just a packet of biscuits and water to live on. Her only friend was Tommy, but then Patch comes into her life – a dog who also has lost his owner and is in need of love. But Patch is a clever dog and uncovers lots of mysteries in the village of Burgh St Paul.

Ifrit

Terrorists wanting to proclaim jihad resort to the power of mystical Islam, including dreams, black magic, and the control of supernatural entities known as jinn, to steal Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

As attacks on colleges increase, Samir, the education advisor to the prime minister, sets out to unravel the mystical powers being exploited. While truths are uncovered, separating myths from facts, Ifrit, a powerful jinn, is contacted by terrorists to fulfill their agenda in exchange for having the jinn rule the earth.

What follows is a sequence of fast-moving events when a terrorist head in Afghanistan declares himself to be the Mahdi, the Islamic leader prophesied to rule the world, and calls upon all Muslims to join him, leading to a nuclear standoff between Pakistan and India, to a fight between good and evil, and to an uncertain end if the imbroglio will lead to an apocalypse and end of times.

It's About the Living

Every reader becomes a part of this story. Charles Benford is a very ordinary man who finds himself called upon to make the kind of choices he is not equipped to make, choices that nobody should ever have to make.

Read it and perhaps think how you would have done things better or just differently given the time scales involved. Or become one of any number of the people who occupy the centre stage of the book for a chapter or two. Perhaps it is a memorable character; someone easy to recognise as part of ourselves or someone we know. Experience their fears and emotions as they flit across the pages, enduring pain, grief and, for some, death. For others, there is a huge feeling of guilt, mixed oddly with love and happiness.

This book will leave you intrigued and will make you want answers. But most of all, it will make you think.

Journey to a New Life

This is a story about the long and traumatic journey of two hard working Irish families at the time of the great famine and potato blight in Ireland in the mid nineteenth century when the country was governed from London and the poor were suffering greatly from starvation and disease.

The Doyle and the Gill families both became victims of the arrogant and ignorant son of the local landlord and magistrate and were forced to leave the land of their birth.

In different ways they suffered on the first sea leg of their respective journeys to the port of Liverpool in England where they became united.

They decided that their eventual destination was Canada and to achieve that dream they had to earn enough money by working for an extended period in Liverpool and industrial Lancashire.

Finally, they travelled by sailing ship to Canada. How would they fare? Would their dream eventually come true?