Iceland 1934: Two boys playing see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: The credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay... And in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then, one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him.
Madeline Kramer has finally got her life back on track at top City law firm. But when two armed, masked men burst into a conference room one lunchtime, kidnapping a trainee and a partner, Maddy's life is plunged into disarray once more --particularly when charismatic DCI Jake Carver, who caught a heartless killer when they last met and with whom Maddy shared a mutual chemistry, is called to the scene. Things become more complicated when a disturbing video reveals two more trainees have been taken. What initially appears as a random kidnapping for mercenary gain soon evolves into something far more complex, the horrifying events of 30 years ago motivating the abductors and having colossal implications?
Brexit looms and Charles Thoroughgood, Chief of MI6, is forbidden for political reasons from spying on the EU. But when an EU official volunteers the EU?s negotiating bottom lines to one of his officers, Charles has to report it. Whitehall is eager for more but as the case develops Charles realises that it may not be quite what it appears. At the same time, he finds he has a family connection with a possible terrorist whom MI5 want checked out. In both cases, Charles is forced to become his own agent, seeking what he really does not want to find.
Have you ever wondered how the ideas for some things come about? Surprisingly it is often as much down to chance as a single person's brilliance. The Accidental Scientist explores the role of chance and error in scientific, medical and commercial innovation, outlining exactly how some of the most well-known products, gadgets and useful gizmos came to be. Encompassing everything from DNA profiling to fingerprinting and TNT to the telephone, this book explores many of the discoveries that we are all so familiar with today, yet have the most interesting origins because of the story behind them. Not all discoveries require brilliance, and as The Accidental Scientist demonstrates, sometimes a special ingredient is needed: luck.
Independent old man Walter Fletcher is found dead within two days of moving out of the home that he has lived in for forty years. His death is at first presumed to be accidental. Superintendent Lambert and Sergeant Hook find to their embarrassment that his granddaughter's suspicions of foul play are only too well founded.
The Foreign Land of the Very Wealthy - otherwise known as Manhattan's Upper East Side - has its own rigid code of behaviour. Emotional displays - unacceptable. Fun - no thanks. This is Glenn Wilder-Bingham's kingdom. A beautifully displayed impeccably edited fortress of restraint. So when Rosie Kitto, an eccentric 38-year-old primary school teacher from England, bounces into their lives with a secret sorrow and a heart as big as the city, nobody realises that she hasn't read the rule book. For the Wilder-Bingham family, whose lives begin to unravel thread by thread, the consequences are explosive. Because after a lifetime of saying no, what happens when everyone decides to start saying...yes?
When twelve-year-old Ada Cooper's elder sister, Connie, goes mysteriously missing, Ada and her younger brother, Sam, are forced to fend for themselves. Connie's job at the match factory was the only thing keeping the family together and when the rent man, Mr Winterbourne, threatens them with internment at the workhouse for non-payment, Ada and Sam must flee. A coster mongering family come to their aid by providing Ada with a barrow of her own to sell fruit and veg by day and flowers outside the theatres by night. Will Ada and Sam ever reunite with their sister? And will they both be able to survive the savage streets?
You think you know him. Until he's dead... When Cameron Swift is gunned down outside his family home, DC Beth Chamberlain is appointed Family Liaison Officer: a dual role that requires her to support the family, and also investigate them. As the case unfolds and the body count climbs, Beth discovers that nothing is quite as it appears and everyone, it seems, has secrets. Even the dead.
London, April 1912. The third Irish Home Rule Bill is passing through Parliament and the situation is growing ever more tense. Closely involved in the negotiations, cabinet minister Edmund Latimer finds himself under growing pressure which only intensifies when his seven-month-old niece Lucy is snatched away in her pram in Regent's Park. Could there be a connection between Lucy's kidnapping and the Irish talks? With her husband under intolerable strain, Edmund's wife Alice makes it her business to find out. But the more she discovers, the more she realises how little she really knows the man she married five years before.
The year is 1864 and Detective Inspector Faro's idyllic life has been shattered by the escape of convicted murderer John McLaw. With countless dead end sightings of the killer and further criminal activity, Faro realises that this case is far more complicated than he had first assumed. When the disappearance of a maid comes to light, Faro begins to think there could be a link between her disappearance and the murder of Annie McLaw. His determination to unearth the truth becomes personal and in a race against time to solve the anonymities of the case, he takes matters into his own hands.
Oz Blackstone didn't go looking for fame, but unwittingly found himself a movie star, married to a successful businesswoman. His first taste of bitterness was finding his ex-wife in tears, her life in ruins and robbed of her baby by his lying, cheating father. What else could he do but help? He sets out on a voyage of dark intrigue and wild discovery, turning his life upside down.
Monty Bannerman's father is a leading genetic scientist, and Nobel Prize winner, whose company has just been taken over by what will soon be the world's biggest pharmaceutical giant. He had some misgivings about their company ethics -- but ultimately, he needs their money, and they need his mind. Then a journalist comes to Monty's door, with a far-fetched story about the pharmaceutical company. She doesn't believe what she's being told for a moment - but within a few short weeks, events are making the apparently fantastic claims look horrifyingly like the truth. Behind the respectable facade of the multinational company which calls itself the 'World's Most Caring Company' lies an outrage against the whole human race?
It is 1916 and Edith Mellor is one of the few female surgeons in Britain. She travels to the Somme, where she is confronted with the horrors at the front. Yet amongst the bloodshed on the battlefield, there is a ray of light in the form of the working class Albert, a corporal from the East End of London. Meanwhile in Bradford, strong-minded Ada is left heartbroken when her only remaining son Jimmy heads off to fight in the war. She then discovers that her mentally unstable sister Beryl is pregnant with her husband Paddy's child. Can Edith help her to turn her life around?
Verity is telling lies... And that's why she's about to be arrested for attempted murder. Serena has been lying for years? And that may have driven her daughter, Verity, to do something unthinkable. Poppy's lies have come back to haunt her? So will her quest for the truth hurt everyone she loves? Everyone lies. But whose lies are going to end in tragedy?
About to turn 40, there's no doubt in her mind that suburban wife and mother-of-two Claire Taylor has settled. A wild week in Chicago may have shaken things up a bit, but when she returns home on the eve of Hallowe'en, she knows that this is where her life is. Except that it's all gone. The house is stripped and her family is gone. By dawn next morning, her supposedly mortgage-free home has been foreclosed against, one of Danny's childhood friends lies dead in her backyard, and Claire is caught up in a nightmare that began with her husband on Hallowe'en night, 1976.
It's 1940 and war has broken out. It is midnight at the turn of the year, and Walter Gabriel speaks the same line that opened the very first radio episode - 'And a Happy New Year to you all!' For Ambridge, a village in the heart of the English countryside, this year will bring change in ways no one was expecting. From the Pargetters at Lower Loxley Manor to the loving, hard-working Archer family at Brookfield Farm, the war will be hard for all of them. And the New Year brings the arrival of evacuees to Ambridge. As the villagers embrace wartime spirit, the families that listeners have loved for generations face an uphill battle to keep their secrets hidden.
On duty during London's Blitz...As death and destruction fall from the skies day after day in the London Blitz, Australian ambulance driver, Lily Brennan, confronts the horror with bravery, intelligence, common sense and humour. Lily begins to suspect that someone at her Ambulance Station may be giving assistance to the enemy by disclosing secret information. Then a Jewish ambulance attendant, David Levy, disappears in suspicious circumstances. Helped by David's school friend, a mysterious and attractive RAF pilot, Lily has to draw on all of her resources to find David but also negotiate the dangers that come from falling in love in a country far from home and in a time of war.
Young Maisie Halliday has escaped the grinding poverty of the northern town where she was born to live in the glittering world of professional dancing. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she volunteers as an ambulance driver.Maisie is at the Cafe de Paris nightclub when it is bombed. In the chaos, she attempts to help an injured man, and by this charitable act she becomes mixed up in what may well be a murder. A series of incidents, all connected to a handsome, arrogant American, throw Maisie's life into a dangerous spin. With one serious misjudgement, Maisie risks losing everything she holds dear.
Alastair Cunningham wakes up in hospital with almost total amnesia. But he knows that something terrible happened in his past, something that haunts him still. A young family friend, Clemence, is called in to help rekindle his memory. Retreating with Alastair to his remote cottage, Clemence finds a peculiar manuscript hidden away from prying eyes. Reading the prologue, she discovers a murder by someone very much like a young Alastair. The victim? Clemence's grandmother, Sophie. Could this kindly old man truly be a killer? Clemence becomes determined to find out what happened all those years ago, even if she must risk everything to do so.
One magical winter's night in Venice, Didi fell in love. But it ended -- and he left without even saying goodbye. Now, thirteen years on, Shay Mason is back. Didi won't let the past unsettle her present: as manager of one of the most stunning hotels in the Cotswolds, she's happy at last and soon to be married. Anyway, Shay isn't staying. He's made a promise to his wayward father, that's all. He's going to keep it. And then he'll be gone. But Shay's return stirs up long-forgotten emotions in idyllic Elliscombe, and the scandal that led him to leave raises its head once again. The time has come for buried secrets to come to light.
