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?
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.
George Surridge, director of the Birmington Zoo, is a man with many worries: his marriage is collapsing; his finances are insecure; and an outbreak of disease threatens the animals in his care. As Surridge's debts mount and the pressure on him increases, he begins to dream of miracle solutions. But is he cunning enough to turn his dreams into reality - and could he commit the most devious murder in pursuit of his goals? This ingenious crime novel, with its unusual 'inverted' structure and sympathetic portrait of a man on the edge, is one of the greatest works by this highly respected author.
In the small Cotswold village of Heyford Bassett, vicar's wife Monica Noble throws a party for the village's new residents. The guests include Margaret Franklyn and her philandering husband Sean, a celebrity chef and her cartoonist beau, a retired Oxford Don with a secret, a forty-something divorcee, and the owner of a chain of gyms. A shotgun blast heralds the discovery of Margaret Franklyn's body, terrifying the community on whom, inevitably, suspicion falls. Who to blame? The husband? Monica's daughter who had been accused of stealing from the deceased? Monica swings into action with the local DI to save her daughter and solve the crime.
Currently on leave, Patrick Gillard is considering whether to carry on in his hazardous job as "adviser" to the National Crime Agency when his father, the local rector, asks for his help. A parishioner, Mrs Anne Peters, has paid him a visit, convinced that the wrong body was cremated at her late husband's recent funeral. Patrick promises to investigate with the help of his wife and working partner, Ingrid Langley. But when Mrs Peters' home is destroyed in a massive explosion, events take a sinister turn. Could there be a connection between the explosion and the death of the funeral director who organised her late husband's cremation? Patrick and Ingrid are about to uncover some disturbing facts in their search for the truth.
Want to know where to discover the perfect sunset in Fiji? How about a tropical paradise in St Lucia, or one of the world's beautiful natural wonders in the Alps? Well this is NOT the book for you. But if you want to know about meeting transvestite prostitutes in a South African prison, or being attacked for a can of tuna in the Congo, buying crack cocaine in a Venezuelan prison or being chased by dogs in a haunted house in Belize, then look no further. Ross Kemp has visited the worst places in the world, and here they are in all their horror - in a handy A to Z format.
Ivy, Dulcie, Barbara, Ann, Dorothy and Jean all had different reasons for applying for work at Carr's of Carlisle, but once they had put on their overalls and walked through the factory gates they discovered a community where they worked hard, gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Beginning in the 1940s, this is the true story of the 'Home of Biscuits', based on the vivid recollections of six of the women who helped send Carr's biscuits around the world.
Spider Shepherd's MI5 Controller, Charlie Button, has gone rogue, using government resources to get revenge on the men who killed her husband. Spider is told to betray her. Worse, he's asked to cooperate with his nemesis at MI6, Jeremy Willoughby Brown, in taking Charlie down. Meanwhile, Spider's 16 year-old-son is caught with drugs. But the drug police offer Spider a deal: go undercover, unmask a local dealer and his son will go free. Spider has no option but to cooperate. There's little time to debate because another high profile mission is about to engulf him. Along with everything else, it's down to Spider to stop the assassination of a head of state on British soil.
Previously unsuccessful businessman Paul Hagar manages to secure the most sought after quarter section in all Converse County, but hanging onto it will set him against some very ruthless adversaries.
In January 1991, eight members of the SAS regiment embarked upon a top secret mission deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they were to sever the underground communication link between Baghdad and north-west Iraq, and to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: BRAVO TWO ZERO. After their location was compromised, they were forced to escape and evade on foot to the Syrian border. In the desperate action that followed, the patrol "went ballistic". Four men were captured. Three died. Only one escaped. For the survivors, however, the worst ordeals were to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they were tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training had prepared them.
Fisher College at Cambridge lies between St John's and Trinity Colleges. Here one morning the bedmakers and gyps, clamouring for admission on the last day of term were admitted to find, lying across the path, the body of one of the College porters. The murder of the porter begins a mystery which deepens when it is found that the unpopular Dean of the college is missing. The search for the murderer is conducted in part by the police and partly by the Vice-President of Fisher College Sir Richard Cherrington, an eminent but slightly eccentric archaeologist with a penchant for amateur detection.
Glastonbury, legendary resting place of the Holy Grail, is a mysterious and haunting town. But when plump, dizzy Diane Ffitch returns home, it's with a sense of deep unease - and not only about her aristocratic family's reaction to her broken engagement and her New Age companions. Plans for a new motorway have intensified the old bitterness between the local people and the "pilgrims", so already the sacred air is soured. And, as the town becomes increasingly split by violence and death, Diane, local bookseller Juanita Carey and the writer Joe Powys must now face up to the worst of all possibilities: the existence of an anti-Grail - the dark chalice
In the sapping summer heat of 1665 there is little celebration in plague-ridden London of the naval victory at the Battle of Lowestoft. At Chelsea, with fine mansions leased to minor members of the Court, there are more immediate concerns: the government has commandeered the theological college to house Dutch prisoners of war. Moreover, a vicious strangler is stalking the neighbourhood. Thomas Chaloner is sent to investigate the murder of the first victim, an inmate of a private sanatorium known as Gorges. He realises, though, that Gorges has stronger links to the prison than just proximity, and that the influx of strangers offers plenty of camouflage for a killer.
In 1960s Scotland, the farming industry is on the brink of huge changes, becoming more mechanised and less dependent on manpower, but at Lochandee, it's a time of hope and promise. Ross and Rachel Maxwell are proud of their expanding family. Daughter Bridie and her Nick are happily married and working hard to build up their own farm, and eldest son Conan's transport business is prospering. Youngest son, Ewan, is showing a keen interest in farming, but there is a cloud on the horizon - the young woman Gerda Fritz-Allan, who seems to have caught his eye. Beautiful, ambitious and utterly selfish, she has the power to wreak untold damage, changing the lives of the Maxwell family for ever.
When a woman confesses to Father Will, one of the monk-constables at Maddleskirk Abbey, that she has committed murder, he can do nothing but absolve her from her sin. The Seal of Confession is absolute. When a body is found in the nearby woodland, his moral dilemma grows. Detective Chief Superintendent "Nabber" Napier and his team have a murder to solve, but monks sworn by oath to silence are hardly the ideal candidates for questioning... When the murder weapon is discovered, and the detectives learn of the violent past of one of the Abbey's monks, the race is on to find the culprit before anybody else gets hurt. Questions need to be answered and confessions must be made.
The market town of Everham is full of rumours and counter-rumours. Dr Leigh McDowall, medical registrar, is taking a refresher course in obstetrics. He is immediately attracted to Dr Shelagh Hammond, obstetric surgeon, but she is deeply involved with another doctor, Paul Sykes and is caring for her terminally ill mother, who has a secret of her own. Meanwhile Reverend Derek Bolt is troubled by the unwanted attentions of a female parishioner and he confides in headmaster Jeremy North. Set against the back-drop of the Profumo affair that rocked Britain, Everham's own politics reach a dramatic scandalous crescendo.
Lord Thurlby can only ever recall previous visits of Lavinia Muir, his mother's god-daughter, with a shudder. So it is with undisguised horror that he hears she is to come and stay again. Her arrival on the common stage accompanied by the flirtatious Isobel Macclesfield does nothing to allay his fears. When he learns that Lavinia has become entangled with the rakish Lord Riseholm, his reservations appear to be justified. With the passing of time, perceptions begin to change and only with the arrival of Lord Riseholm himself can matters begin to be resolved once and for all.
DCC Bob Skinner has a failed marriage on his hands and a death on his conscience, but little time to deal with either as he faces the biggest challenge of his career within the secret corridors where dark power is wielded. But this isn't his only issue: he's also trying to protect his daughter from a stalker; a bookmaker has taken one gamble too many and paid his debt in a gruesome fashion; and a casual call to the Chief Constable sets him on a personal crusade, which quickly points to a bigamist at work. Or is it worse? Four crimes, four crises: can Skinner and his people solve them?
Life is difficult enough for Sam Holt with the neighbouring ranches warring over turf, authority and complicated love triangles, when the Paiutes decide to get involved too.
For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students, and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon, only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe. The police assume that a student prank got out of hand, but the resourceful Persephone girls suspect foul play, and take the investigation into their own hands. Soon they uncover the tangled secrets that led to the bursar's death - and the clues that point to a fellow student.
