The bestselling author of The Asti Spumanti Code offers a globe-hopping spoof of contemporary fiction's most famous detectives.Cuff College of Transgression and Pathology, Oxford, is the Alma Mater of the world's most famous fictional detectives. But when a body is discovered in the Cuff College library, the police are baffled. The only clues to the crime are the enormous spear sticking out of the victim's chest, and the price tag from an IKEA duvet. It lo...

Warwick, 1468. One drowsy summer afternoon, Sir Thomas Malory – politician, courtier, outlaw, renowned author of Le Morte D'Arthur – is seized from his garden and dragged to Newgate Prison for reasons unknown. Shivering in his foul-smelling, filthy old cell, Malory mourns his misspent life as he awaits the execution bell. But when the locking bar lifts, he is greeted by a boy of about 12 winters: the gaoler's son. Giddy with relief, Malory seizes the opportunity to recount his deeds to an ...

In the spring of 1666 everyone's first reaction to a sudden death at the palace of White Hall is that the plague has struck, but the killing of Thomas Chiffinch was by design, not disease. Chiffinch was holder of two influential posts - Keeper of the Closet and Keeper of the Jewels - and rival courtiers have made no secret of their wish to succeed to those offices. To Thomas Chaloner, ordered to undertake the investigation, such avarice gives a whole host of suspects an ample motive for mu...

**From the author of *Caligula (***an engrossing new spin on a well-known tale - The Times) comes a new standalone novel in the Damned Emperors series: Commodus.Rome is enjoying a period of stability and prosperity. The Empire's borders are growing, and there are two sons in the imperial succession for the first time in Rome's history. But all is not as it appears. Cracks are beginning to show. Two decades of war have taken their ...

Journey deep into the Scottish Highlands in the first memoir by #1 New York Times bestselling author and award-winning star of Outlander, Sam Heughan—exploring his life and reflecting on the waypoints that define him"I had to believe, because frankly, I had come so far there could be no turning back."In this intimate journey of self-discovery, Sam sets out along Scotland's rugged ninety-six-mile West Highland Way to map out the mo...

Women the world over are brought up to hope, even expect, to find the man of their dreams and live happily ever after. When Stephanie Wood meets a former architect turned farmer she embarks on an exhilarating romance with him. He seems compassionate, loving, truthful. They talk about the future. She falls in love. She also becomes increasingly beset by anxiety at his frequent cancellations, no-shows and bizarre excuses. She starts to wonder, who is this man?When she ends the relatio...

"The Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel . . . writes in machine gun fashion . . . reminiscent of the work of Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyenne." — The Irish TimesIn Green Hell, Bruen's dark angel of a protagonist has hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, t...

Set in Dundee, this fast-paced crime novel is the first to feature Polish Detective Sergeant Dania Gorska.Volatile times in the city of discovery . . .DS Dania Gorska is a stranger in a foreign land. Born in Poland and transferred from London to Dundee's specialist crime division, she is called upon to investigate a series of grotesque killings where the victims are first brutally murdered and then displayed in a bizarre manner. Although seemingly unrelated...

Winner of the Sunday Times short story prizeShortlisted for the Edge Hill short story prizeA kiss that just won't happen. A disco at the end of the world. A teenage goth on a terror mission. And OAP kiddie-snatchers, and scouse real-ale enthusiasts, and occult weirdness in the backwoods...Dark Lies the Island is a collection of unpredictable stories about love and cruelty, crimes, desperation, and hope from the man...

This superb annual anthology of the year’s most outstanding short crime fiction published in the UK is now well into its second decade. Jakubowski has succeeded, once again, in unearthing the best short crime stories of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish authors (along with a handful of US writers living in the UK, and some expatriate Brits). With this collection he showcases the impressive breadth of British crime writing, from cosy tales of detection to noir mayhem and psychological susp...

Comedian Tony Martin has strip-mined his often unremarkable life to tell sixteen small tales fraught with laughter and detail. Choosing to ignore his many dubious achievements in the world of Australian show business (Martin/Molloy, The Late Show, a short-lived but torrid affair with Sharon on Kath & Kim), New Zealand-born Martin instead recalls dozens of tiny life-changing moments that, frankly, could have happened to anybody.In damning personal testimony spannin...

Comedian Tony Martin's genius for unearthing the eccentric in seemingly ordinary people is laid bare in this hilarious new collection of tales from his tumultuous life outside show business.Spanning four decades, two nations, and a number of embarrassing medical procedures and ancient family disputes, Martin's stories are light on the epic, and unsparing in the detail. Be amused and appalled as Tony discovers his parents are censoring bare breasts in the National Geographic, attemp...