In the summer of 1909, an unassuming English bobby crossed paths with Russian royalty. Now, a century later, the secret entrusted to him is about to be revealed.
 
Richard Eusden is on his way to work in London one unremarkable winter morning when he is intercepted by his ex-wife, who asks him to ferry an old attaché case to their friend Marty Hewitson in Brussels. Richard expects to be back in London within the day, but in Belgium, Marty is nowhere to be found. Instead, Richard comes face-to-face with a ruthless kidnapper and his outrageous demand: the attaché case in exchange for Marty's life.

The desperate attempt to save his old friend sets Richard off on a race across Germany and then north, first to Copenhagen, then to Helsinki. Whatever the contents of the case, they link a Danish tycoon and his family's dark secret to the deaths of several innocent people. And now that secret is beginning to tug at the threads of a larger mystery—one involving the fate of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, last of the Romanovs.

Stephen Swan is amazed when he hears that the uncle he thought had been killed in the Blitz is actually alive. For nearly four decades, Eldritch Swan has been locked away in an Irish prison and now, at last, has been released. Shocked and suspicious, Stephen listens to the old man's story and is caught up in a tale that begins at the dawn of World War II, when Eldritch worked for an Antwerp diamond dealer with a trove of Picassos—highly valuable paintings that later disappeared. Stephen, who finds his uncle by turns devious, charming, and brazen, then meets Rachel Banner, a beautiful American who may have inherited the Picassos—and is determined to see justice done for her family. But in this tale of revenge and redemption, justice is the ultimate illusion. Eldritch, Stephen, and the woman Stephen has fallen in love with soon find themselves fighting for their lives—against sinister forces still guarding a secret that must never be revealed.

A centuries old mystery is about to unravel…

When Tim Harding is sent by his employer to buy an antique ring at auction, little does he realize that he is about to restart a chain of events which began many years before. The ring was first lost in a sinking off the isles of Scilly in 1707. When centuries later it is rediscovered in 1999, once again its appearance coincides with a terrible tragedy.

But before it can be sold, the ring is stolen and looks set to disappear forever. Until a shocking murder draws attention to a sequence of events designed to conceal crucial facts about its origins. At the heart of the mystery is a young woman whom Harding is certain he recognizes, even though they have never met before. As he goes in search of her identity, his life begins to unravel around him. Somewhere, a perilous truth about the ring awaits him, coupled with a dreadful realization: those who uncover the truth are not allowed to live…


From the Paperback edition.

On a bright autumn afternoon in Truro, the Napier family celebrates one couple's golden wedding anniversary and another's marriage. But for one member of the clan, the day turns dark. Chris Napier, prodigal son, suddenly spots the ragged specter of a former friend, Nicky Lanyon—a man whose own family was ruined by the same twist of fate with which the Napiers were blessed. And the next morning, Chris is horrified to find Nicky dead, hanging from a tree where the boys once played….

For Chris, the suicide opens a floodgate of doubt and suspicion. How did his family's wealth slip out of the hands of a great-uncle, brutally murdered before he could change his will? Were the men convicted of the crime truly guilty? And who is the mysterious, seductive woman who claims to know the Napiers' darkest secrets? As the crimes of two families are exposed, a series of violent acts shadows him and suddenly Chris knows he's in uncharted waters…until a killer drops one last disguise—for the ultimate act of revenge.

Richard Eusden is on his way to work in London one unremarkable winter morning when he is intercepted by his ex-wife, Gemma. She has sad news of his old friend, her other ex-husband, Marty Hewitson. Marty is dying, but needs a favour done for him - now, today, at once. Eusden reluctantly agrees and sets off on what should be a simple errand

At a lush villa on the sun-soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What's more, Martin is being offered a job—to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family.

Martin is intrigued by Strafford's story, by the man's overwhelming love for a beautiful suffragette, by her inexplicable rejection of him and their love affair's political repercussions. But as he retraces Strafford's ruination, Martin realizes that Strafford did not fall by chance; he was pushed. Suddenly Martin, who has not cared for many people in his life, cares desperately—about a man's mysterious death and a family's terrible secret, about a love beyond reckoning and betrayal beyond imagining. Most of all Martin cares because the story he is uncovering is not yet over—and among the men and women still caught in its web, Martin himself may be the most vulnerable of all….

In the spellbinding new mystery by the master of “the clever twist,” a group of ex-RAF comrades journey to a Scottish castle for a reunion. But by the time they reach their destination, two of them are dead.

Harry Barnett is leading a contented life in Vancouver with his wife and daughter when he is brought back to England by the death of his mother. He intends to spend just a few days sorting out her affairs when a chance meeting he will regret for the rest of his life makes him change his plans. Two old acquaintances from his National Service days track Harry down to his mother's house — the last address they had for him. A lavish reunion has been organized to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their RAF days. Harry decides to go.

During the war, Harry and his fellow RAF conscripts spent three months in a Scottish castle where they acted as guinea pigs in a psychological experiment. The reunion is to take place in the same castle. It will be a chance to see friends, settle old scores and lay a few ghosts to rest.

The party begins on the train up to Aberdeen, until the apparent suicide of one of their number shatters the holiday atmosphere. Their arrival in Scotland seems under a cloud, and when another comrade dies soon after their arrival, Harry is gripped by a sense of foreboding. As well, the recollections of the old comrades of their time in the castle are frighteningly different, and unexplained events from 1955 still haunt them. As Harry tries to solve the mystery of what really happened fifty years ago, he uncovers an extraordinary secret that convinces him he will never leave the castle alive.

Six months after her husband's sudden death, Leonora Galloway sets off for a holiday in Paris with her daughter Penelope.  At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin...

Their journey starts with an unscheduled stop at the imposing Thiepval Memorial to the dead of the Battle of the Somme near Amiens.  Amongst those commemorated is Leonora's father.  The date of his death is recorded and 30th  April, 1916.  But Leonora wasn't born until 14th March 1917.

Penelope at once supposes a simple wartime illegitimacy as the clue to her mother's unhappy childhood and the family's sundered connections with her aristocratic heritage, about which she has always known so little.

But nothing could have prepared her, or the reader, for the extraordinary story that is about to unfold.


From the Paperback edition.

Another classic mystery from the “master of the clever twist.”

On a summer's day in 1981, a two-year-old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor's van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson.

One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of “Junius,” the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. The two-year-old, Tamsin Hall, was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson, the nanny, wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide.

In the spring of 2004, retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed “Junius” reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber's denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit — and hence the long-concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Thriller from one of the UK's most acclaimed writers. A group of ex-comrades reunite in a Scottish castle where they were guinea pigs in a psychological experiment many years before. When one of them uncovers an extraordinary secret, he become

Once Toby Flood played a Bond-like hero in a Hollywood film. Now he's serving a sentence in a crippled traveling production of a newly unearthed Joe Orton play—a play that might have saved Toby's career if only someone enjoyed watching it. Painfully, the show's swan song is coming in Brighton, where Toby's wife happens to be living happily with another man in anticipation of a divorce decree. Then, almost as if he were scripted, a stranger enters the scene....

A stalker is frightening Toby's wife, Jenny, who believes the man is probably one of her estranged husband's fans. When Jenny asks Toby to confront the man, Toby leaps at the chance. Soon, he's moonlighting from the stage lights and heroically pursuing... something. The truth is, the more Toby finds out about Jenny's stalker, the more questions he has about a twisting tale of unexplained deaths, interlocking lives, and the violent, greedy adventures of none other than Jenny's wealthy fiancé—a man who might make the perfect villain, if only the hero lives long enough to prove it....

In her seaside cottage, Beatrix Abberley bravely confronts an intruder moments before her life is brutally taken. The crime stuns the elderly spinster's family—especially Beatrix's niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn the loss of her beloved aunt and little patience when police quickly arrest a man Charlotte believes is innocent. For Charlotte, a harrowing quest for answers begins—one that will take her into the shadows of the past…and into the life and secrets of the dead woman's brother, famed poet and casualty of the Spanish Civil War, Tristram Abberley.

Now, amid shattering revelations about her family, and in the aftermath of a second savage crime, Charlotte finds herself at the center of a widening storm. And for Charlotte, something extraordinary is beginning to happen. As fifty years of secrets begin to unravel, shy, cautious Charlotte is coming alive in the shadow of a mystery—uncovering a shocking tale of wartime greed and treachery, and a vendetta of violence seemingly without end….

It is a golden evening of high summer.  Walking a ridge on the Welsh Borders, Robin Timariot meets by chance an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place.  They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable.  A few days later Timariot learns from the newpapers that, just hours after their meeting, the woman was raped and murdered.

A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems.  Fascinated by the dead woman's memory, he is sucked into the complex motives and tortured relationships of her family and friends, searching against his better judgemnt for the secret of what really happened the day she died.

The closer he gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be.  And far too late he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to be allowed to live.


From the Paperback edition.

Harry Barnett lives the life of an Englishman on permanent vacation in Greece, house-sitting for a powerful friend and hiding from a past disgrace. That is, until a guest at the villa disappears on a walking tour, and Harry is the number one suspect. While a Greek detective tries to trap him, and the British tabloids pillory him at home, Harry's conscience is his worst enemy of all. What happened to young, beautiful Heather Mallender? Who took her—and why didn't Harry realize that something was amiss?

Suddenly, a man steeped in failure has found a purpose, retracing the strange, twisting route that led to Heather's vanishing. But the more he learns, the less he knows. Until Harry finds himself at the heart of a dangerous puzzle whose pieces are scattered everywhere: in the realm of British politics, in the beds of adulterous lovers, in the past, the present, and most of all, amid the secrets of a killer....

Targeting the beautiful daughter of a wealthy munitions dealer in the hopes of receiving a payoff from her father, scam artists Guy Horton and Max Wingate find their plan upset when Max really falls in love. Reprint.