Showing results by publisher "Zaffre" in Crime Fiction

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of legendary horror author Vincent Taylor, famous not only for his novels, but for being the prime suspect in the brutal slaying of his siblings. On the brink of financial ruin, Olivia reluctantly agrees to ghostwrite her father's last book, not realising that she will be forced to reckon with the ghosts that live at the centre of her family. Because after fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk. But is he ready to tell the truth?

For some people, trouble just finds them. Thirty years ago, Vincent King became a killer. Now, he's been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California. Not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend and sister of the girl he killed. Duchess Radley, Star's 13-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin - and to her deeply troubled mother.

As Christmas comes to the west cost of Iceland, a corpse is found in a fish farming pond. Detective Hildur Rúnarsdóttir and trainee Jakob Johanson barely have time to start their investigation before another body is discovered. And soon a third. While investigating the case, Hildur's lost sister weighs heavy on her mind. Meanwhile, Jakob travels to Finland for the hearing of his fraught custody battle, that leaves him facing dire consequences. As the number of deaths continues to grow, Hildur and Jakob are desperate to catch the killer before they strike again.

Saffy Huntley-Oliver is beautiful, charming, rich, and in her spare time she's a serial killer. For the past fifteen years she's been hunting down and killing bad men: rapists, murderers, domestic abusers. As a hobby, it's not as Instagrammable as baking, but at least it's better for your thighs. The problem is, that it's hard to sustain a healthy, balanced heterosexual relationship when you're expecting to have to kill your boyfriend at any moment. She's lost her faith in mankind. That's why she's decided to look for a good man instead, preferably one who shares her interests.

Queen Elizabeth II is having a royal nightmare. A referendum divides the nation, a tumultuous election grips the United States - and the body of a staff member is found dead beside Buckingham Palace swimming pool. Is it a tragic accident, as the police think? Or is something more sinister going on? As Her Majesty looks for answers, her trusted assistant, Rozie, is on the trail of a treasured painting that once hung outside the queen's bedroom.

When a group of friends rent a converted farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales, they have little idea that this one weekend may change the course of their lives forever. While out on a walk, a storm descends and the friends take shelter in the mouth of an old lead mine. Inside, they discover a backpack filled with more money than they've ever seen. Of course, they agree, they will hand the money to the police at the first opportunity. But as the storm continues and time passes, some of the party begin to think again.

Three glass cabinets appear in London's Trafalgar Square containing a gruesome art installation: the floating corpses of three homeless men. Shock turns to horror when it becomes clear that the bodies are real. The cabinets are traced to @nonymous—an underground artist shrouded in mystery who makes a chilling promise: more will follow. Eighteen years ago, Detective Inspector Grace Archer escaped a notorious serial killer. Now, she and her caustic DS, Harry Quinn, must hunt down another.

An alarm sounds in in the middle of the night for a burglary in progress at a winter-closed campsite in Bredäng, outside Stockholm. The nearest police car answers the call. There is a light in one of the farthest caravans and when the officers open the door they are greeted by a horrific sight. Floors, walls and furniture are completely covered in blood. A man has been killed with an axe and brutally dismembered. On the floor of one of the rooms lies a young man sleeping with a severed arm as a pillow.

Hildur Rúnarsdottir is the only police detective in the isolated Westfjords of Iceland, desperately trying to forget her traumatic past by burying herself in her cases. Once Jakob Johanson, a Finnish police trainee with a knitting hobby, begins to work alongside Hildur to escape his own complicated life, it becomes clear that neither can keep their pasts away for long. But when a local man is found with his throat slit, underneath an avalanche that has buried much of the evidence, Hildur and Jakob must set their own problems aside and unravel the dark secrets and a killer that the fjords hide.

Thirteen-year-old Ava Bonney is unlike other children. Exceptionally bright, she has an obsessive interest in the rate at which dead animals decompose. The motorway she lives by regularly offers up roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava likes nothing better than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den so she can study it. But one day when she arrives she stumbles across the body of fellow pupil, Mickey Grant. DI Seth Delahaye is given the case, one of the most challenging of his career.

Detective Hildur Rúnarsdottir and her trainee Jakob are plagued by their own demons while working on the chilly west coast of Iceland: Hildur by the disappearance of her younger sisters twenty-five years ago and Jakob by a custody battle that has left him unable to see his son. When a local politician is found shot dead on a ski trail, the two must put aside their personal problems to investigate the murder. While initially thought to be a crime of passion, there are much darker secrets hiding beneath the surface. Hildur and Jakob soon realise that even the dead can't stay buried forever.

Emma was taught ten rules of survival as a child by her Doomsday-fearing father. Rules that have helped throughout her life, especially when trapped in a marriage to a controlling man who she suspects of having an affair. When Emma, her husband Logan and the 'other woman' walk into the woods, only two will survive. But it won't be the two you think. Not everything is as it seems.

Detective Jack leads Scotland Yard's fledgling art fraud unit, its survival hinging on exposing a suspected forgery - a multimillion-dollar Basquiat. When his informant, gallerist Ester Langton, is brutally murdered, Jack's hunt spirals into obsession. Clues point to Adam Border, a reclusive genius hiding in a decayed Sicilian villa haunted by Mafia ties and violent secrets. As Jack abandons family and duty to pursue him, he's drawn into a world where brilliance and madness collide, masterpieces mask psychosis, and death stalks every shadow.

Andy and Laura are good parents. They tell their son, Connor, that he can go out with friends to celebrate completing his exams, but he must be home by midnight. When Connor misses his curfew, it sets off a series of events that will change the lives of five families forever. Because five teenagers went into the woods that night, but only four came out. And telling the truth might mean losing everything.

Joe Lynch is just an ordinary happily-married man - until one split-second decision throws his life into crisis. When Joe sees his wife having a confrontation with family friend Ben, it's the first hint that she's been lying to him - about everything. And when he steps in to protect her, a harmless shove knocks Ben to the ground. And he's not moving... Gripping, unputdownable and packed with twists and turns from the first page to the very last, this stunning psychological thriller will make you question: can we ever really trust the ones we love . . .

Three years ago, Saga Bauer received a postcard with a threatening text about a gun with nine white bullets - one of which is waiting for Detective Joona Linna. But time passed and the threat faded. Until now....

An anonymous letter arrives at the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary containing a challenge for the team of lexicographers working there. It's clear that's it's not the usual run-of-the-mill, eccentric enquiry. The letter hints at secrets, lies and a year. 2010. For Martha Thornhill, the new senior editor, that year can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister Charlie went missing.

The most anticipated spy thriller of 2020, from the Sunday Times best-selling author of Corpus. Autumn 1941. The war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed. In Cambridge, professor Tom Wilde is approached by an American intelligence officer who claims to know of such a weapon - one so secret even Hitler himself isn't aware of its existence. If Wilde can smuggle the package out of Germany, the Third Reich will surely fall.

Private Detective Julia Stark has been hired by famous actress Bianca Salo, who is convinced that her dead fiancé is stalking her. Julia accompanies Bianca to the rehearsals, to watch over her but also to survey the people around her as the stalker seems to move about freely inside the theater. Julia asks her ex-husband Sid to investigate the peculiarities surrounding Bianca's fiancé's death.

Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison has elbowed her way into the Area Major Incident Pool, or AMIP, an elite team investigating non-domestic murders. With her new position, she hopes things will change: the rampant sexism, the snide remarks, the undermining. Then she gets her first assignment: a five-year-old cold case of a missing teenager no one else has any interest in investigating, and an assumed suicide Tennison suspects is, in fact, murder. But as Tennison gathers the crucial evidence to secure arrests, her new colleagues watch like vultures circling prey.