Item category 1: Crime

You think it will never happen to you: the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts with the words, 'I'm afraid.' Sally Lambert is also afraid, and desperate enough to consider the unthinkable. Is it really, definitely, impossible to escap...

DCI Beniamin Dinescu faces his darkest case yet in the heart of West Sussex. This British police procedural crime thriller takes readers through dark tunnels, priest holes, and labyrinths of secrets and lies, set against the backdrop of Chichester and the Sussex Downs.

In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town's hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any...

What happens when a serial killer forgets that he's a serial killer? When Gilbert Williams, a resident at Sunset House Care Home, claims to have once killed someone, care assistant Will Cavanagh initially dismisses his claims - he's frail and vulnerable, he can't imagine him ever killing someone ...

Thomas Caine was the CIA's deadliest killer. Then he was burned, betrayed, and left for dead. Now he survives off the grid, currently in Pattaya, Thailand. But when a feud with local criminals lands him in jail, his old CIA masters return with an offer he can't refuse. Rot in a Thai prison, or ac...

Dan Armstrong, a private investigator, lives and works in Florence and knows the world famous Ponte Vecchio well. Usually a magnet for tourists, on this occasion it is the scene of an unexplained death, and Dan finds himself involved in the case. Dan quickly discovers that the victim, an elderly ...

Tensions are high at the Three Counties Show when accusations of cheating add fuel to a longstanding feud. For Jude Gray, whose only hope was to not make a fool of herself showing her Kerry Hill sheep, farming life has never been so dramatic. When a body is found, belonging to one of the competit...

Chief Inspector Soobramania is called when three bodies are discovered in the space of 24 hours, with mutilations bearing an eerie resemblance to Jack the Ripper's victims. Initial suspicion centres on an English Duke visiting Hyderabad and his friend, a powerful Deccani noble and the angry steps...

Summoned to an unnerving, abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once loved. While teaching in Rome during the early days of her career, Scarpetta had a love affair with acclaimed astrophysicist Sal Giordano that led to a life...

Shrewsbury, 1866. Julian Lockyer is an imposing gentleman in his late fifties. Having reserved a room for the night at the Station Hotel, he asks to be called early in the morning because he has a train to catch. Repeated attempts are made to wake him but there is no response. After forcing the d...