All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

We could tell you about the bodies. We could tell you their names, where they were found, the states they were in. We could tell you about the suspects, too, the evidence, the investigators; join a few dots, even throw you a motive. But what would be the point? After all, you know these people. You went to school with them. We all did. So if you really knew them then, you’ll already have all the answers....

Back when they were students, Simon and his friend, Ray, had dreams to become rock stars. Fifteen years later their mid-30s are bearing down fast, and they're having to accept a less glamorous life. Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody finds their own way of coping. But for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.

Gavin is creating a unique 'holiday experience’ - every facility any tourist who hates going abroad will ever want will all be available on a converted North Sea oil rig. To test the facilities he's hosting a reunion for his old school friends. He is so busy showing off that he doesn't notice that another group have invited themselves along - a collection of terrorist mercenaries who are occasionally of more danger to themselves than to the public.

The murder of a media moghul in his country mansion appears to be the result of him disturbing a gang of would-be thieves. The robbers are swiftly caught, but when they are unexpectedly moved to a different prison they escape. Back in Edinburgh, a young solicitor reveals to the press that one of the subjects had left a letter with her some time before the break-in which proves his innocence.

The crew of an oceanic research vessel goes missing in the Pacific along with their mini submarine. An evangelical media star holds a rally next door to a cinematic convention in LA. The cops know there's going to be trouble, but what they didn't foresee was the presence of a Glaswegian photographer with an indecipherable accent and a strong dislike of hypocrisy or of a terrorist who seems to have access to plutonium as well as Semtex.

In Glasgow, aspiring actress Jasmine Sharp is reluctantly - and incompetently - earning a crust working for her Uncle Jim's private investigation business. When Jim goes missing, Jasmine has to take on the investigator mantle for real. Soon she stumbles into a web of corruption and decades-hidden secrets that could tear apart an entire police force - if she can stay alive long enough to tell the tale...

Would it be your ultimate fantasy to enter a video game? A realm where you can look like a hero or a goddess, fly space-ships, slay dragons, a realm where there are no consequences and no responsibilities. Or would it be your worst nightmare? Stuck in an endless state of war and chaos where not even death can offer an escape…This is where you find out. This is Bedlam.

Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it. Except this stiff happens to be a Ponsonby, scion of a venerable Edinburgh medical clan, and the manner of his death speaks of unspeakable things. Why is the body displayed like a slice of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged? And if it's not the corpse, what is that awful smell?

Million-copy-selling Chris Brookmyre takes his fiction further than ever before in this wildly inventive and sharply-plotted novel set in the unforgiving emptiness of space. "This is as close to a city without crime as mankind has ever seen." Ciudad de Cielo is the 'city in the sky', a space station where hundreds of scientists and engineers work in earth's orbit, building the colony ship that will one day take humanity to the stars. When a mutilated body is found on the CdC, the eyes of the world are watching.

Famous, beautiful, and talented, Heike Gunn has the world at her feet. Then one day she simply vanishes. Jack Parlabane has lost everything. A call from an old friend offers a chance for redemption--but only if he can find out what happened to Heike. From Berlin to Barcelona, from the streets of Milan to remote Scottish islands, Parlabane must find out what happened before it's too late, all while the walls are closing in...

He’s the Man With No Name and the owner of No Alibis, a mystery bookshop in Belfast. But when a detective agency next door goes bust, the agency’s clients start calling into his shop asking him to solve their cases. It’s not as if there’s any danger involved. It’s an easy way to sell books to his gullible customers and Alison, the beautiful girl in the jewellery shop across the road, will surely be impressed. Except she’s not – because she can see the bigger picture.

Gary is a sweet and decent man. Only two things would improve his life - having children with his gorgeous wife, Pauline, and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely. Pauline is wondering how she ended up living in an ugly little house, driving a second-hand car and making a living dressing up as Tinker Bell. She's planning to leave Gary for a self-made carpet millionaire. Findlay, the Carpet King of Scotland, wants to trade in his obese wife for a younger model.

It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Three-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he's only the first. There's a serial killer stalking the Granite City, and the local media are baying for blood. Soon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die.

When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic. 

Every Winter, the human population hibernates. During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness and devoid of human activity. Well, not quite. Your name is Charlie Worthing, and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense - nothing more than a quirky artefact born of the sleeping mind. When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling.