One Last Dram Before Midnight

As the Second World War nears its end, a man is stabbed to death on the shoreline of Kinloch, in the shadow of the great warships in the harbour. Many years later the postman on Gairsay, a tiny island off the coast of Kintyre, discovers that the Bremner family are missing from their farm. When DCI Daley comes into possession of a journal written by his wartime predecessor in Kinloch, Inspector William Urquhart, he soon realises that the Isle of Gairsay has many secrets.

It's December, and the Shannon family are returning home to their clifftop mansion. However, a century ago Archibald Shannon stole the land upon which he built their home, and his descendants have been cursed ever since. When heavy snow cuts off Kintyre, DCI Jim Daley and DS Brian Scott are assigned to protect their illustrious visitors. As an ancient society emerges from the blizzards, ghosts of the past come to haunt the Shannons. As the curse decrees, death is coming. But for whom, and from what?

DCI Jim Daley is sent from the city to investigate a murder after the body of a woman is washed up on an idyllic beach on the West Coast of Scotland. Far away from urban resources, he finds himself a stranger in a close-knit community. Love, betrayal, fear and death stalk the small town, as Daley investigates a case that becomes more deadly than he could possibly imagine, in this compelling Scottish crime novel infused with intrigue and dark humour.

Detective Chief Inspector Ryan retreats to Holy Island seeking sanctuary when he is forced to take sabbatical leave from his duties as a homicide detective. A few days before Christmas, his peace is shattered, and he is thrust back into the murky world of murder when a young woman is found dead amongst the ancient ruins of the nearby priory. When former local girl Dr. Anna Taylor arrives back on the island as a police consultant, old memories swim to the surface, making her confront her difficult past.

One psychopath. One killer. The Stabber. Six victims, all wife beaters. Each stabbed to death through their left eye. Six victims, all wife beaters. Each stabbed to death through their left eye. The cobbled lanes and backstreets of St Andrews provide the setting for these brutal killings.

Husband and wife Niamh and Ruairidh Macfarlane co-own Ranish Tweed: a Hebridean company that weaves its own special variety of Harris cloth, which has become a sought-after brand in the world of high fashion. But when Niamh learns of Ruairidh's affair with Russian designer Irina Vetrov, then witnesses the pair killed by a car bomb in Paris, her life is left in ruins. Along with her husband's remains, she returns home to the Isle of Lewis bereft.

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.

Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel got caught fitting up Jack Wallace - that's why they demoted her and quashed his sentence. Now he's back on the streets, and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good. The Powers That Be won't listen to her, not after what happened last time. According to them, she's got more than enough ongoing cases to keep her busy.

What happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher at the École Nationale d’Administration, who trained some of France’s best and brightest as future prime ministers and presidents, vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. This ten-year-old mystery inspires a bet—one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse, France, instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose.

Undercover ops are always dangerous, but DC Constance Fairchild never expected things to go this wrong. Returning to their base of operations, an anonymous office in a shabby neighbourhood, she finds the bloodied body of her boss and friend, DI Pete Copperthwaite. He's been executed - a single shot to the head. In the aftermath, it seems someone in the Met is determined to make sure that blame for the wrecked operation falls squarely on Con's shoulders. She is cut loose and cast out, angry and alone with her grief....

When three young women are discovered strangled and mutilated in a Glasgow park, it is up to DCI Lorimer to find their killer. Frustrated by a lack of progress in the investigation, Lorimer is forced to enlist the services of Dr Solomon Brightman, psychologist and criminal profiler. Together they form an uneasy alliance. But when a homeless man is brought in for questioning, the investigation takes a bizarre turn.

Jan Reyna is a murder squad detective, British by adoption and choice, Faroese by birth and history. Called back to the remote Danish Faroe Islands when his father suffers a paralysing stroke, Reyna is forced to reexamine his decades-long rejection of the past and of his father in particular. But in this now-foreign country, whose language and customs he no longer understands, Reyna is also drawn into a rare Faroese murder case.

Five years ago, 14-year-old Max Wheeler disappeared from Priest's Island, an isolated but bleakly beautiful place on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. In the close-knit local community, there are no secrets - except what happened to Max. None of the police or private investigations since have shed any light on what happened the night he went missing, presumed dead. But there is one man who is yet to take on the case: The Sea Detective.

A burned corpse is a disturbing mystery for Beijing detective Li Yan until he enlists forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell. Having abandoned a broken life in Chicago for her work, she's as determined as Li to ask difficult questions about the man's death. But some questions have answers they'd rather not hear - facts that others are desperate to conceal. The Firemaker is the first in the acclaimed China series from Peter May, author of Runaway, Entry Island and the internationally best-selling Lewis Trilogy.

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.