Showing results for "Snake" in Literature & Fiction

Brought to you by Penguin. READ THE TENSE TWIST-FILLED RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK FOR SPRING 2020 FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE OUTCAST ‘Superbly written, each sentence punctuated by a drumbeat of menace ... A thrillingly good read’ Elizabeth Day Family secrets can be deadly…...

When Selena travels to the remote desert town of Quartz Creek in search of her estranged Aunt Amelia, she is desperate and short of options. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, she has exactly twenty-seven dollars to her name, and her only friend in the world is her dog, Copper. On arrival, Selena learns Amelia is dead. But the inhabitants of Quartz Creek are only too happy to have a new resident. Out of money and ideas, Selena sees no harm staying in her aunt’s lovely house for a few weeks, tending to her garden and enjoying the strange, desolate beauty of the desert.

Even sleepy, picturesque coastal towns have their secrets. Welcome to Solva, where a burned-out car, a corpse, and a hauntingly precise execution greets a morning walker. DCI Evan Warlow faces a case steeped in fear and the worst of modern crimes.

‘One of my favourite epics of all time’ – SAMANTHA SHANNON ‘Breathtaking' – SAARA EL-ARIFI ‘A cunning political fantasy' – SHANNON CHAKRABORTY 'Vicious, brutal, intricate' – TASHA SURI “Death is come to take you home, death of blood and thorn and bone…” Tilde has always...

Magic is real—and it's electrified. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, two brilliant minds clash not just over electricity, but over the soul of magic itself. Nikola Tesla, a visionary wizard-scientist, dreams of a world where power flows freely for all. Thomas Edison, backed by a secretive cabal, seeks to harness arcane forces for profit and domination.

With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt’s house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind. Because in Quartz Creek, there’s a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena’s ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena’s house at night, keeping watch.

I'm no prisoner. And I'm no coward. I won't stay locked away at the clubhouse hiding from those *ssholes, The Devil Saints. So I go to a bar, away from my brothers. I need a break from all the chaos. Until drama walks right through the door. Laiken. The one who got away. Or I pushed away, I can barely remember. She's looking fine in that police uniform. I wonder if she'd let me use those cuffs on her. But we can't be together. A patched member and a cop? No. But you know what they say. The heart wants what it can't have.

Istanbul 1838. Lefevre, a French archaeologist, has arrived in Istanbul determined to uncover a lost Byzantine treasure. Yashim is hired to investigate him, but when the man turns up dead, there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. Once again, the investigator finds himself in a race against time to uncover the startling truth behind a shadowy secret society dedicated to the revival of the Byzantine Empire, caught in a deadly game deep beneath the city streets, a place where the stakes are high—and betrayal is death...

After one of the deadliest family reunions imaginable, Argrave finds himself becoming ever more entwined in the civil war engulfing the kingdom. With a steeled heart, he must plunge headfirst into this cloudy whirlpool of grudges and allegiances. His father the king remains undefeated in battle, though the rebels have come further than any before them. However the dice land, he doesn't intend to join this fight without allies.

What happens in Vegas...could kill most of the human race. When all trails lead Chris, Tanya, and their entire team to the desert gambling mecca, the stakes become the highest possible. Facing a hybrid demon werewolf, his death witch mother, undead strippers, and pregnancy cravings, Chris must rely on his team like never before if he's to have any chance at saving the race of man, not to mention a spot in preschool for his unborn kids.

This adventure transports Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson to Amarna, the rustic desert site where the two archaeologists first met, beginning the 13-year association that would take them from mayhem to murder in the Egyptian outback.

The bastard’s more royal sibling and their deranged father are struggling to tether a kingdom on the brink of civil war. Necromantic atrocities free of their long-dead creators and the order of knights meant to contain them veritably compete to prove which one can be a deadlier obstacle to Argrave’s plans. But he knows something that they don’t, something that will make him grimly move forward no matter the cost.

In a world where justice is outsourced and morality is measured in market value, OPUS watches from the shadows—an elite organization tasked with resetting those who slip through the cracks of conventional law. When Joseph Melrose, a beloved family man, is left to die on a desolate road, the evidence points not to the driver but to the enigmatic Selena Destine. Known in elite circles as the “Snake Doctor,” Selena’s surgical brilliance has saved billion-dollar lives, but her indifference to Melrose’s suffering reveals a chilling calculus: some lives simply aren’t worth stopping for.

BEAUTY IS PAIN . . . Exploring themes of ambition, authenticity and empowerment, this taut, politically charged feminist thriller delivers a scathing take-down of the wellness industry, perfect for fans of The Drop Out and Yellowface. 'A propulsive read with a healthy dose of cynicism' - The...

The Petrosyan trafficking operation is in tatters and Interpol and the NCA are working furiously to build their case. They want put the people responsible behind bars once and for all, but before the dust can even settle following their latest bust, key witnesses begin to die. Three suspicious deaths in a week has everyone scrambling. But the NCA are closing the cases faster than Detective Jamie Johansson can even look into them. Someone is killing those who can name the people pulling the strings, and the few witnesses who are still alive are running scared.

In the blink of an eye, a wiki editor’s deep and somewhat unhealthy understanding of a game becomes useful, usable knowledge when he inexplicably replaces the once-cruel royal bastard. Before he can start to push his frail body to use his deep understanding of the lore to handle the imminent apocalypse, or go off to stop an invasion, there’s a more personal task he needs to handle first. His cousin has a knife in her hand, and death in her eyes.

Picking her battles is a luxury Amber never has. Still reeling from her brutal duel with the Queen of Diamonds, Amber must win over the Assembly. The price of failure? Her own execution and the utter destruction of Emergence. Traditionalist Athanate are calling her an abomination and baying for her Blood. When those who should be her allies attack her, she must bind enemies to her cause.

November 1978. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, rubbish piles in the streets—and somewhere in West London a black woman dies in a rain-soaked gutter. Her passing would have gone unmourned but for the young woman who finds her and who believes—apparently against reason—that Annie was murdered. But whatever the truth about Annie—whether she was as mad as her neighbors claimed, whether she lived in squalor as the police said—something passed between her and Mrs. Ranelagh in the moment of death which binds this one woman to her cause for the next twenty years.

After clashing fiercely with Fellhorn's followers, Argrave has been forever altered by the desert's crucible. Awaiting him as he makes his way back to his homeland are faces from the past – friends and foes, all unprepared for his transformation. Argrave now ventures into the core of a land besieged by plague, forced to ally with his unpredictable, fervently passionate brother: Orion. Wielding strength that borders on the mythical, Orion might just hold the key to quelling the foul force spawning the unnatural pestilence.

Brought to life by the miracle of DNA cloning, a 93-foot megalodon shark has escaped captivity. With an insatiable appetite and unmatched aggression, it travels west for the Georgia coast, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Bullets and harpoons can’t penetrate it, steel nets can’t hold it, and it’s only a matter of time before the whole world finds out about it.