Showing results by publisher "riverrun" in Literature & Fiction

London is in lockdown under martial law. A hospital is being urgently built by the river Thames to contain the thousands of victims of a flu-like epidemic. Construction is brought to a sudden halt when a leather holdall containing the bones of a child is unearthed from the rubble. A psychopath has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. But why are he and his handlers determined to go to such murderous lengths to hide the origins of the body?

A DI RYAN WILKINS MYSTERY A four-year-old girl goes missing in plain sight outside her nursery in Oxford, a middle-class, affluent area, her mother only a stones-throw away. Ryan Wilkins, one of the youngest ever Detective Inspectors in the Thames Valley force, dishonourably discharged three...

Ryan Wilkins grew up on a trailer park, a member of what many people would call the criminal classes. As a young Detective Inspector, he's lost none of his disgust with privileged elites - or his objectionable manners. But he notices things; they stick to his eyes. His professional partner, DI Ray Wilkins, of affluent Nigerian London heritage, is an impeccably groomed, smooth-talking graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. You wouldn't think they would get on. They don't. But when a young woman is found strangled at Barnabas Hall, they're forced to.

'Jeffs narrates these interconnected tales with warmth, intimacy and a subtle undercurrent of menace' Guardian (Audiobook of the Week) Enriched for audio with specially commissioned music based on traditional melodies, Old Songs fuses short stories, histories, lyrics and music in an enthralling...

In the first months of 2020 there was a spate of murders of Black sex workers in northern cities. One of them was Ella Bailey, last seen talking to a punter in an alley in Sheffield city centre, and although no trace of her was ever found, the punter, Michael Godley, soon confessed to all three murders. Five years later, as another sex worker is murdered in the same district, the bag Ella had been carrying with her reappears, hanging on the door handles of a café, and a local vagrant claims to have seen Ella sitting on a bench in a churchyard near the site of the murder.

Bournemouth 2008, the height of the financial crash. Don Bayliss, a timid and well-mannered accountant, vanishes after leaving his office before a scheduled meeting. His wife is both perplexed and distraught. His clothes are found discarded at the mouth of Poole Harbour. The Finder begins with the last sightings of Don on the day he went missing, hearing how he seemed in a hurry, somewhat distracted? He unearths a string of overlooked clues that lead him to face the unlikely friendships that Don had made and more.

Spain, 2020. When expat fugitive Jack Cleland watches his girlfriend die, gunned down in a pursuit involving officer Cristina Sanchez Pradell, he promises to exact his revenge by destroying the policewoman. Cristina's aunt Ana has been deaf-blind for the entirety of her adult life: the victim of a rare condition named Usher Syndrome. Ana is the centre of Cristina's world - and of Cleland's cruel plan. John Mackenzie - an ingenious yet irascible Glaswegian investigator - is seconded to aid the Spanish authorities in their manhunt.

For fans of Marian Keyes, Dolly Alderton and Holly Bourne, ALMOST LOVE is one of the most addictive and heartbreaking reads of the year 'Compulsive' Sunday Times 'Breaks another boundary' Irish Times 'A must-read' Image 'Honest and poignant' Elle 'Intelligent and compelling' Daily Mail When...

eves are designed, not made. The School trains them to be pretty The School trains them to be good. The School trains them to Always be Willing. All their lives, the eves have been waiting. Now, they are ready for the outside world. companion . . . concubine . . . or chastity Only the best will...

July 2015, Sevenoaks. 12-year-old schoolgirl Alice Johnson went missing while doing her paper round, her bag found discarded on the pavement. At 08.00, she was spotted standing in heavy rain at the side of the busy by-pass. At 11.00, she was seen talking to the driver of a black car in Tonbridge. After that, nothing. Alice was never found. Nine years later the body of another schoolgirl, Joleen Price, is pulled from a nearby lake and a local man named Vince Burns detained. Convinced that Burns is guilty in both cases, SIO Dave Armstrong calls in the Finder.

A woman walks into a tattoo parlour. But this is no ordinary woman, and this is Hackney in 2233. Jones' body is covered in tattoos but she wants to add one final inking to her gallery - a thin line of ink mixed with blood that connects her body art together, creating a unique map. As the two artists set to work, Jones tells them the story behind each tattoo. As Jones is no ordinary woman, these are no ordinary stories: each one represents a doorway to a life Jones fell into, a 'remembering'.

In a French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is murdered in a nearby house. The deaths occurred more than 70 years apart. Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo Macleod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter. Two extraordinary narratives are set in train - one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of occupied France, the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown.

Embra, winter of 1574. Queen Mary has fled Scotland, to raise an army from the French. Her son and heir, Jamie, is held under protection in Stirling Castle. John Knox is dead. The people are unmoored and lurching under the uncertain governance of this riven land. It's a deadly time for young student Will Fowler, short of stature, low of birth but mightily ambitious, to make his name.

Daniel Amat has left Spain and all that happened there behind him. Having just achieved a brilliant role in ancient languages at Oxford University and an even more advantageous engagement, the arrival of a letter - a demand - stamped 'Barcelona' comes like a cold hand from behind. He arrives back in that old labyrinthine and near-mythic city a few days before the great 1888 World's Fair, amid dread whispers of murders - the injuries reminiscent of an ancient curse and bearing signs of the genius 16th century anatomist Vesalius.