Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Psychological

Brenton Brown is 16 years old. A mixed race youth, Brenton has lived in a children's home all his life. Being reunited with his mother is the best thing that has happened to Brenton. But a strange series of events soon push him to the edge...

A gripping gothic page-turner told in a startlingly different and wonderfully captivating voice. In a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles.

Marianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing. Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of a small village, she clings to the fragmented memories of her mother’s love; the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, and the songs and stories of her childhood. As time passes, Marianne struggles to adjust, fixated on her mother’s disappearance and the secrets she’s sure her father is keeping from her.

Fat Boy McMaster is a hopeless heavyweight boxer, who has somehow managed to become the champion of Ireland. His devious manager has set up a St Patrick's Day fight in New York against Mike Tyson, and he wants journalist Dan Starkey to write about it. Once in New York, however, McMaster's wife is kidnapped, the Champ is chased all over town by gunmen, and there's the Big Fight to consider too...

Ruth Hartland is the director of a trauma unit, a psychotherapist with years of experience, wise and respected by her peers. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never 'fit in', disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him but feels she is living a kind of half life, waiting for him to return.

For five years, the remains of a young woman lie undisturbed in dark woodland on the outskirts of Birmingham. The gold necklace round her neck reads ‘Molly’. Now, watching the post-mortem, forensic psychologist Kate Hanson knows in a heartbeat that she’s looking at Molly Elizabeth James. She was only eighteen when she disappeared from a shopping centre in Solihull. DCI Bernie Watts’ team unearths more long-buried bodies in the area. Kate realises they’re dealing with a serial killer. One who abducted young women, torturing them for days before finally killing them.

It’s 1:23 in the morning when Kate gets the call. News at this time is never good, but this call is one of the worst. A body has been found in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Birmingham. It’s badly decomposed, but forensic psychologist Kate Hanson is sure she knows who it is. Nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Williams disappeared a year ago. She was a good student who simply vanished off the face of the earth.

In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.

1780. Wild and windswept Yorkshire. Sixteen-year-old Heathcliff runs from the only home he has ever known in a squall of pain and fury. Blown into an inn on the edge of the moors, sodden, rejected, and hankering for revenge, he steals a horse and sets out for Liverpool in search of answers. The town he arrives in is a brutal new world, brimming in equal measure with risk and opportunity. Here, Heathcliff might map his future, make his fortune, forge a role for himself. But at what cost…

Are we more like a coffee bean, a carrot or an egg? What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life? Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?

Venice is a beautiful and mysterious city. Lucifer's Shadow combines two stories in the city, set centuries apart from one another, and both involving the shady but seductive characters of Venice. The stories involve an anonymous manuscript for a violin concerto, and run parallel, interweaving to lead listeners into a stunning double twisted ending.

Laura Hamley has everything: a loving and successful husband, two children and an expensive home. But then she receives a phone call from the mother of a girl Laura bullied at school. As Laura is drawn into the past, she is forced to face the consequences of her cruelty. But, as her secrets are revealed, so too is an even more devastating truth....

Callie's life is spent caring for others – for Frey, her client, and for Noah, her brother. When a tragic car accident shatters her family, she's left alone with her mother Vanessa. Vanessa's favourite child was Noah; Callie's favourite parent was her dad. Now they're stuck with each other - the leftovers of their family - and they'll have to confront the ways they've been hurt, and the ways they've passed that hurt on to others.

New Year’s Day. A dog walker is enjoying the early morning calm in Birmingham’s Woodgate Country Park. At first he thinks it’s some old rubbish. His dogs are always digging up trouble. But it’s a mummified body. The victim is Nathan Troy, an art student who disappeared twenty years ago. Days later, a second body is found. This time it’s a fresh kill. And the ligature marks on the victim’s neck are identical. It’s been twenty years, but after all this time, forensic psychologist Kate Hanson knows that Nathan’s killer is back.

Sally, a cynical 15-year-old schoolgirl, is much too clever for her own good. When partnered with her best friend, Pamela—a mouthy girl who no one else much likes—Sally finds herself unable to resist the temptation of rebellion. The pair play truant, explore forbidden areas of the old school and—their favourite—torment posh Sylvia Rose, with her pristine uniform and her beautiful voice that wins every singing prize. One day, Sally ventures up to the greenhouse on the roof alone. Or at least she thinks she's alone, until she sees Sylvia on the roof, too.

Two teenage boys make a gruesome discovery. A body locked inside a church crypt. The victim’s throat viciously ripped out. The dead man is quickly identified as twenty-year-old Matthew Flynn, son of a wealthy businessman. He was reported missing a year ago. Nothing about the crime scene makes sense to forensic psychologist Kate Hanson. The evidence reveals careful planning — but also a frenzied loss of control. Kate and her team disagree about the killer’s motive — is it drugs? Money? Sex?

Ben has no qualms about signing up for the Evergreens project, a controversial new trial. But are the promises of life without aging too good to be true? Sophie has no doubt that they are. And sixty-five years down the line, she gets the chance to find out. With Ben in hospital, unresponsive and aging rapidly before her very eyes, can Sophie uncover the dark secret at the heart of the Evergreens project—and save Ben's life in the process?

Val, a widow living in Weston-super-Mare, spends lonely evenings dressing up as the movie star Elizabeth Taylor. It seems to be a way of coping with the loss and sadness she has experienced in her life. One day, when Val sees a pram left unattended on the seafront, on a whim she kicks off the brake and walks away with it.

Bo Luxton has it all - a loving family, a beautiful home in the Lake District and a clutch of best-selling books to her name. Enter Alice Dark, an aspiring writer who is drifting through life, with a series of dead-end jobs and a freeloading boyfriend. When they meet at a writers' retreat, the chemistry is instant, and a sinister relationship develops.... Or does it?

In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.