Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in All Categories

Warring staff. 'Accidental' poisonings. Topiary of dubious intent. Throw in the full complement of the Toot Hansell Women's Institute and dragons doing yoga, and DI Adams is starting to wonder if she might have made a small misjudgement signing up for this particular spa weekend. And that's before the dead body in the sauna and the storm that cuts them off from the rest of the world. Now she's dealing with a houseful of guests (and staff) who're looking more suspicious by the moment, fending off protesters, and trying to keep everyone safe as the storm closes in.

Young, feisty, and beautiful, heads turn wherever Danica Campbell goes, even if she only has eyes for her fiancé, Ricky Fyfe. He might be 30 years older than her, but his job as a big-time club owner in Glasgow means he can afford to give Danica the life she deserves. Danica knows he has a history—after all, his adult daughter Teigan works at the club—and she knows that Teigan’s mum, Elle, disappeared decades ago. It doesn’t matter, because Danica knows that Ricky will do anything for her.

Baton. Light. Chocolate. Duck. This is not DS Adams' usual kit. This is not DS Adams' usual case. She doesn't think it's anyone's usual case, not with the vanishing children and the looming bridge and the hungry river. Not with the snap-snap-snap. But six kids are missing, and she's not going to let there be a seventh. Not on her watch. And she knows how to handle human monsters, after all. How different can this really be?

Alexander Blix is a broken man. Convicted for avenging his daughter's death, he is being held in one of Norway's high-security prisons. Inside, the other prisoners take every opportunity to humiliate the former police investigator. Outside, Blix's former colleagues are hunting for a terrifying killer. Walter Kroos has escaped from prison in Germany and is heading north. The only lead established by the police is that Kroos has a friend in Blix's prison ward. And now they need Blix's help.

In the far south of New Zealand, in the remote Fiordland village of Manapouri, Ruth Shaw runs two tiny bookshops. In this memoir, she weaves together stories of the characters who visit her shops, musings about favourite reads, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life, which has been crammed with incredible escapades. After becoming the first New Zealand Wren to go AWOL, Ruth has sailed the Pacific for years, been boarded by pirates, and worked the yacht Breaksea Girl with her husband Lance.

Best friends Jana and Eva are carefree eight-year-olds in Prague – until Nazi occupation tears them apart. As their mothers are taken away and the girls face the horrors of war, survival becomes all that matters. In Theresienstadt, two desperate women make unimaginable sacrifices to one day find their children. But will love and hope be enough to help them reunite?

When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls. Online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge.

The death of The Conqueror left three sons to inherit his power and his wealth. Normandy for Robert, England for Rufus, and for Henry, the youngest, 5,000 pounds of silver. The three were natural rivals. The feckless Robert lost his Norman dukedom in an orgy of impulsive extravagance. Red-haired Rufus scandalized the court with his perverse sexuality and contempt for the Church. And Henry - cleverest of all - awaited his chance to fulfill his father’s prophecy and assume the mantle of The Lion of Justice.

William the Conqueror is destined to succeed his father as the Duke of Normandy but questions about his legitimacy mean he consistently faces challenges from potential usurpers in the Duchy to retain the title. He marries Matilda, the equally intelligent and ambitious daughter of the King of Flanders, and together they have many children. In 1066, he crosses the channel from Normandy to England and seizes the crown from King Harold, Edward the Confessor's popular successor.

When private eye V.I. Warshawski is called out to a derelict drug house in a rural town just south of Chicago, she discovers something she wasn't expecting: the mutilated corpse of a man, dumped in a cornfield. It is a discovery that throws V.I. into the fascinating world of physics and invention: a design that sparked the construction of the computer as we know it, the development of nuclear weapons, the wonder of Newton's prisms and a train of dramatic events that occurred in wartime Vienna.

Autumn 1191, and Robert, earl of Locksley, also known as the notorious outlaw Robin Hood, and his loyal lieutenant, Alan Dale, are returning home fresh from victory in the Third Crusade. They decide to travel via the Mediterranean sea-route, despite the dangers of the imminent stormy season. Disaster strikes, and Robin and his men are shipwrecked on the rocky coast of Crete.

1912. Leo is on a journey. Aged 13 and banished from the secluded farm of his childhood, he travels through Devon, grazing on berries and sleeping in copses. Behind him lies the past, and before him the West Country, spread out like a tapestry. But a wanderer is never alone for long, and soon Leo is taken in by gypsies. Yet he knows he cannot linger and must forge on to Penzance. Life on the estate continues as usual, yet nothing is as it was. Lottie’s father is distracted by the promise of new love, and Lottie is increasingly absorbed in the natural world. And of course, Leo is absent.

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators.... When patriarch Jim dies, it's left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn't the husband she thought he was.

Throughout the 20th century, the seaside service posters of Britain's railways promised fresh air and frivolity to millions of urban dwellers with the phrase: 'To the sea by train'. A staple of modern British life, the seaside getaway was intertwined with the train, in whose compartments holidaymakers were shunted from smog-choked cities to sandy coves.

An Iranian defector shows his true colours and returns to his own country—taking a vital piece of intelligence equipment with him. The race is on to capture the turncoat and get the equipment back. Only one man is up for the job—American super-spy Richard Yokely. In the past Yokely served in the Army, the CIA, DEA and the NSA. But now he works for Grey Fox, the super secret agency that takes care of business that the White House would prefer stays hidden. And with a possible World War Three approaching, Yokely is America's only hope. The chase is on.

Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale has always dealt with unusual - and dangerous - cases. When a serial killer starts killing victims using Witchfinder methods of execution, Nightingale is asked to help. As the body count mounts, Nightingale realises that the killer is on a mission of revenge for acts committed 400 years ago. And he and his assistant Jenny McLean are both on the killer's hit list.

When Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter, Rose, cannot accompany her employer, Lord Peters, to Manchester, which means his niece, Marion, has to go instead, which means she sends a text to her lover which is intercepted by his wife, which is…just the beginning of the ensuing chain of life-altering events.

In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can change the courses of many lives.

Now that her brood had left the nest, Fanny McBride, a large, cheerful and indomitable Tyneside widow, had time to sit by her window and watch the goings-on outside. There was plenty to keep her occupied: the mystery of the new woman at Mulhattan's Hall, the tenement block (here a fortnight already and not so much as a hello); the long-standing feud with Mrs Flannagan; after-school visits from her grandson Corny. But Fanny had any intention of ending her days in lonely isolation. So when her friend Mary fell sick and couldn't work, it was Fanny who took her place.

Teenagers are being possessed and turning into sadistic murderers. Priests can't help, nor can psychiatrists. So who is behind the demonic possessions? Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate and finds his own soul is on the line.

Jack Nightingale fights his battles in the shadows - in the grey areas where the real world meets the supernatural. But when he arrives in San Francisco to take on a group of Satanists bent on opening a doorway to hell, the danger is out in the open and all too real. The Apostles - a Satanic coven using murder and torture to pave the way for a demon to enter the real world - realise that Nightingale is on their tail and unleash their own brand of monsters to take him down.