John le Carré was born in 1931. He attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. Later he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, his third book, secured him a wide reputation and was followed by THE LOOKING-GLASS WAR, A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY, THE NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER, and his trilogy TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE. His most recent novels are THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL and A PERFECT SPY. Though he divides his time between England and the continent, he is most at home in Cornwall.

Major Kit Bennings is an elite military intelligence agent working undercover in Moscow. When he is blackmailed and compromised by a brutal mafia don and former KGB general, he knows that his military career, if not his life, will soon be over. With little to lose, he goes rogue in the hope of saving his kidnapped sister and stopping a deadly scheme directed against America.

Yulana Petkova is a gorgeous divorcee, devoted mother, and Russian weapons engineer. And maybe more. Spy? Mob assassin? The shotgun marriage to stranger Kit Bennings takes her on a life-or-death hopscotch from Moscow to Los Angeles, from secret US military bases to Las Vegas, where she uses her wiles at every turn to carry out her own hidden agenda.

Hunted by killers from both Russia and the United States, Bennings struggles to stop the mobster’s brilliant deception—a theft designed to go unnoticed—that will make the mafia kingpin the richest man in the world, while decimating the very heart of America’s economic and intelligence institutions.Review

“Brisk, easy-to-read thriller… Readers who like their heroes fearsome and focused… will want to see more of (the hero) Kit Bennings.”—Publisher’s Weekly

“This is a thriller packed so full of action, it leaves readers breathless. Kovacs does an incredible job at being technically accurate and easy to understand, so readers of all levels are engaged throughout. A must-read for fans of fast-paced stories that don’t let you go till the very end.”—RT Book Reviews

“Quick, entertaining action.”—Kirkus Reviews

Two women, one planet, incredible odds!The online appearance of Anna, the rebellious daughter of Russian syndicate higher-ups, lands intelligence contractor, Jessica Ducat, a job in Kiev, Ukraine. But when Anna’s headstrong behavior destroys the operation, the only way to curtail the collateral damage is by fleeing with Anna through Ukraine to Turkey and across several seas.Hampered by Anna’s Russian passport, tagged as belonging to a terrorist, and aided by a mysterious American, Jess uses ingenuity to overcome obstacles encountered en route to safety in the west. She fights for a young woman’s life against a backdrop of post Orange Revolution political unrest in Ukraine, relentless pursuers, and even nature itself. Rooted in actual events, the action is enmeshed in Russian politics, corruption and syndicate activity.

The Russian White, a large uncut diamond given by the Holy Eastern Fathers to the founders of the Russian State, is revered by the Russian Orthodox Church. Tsar Peter the Great, determined to rule Russia without the church’s intervention, gives the diamond to King William of Orange of England on a visit to London’s shipbuilding yards and so. with a single stroke, weakens the church’s authority in Russia.

King William, aware of the diamond’s significance and certain that the Russian Orthodox Church will attempt to steal the diamond back, hides the diamond with a group he calls The Brotherhood. A group of four of the most influential gentlemen in English society.

The date is now 1853. Russian flexes its military might against Turkey. In Victorian London, Russian spies are everywhere and The Brotherhood fights to keep the diamond secret and safe. One of The Brotherhood, William Hunt, has a sister called Isobel. She is a fiery and headstrong young woman who is determined to live her life according to her rules.

She runs away from home and joins a theatrical troupe where she falls in love with the young manager, James Turney. The troupe is a front for smuggling Russians into London who have been sent to find and retrieve the Russian White.

Isobel is caught up in a dangerous situation that brings her into confrontation with her brother, The Brotherhood and even the government as it faces war with Russia.

The Russian White remains a hidden but very real presence as intrigue, deceit and murder are carried out in its name.

For the first time in decades The Eternal City is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon – one of Rome 's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by softly falling snow is the body of a young woman – her back horribly mutilated…But before Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni of the Questura can begin a formal investigation the US Embassy has brought in its own people, FBI Agents who want the case closed down as quickly and discreetly as possible. But Costa is determined to find out why the enquiry is so sensitive – and as the FBI grudgingly admits that this corpse is not the first, the mutilations of the woman's body point to Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man – and to a conspiracy so sinister and buried so deep, that only two people know its true, crazed meaning.

A man with no identity. A spy with no allegiance. A thief with no scruples. Simon Templar, a/k/a The Saint, is all of these things — and his services can be bought for the right price. Hired by a Russian nationalist to swipe a top-secret formula from an American electrochemist, Templar figures it’s rubles in the bag. But the beautiful Dr. Emma Russell proves to be much more than his usual mark, and stealing her life’s work brings on a sudden, unprecedented attack of Saintly ethics.

Now, with love in his heart, Scotland Yard on his trail, and power-mad Muscovites hot on his heels, the Saint must dodge assassins’ bullets, crack killer security codes, and don a multitude of disguises in a desperate bid to save Russia, his personal angel, and his own less-than-virtuous life.

Castagnetti (informally known as 'Casta') is a private detective who doesn't do things by the book. He's dogged and lonely, impatient with the world of appearances and deceit. So when a pompous notary commissions him to verify that a missing person is 'presumed dead' in order to dispose of a dead woman's estate to the other heirs, Casta smells a rat. Before long he's reopening wounds from years ago and exposing family secrets to those who have tried to suppress them. The relatives of Signora Salati just want their their inheritance, but Casta is going to make sure they get their just desserts as well. Because Casta isn't the sort to content himself with 'presumed dead'. He likes certainty, the kind of certainty that comes from seeing a skeleton. As the Salati case progresses, other corpses appear and Casta realizes he's at the center of an old-fashioned Italian whodunit. "The Salati Case" marks the appearance of a new and memorable detective: an orphan who has pulled himself up from the mean streets.

****"An absolutely splendid Gothic thriller."—A. J. Finn, #1 *New York Times* bestselling author of *The Woman in the Window***

**"This spine-tingling, atmospheric thriller has it all: an eerie Alpine setting, sharp prose, and twists you'll never see coming. A must-read."

** **—Richard Osman, international bestselling author of *The Thursday Murder Club

***

**You won't want to leave. . . until you can't.****

Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.

An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no...

In the powerful new thriller from the author of the international bestseller The Last Templar, a geneticist and a CIA agent on a deadly quest to find the most dangerous book in the world discover a secret that has destroyed everyone in its path for centuries.Naples, 1750. In the dead of night, three men with swords burst into the palazzo of a marquis. Their leader, the Prince of San Severo, accuses the marquis of being an imposter, and demands to know a secret only the marquis harbors. In the fight that ensues, the false marquis escapes over the rooftops of Naples, leaving behind a burning palazzo and a raging prince now obsessed with finding his quarry at any cost.Baghdad, 2003. An army unit on a routine mission makes a horrifying discovery: a state-of-the-art, concealed lab where dozens — men, women, children — have died, the subjects of gruesome experiments. The mysterious scientist they were after, a man believed to be working on a bioweapon and known only as the hakeem — the doctor — escapes, taking with him the startling truth about his work. A puzzling clue is left behind: a circular symbol of a snake feeding on its own tail.As the power of the symbol comes to light, revealing the centuries of destruction left in its wake, one unsuspecting woman stands at the center of a conspiracy that could change the world forever. In the masterful hands of international bestseller Raymond Khoury, The Sanctuary delivers the same rapid-fire suspense and provocative scholarship that made The Last Templar a coast-to-coast blockbuster.

The No 1 Swedish thriller by the author of The Hypnotist and The Fire WitnessHe’s Sweden’s most prolific serial killer.Jurek Walter is serving a life sentence. Kept in solitary confinement, he is still considered extremely dangerous by psychiatric staff.He’ll lull you into a sense of calm.Mikael knows him as “the sandman”. Seven years ago, he was taken from his bed along with his sister. They are both presumed dead.He has one target left.When Mikael is discovered on a railway line, close to death, the hunt begins for his sister. To get to the truth, Detective Inspector Joona Linna will need to get closer than ever to the man who stripped him of a family; the man who wants Linna dead.

This is a work of fiction. And yet…The romantic land of flamenco and Don Quixote and exotic-looking señoritas with tortoises hell combs in their hair is also the land of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition, and one of the bloodiest civil wars in history. More than half a million people lost their lives in the battles for power between the Republicans and the rebel Nationalists in Spain.In 1936, between February and June, 269 political murders were committed, and the Nationalists executed Republicans at the rate of a thousand a month, with no mourning permitted. One hundred sixty churches were burned to the ground, and nuns were removed forcibly from convents, "as though," wrote Due de Saint-Simon of an earlier conflict between the Spanish government and the Church, "they were whores in a bawdy house." Newspaper offices were sacked and strikes and riots were endemic throughout the land. The Civil War ended in a victory for the Nationalists under Franco, and following his death, Spain became a monarchy.The Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, may be officially over, but the two Spains that fought it have never been reconciled. Today another war continues to rage in Spain, the guerrilla war fought by the Basques to regain the autonomy they had won under the Republic and lost under the Franco regime. The war is being fought with bombs, bank robberies to finance the bombs, assassinations, and riots. When a member of ETA, a Basque guerrilla underground group, died in a Madrid hospital after being tortured by the police, the nationwide riots that followed led to the resignation of the director general of Spain's police force, five security chiefs, and two hundred senior police officers. In 1986, in Barcelona, the Basques publicly burned theSpanish flag, and in Pamplona thousands fled in fear, when Basque Nationalists clashed with police in a series of mutinies that eventually spread across Spain and threatened the stability of the government. The paramilitary police retaliated by going on a rampage, firing at random at homes and shops of the Basques. The terrorism that goes on is more violent than ever.This is a work of fiction. And yet…

Iran’s Supreme Leader will use three nuclear weapons, VX and two armored forces driving on Riyadh to overthrow the Saudi monarchy. Can Russian agents, Saudi tanks and American technology stop him in time?

Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the LA Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling readership and revenues, he's got 30 days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low cost reporter just out of J-school who couldn't find the police station if it was right next store to the Times, which it is. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang – a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor – a Pulitzer prize. Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo's mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son's innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter's trick in the book. Jack's real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer. But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo's so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path twelve years before.This time Jack is onto a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar. His investigation leads him into the digital world of data collocation services where server farms are watched over by techs who liken themselves to scarecrows – keeping the birds of prey off their clients' data. But Jack inadvertently set off a digital tripwire and the killer – the Scarecrow – knows he's coming.

Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the LA Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling readership and revenues, he's got 30 days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low cost reporter just out of J-school who couldn't find the police station if it was right next store to the Times, which it is. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang – a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor – a Pulitzer prize. Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo's mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son's innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter's trick in the book. Jack's real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer. But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo's so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path twelve years before.This time Jack is onto a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar. His investigation leads him into the digital world of data collocation services where server farms are watched over by techs who liken themselves to scarecrows – keeping the birds of prey off their clients' data. But Jack inadvertently set off a digital tripwire and the killer – the Scarecrow – knows he's coming.

It is the week before Christmas. The effects of the credit crunch have prompted Dr Kay Scarpetta to offer her services pro bono to New York City 's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. But in no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of dramatic and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same broadcast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds a suspicious package? possibly a bomb? waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a deadly plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Scarpette'a niece Lucy seems to have shared a secret past…

Once a busy hospital, St Jude’s now stands derelict, awaiting demolition.When a partially mummified corpse is found in the building’s cavernous loft, forensics expert Dr David Hunter is called in to take a look. He can’t say how long the body’s been there, but he is certain it’s that of a young woman. And that she was pregnant.Then part of the attic floor collapses, revealing another of the hospital’s secrets: a bricked-up chamber with beds inside. And some of them are still occupied.For Hunter, what began as a straightforward case is about to become a twisted nightmare. And it soon becomes clear that St Jude’s hasn’t claimed its last victim...

Written with the wisdom and grace devoted readers have come to expect from the award-winning author of The Virgin of Small Plains, here is a brilliantly moving tale of family, murder, and redemptive love.Rose, Kansas, is a quiet town poised between the orderly and the unpredictable, where a terrible secret lies long dormant…until it vengefully stirs to life one fateful day. Young English teacher Jody Linder wakes up one morning to find her three intimidating rancher uncles on her doorstep. They bring shocking news: Billy Crosby, the man convicted of murdering her father-and presumably her mother's killer as well-is being released from prison and coming back to Rose with his son, Collin, an attorney. Convinced of his father's innocence, Collin provokes Jody to face the stunnig mystery behind her tragic past. Enthralling, surprising, and beautifully textured, The Scent of Rain and Lightning blurs the boundaries between suspense and literary fiction.