A twenty-five-year-old murder, a missing girl, and fatal attraction in a small seaside town...

On a sunny Sunday in 1970, in the Devon resort of Pelham Bay, teenager Jennifer Stone discovers the corpse of a woman in the sparkling summer sea. It is an event that is to shape her destiny and that of Mark Piddle, the young reporter called to the scene, for the next twenty-five years; until the intense tragedy is resolved and a long-buried mystery comes to light.

The Cruelty of Morning is a tale of dangerous obsessions, small town secrets and a destructive, mesmerising love-affair.

Mandy Vernick is a girl with a problem. She is abused by her stepfather (with her mother’s tacit approval), and discovers that her mother is having an affair. With nowhere to turn, Mandy runs away from home, hoping to find her father in Baltimore. Vernick denies that he is Mandy’s father. Desperate and confused, the voluptuous six- teen-year-old becomes involved in a bank robbery that ends with three men dead.

The Enchanted Isle has a bittersweet ending but, before Cain allows us to relax and share in Mandy’s joy, he strips the facade from a family’s carefully built house of lies and in the process keeps the reader wondering what will happen next... and to whom.

The End of the Night is a journey into a world of fear and violence carried to their logical extreme — murder.

Not the kind of murder that society understands, the murder that comes from passion, or hatred, or love, but the murder that shakes the very foundations of our civilization — the pointless, gratuitous, casual act of killing.

This is the grim and powerful story of the “Wolf Pack” murders: a group of three young men and a beautiful girl, who roam the country, killing without any apparent motive. They are caught; they are tried; they are executed.

But who were they, really? Why did they do it? And who were their victims?

With the skill of the master storyteller that he is, Mr. MacDonald leads us into the little hell where four people, from very different backgrounds, take refuge from the world that they do not understand, that has no meaning for them. Sander Golden, the leader of the group, is a displaced intellectual, intelligent but without real talent. Kirby Stone is a college boy, a young man from a “good” family who has been thrown into the world of adult passions before he is able to cope with them. Hernandez is a simple brute, held in check by his admiration for Golden. And Nan Koslov is the catalyst. the smoldering spark of sexual desire that ignites their brutality.

Theirs is a private, dangerous world, a world of sex, narcotics. jealousy and envy — but it is theirs. Together, linked by their common frustrations, they move back and forth on the endless roads, from cheap motel to cheap motel, in a succession of stolen cars, spreading violence and death.

The End of the Night is a novel of suspense and passion. It is also a remarkable attempt to probe the motives that lie behind this senseless and shocking outburst of violence. Mr. MacDonald examines the past of the young killers, looking for the cause of their revolt. He analyzes the processes of the law, right up to the moment when the State exacts the supreme penalty. And he shows how circumstances provide the victims, as accidentally as the roulette wheel chooses a number.

It is a book the reader will no be able to put down until the very end; and it is one he will not forget quickly.

Hans Olofson is the son of a Swedish lumberjack. His childhood was unsettled: an alcoholic father, and a mother disappeared, only alive in old photographs. His adolescence was no easier as he lost both his best friend and his lover tragically. Alone and adrift, as a young man his only desire is to fulfil his lover’s dream and visit the grave of a legendary missionary who survived alone in the remote hills of Northern Zambia.

On reaching Africa, Olofson is struck by its beauty and mystery. After fulfilling his initial quest, an opportunity of employment in the region tempts him to stay. Time passes quickly. Though dismayed by the attitude of the white population to their adopted country, which is compounded by their vulnerability to alcohol and malaria, he is interested enough to take up sole responsibility for the farm he manages. For almost two decades Hans Olofson battles with a hostile environment and a placid, but resistant workforce.

Set in the 1970s and 1980s, The Eye of the Jeopard explores the relationship between the white farmers and their native workers. Through Olofson’s descent into near mental collapse it becomes clear that many years spent in a foreign land do not necessarily breed an understanding of its people: a handful of generations of white settlers cannot change a continent underpinned by myth and superstition. The Eye of Leopard is a first-rate and original psychological thriller delving deep into the mind of a man lost in an unknown world.

The premise of Margaret Millar’s new suspense novel is simple and shocking. Charlie Gowen, a handsome young man with a badly disordered past, finds himself profoundly drawn toward a nine-year-old girl. His past record suggests, even to Charlie himself, that his sick passion for little Jessie is placing her life in jeopardy. But he can’t stay away from her school, her street, her house.

If the premise of Mrs. Millar’s story is simple enough, its development is complex and compelling. Charlie’s fiancée Louise, who loves him desperately, risks her life in an effort to save him from the dark forces of his own nature. Half a dozen other adults, Jessie’s parents, friends and neighbors, become involved in the network of guilt and menace which surrounds the child. Without sacrificing its quality of almost unbearable suspense, this novel makes a searching and scathing inquiry into the guilty relations of adults with children. To read it is a shaking experience.

BRADY’S BAD FUCKED

I wrote it on the bedroom wall, in yellow day-glo marker. Nice colour, blended well with the years of nicotine.

I haven’t taken my medication for the past week. If I couldn’t go a few days without the lithium, I was in deep shit. I’d gotten the job ten days earlier and it entailed a whack of pub-crawling. Booze and medication Is the worst of songs. Sing that!

A job of pure simplicity. Find a white girl in Brixton. Piece of cake. What I should have done is doubled my medication and lit a candle to St Jude — maybe a lot of candles.

Add in a lethal ex-con, an Irish builder obsessed with Gene Hackman, the biggest funeral Brixton has ever seen, and what you get is the Blues like they’ve never been sung before.

Skimmer was the hotshot — handsome, smart, arrogant...

He had everything: personality, looks, women. He was ready for success — regardless of the cost...

And then he met a girl and a gangster — and something went wrong...

Hotshot is Skimmer’s story — a unique candid portrait, not of the knife-wielding delinquents who capture headlines, but of today’s troubled youth as they really are.

The unforgettable story of a generation battling to find its way in a world it never made.

Lucille Morrow, the central figure in this novel of psychological mystery, was, to all appearances, a fortunate and happy woman. In early middle life she retained the beauty of her youth: her husband. Dr. Morrow, was wealthy and devoted to her; she was the mistress of a large and charming house, properly staffed.

No one was more astonished than her immediate family when Lucille, in mad fear and horror, ran away from her comfortable home, her loving husband, and all the things she had seemed to value. In one day she changed from a serene and self-possessed woman into a creature dominated by a fear so intense that she was glad to be shut up behind the iron gates of an asylum for the insane.

In searching for the cause of Lucille Morrow’s flight Detective Inspector Sands (whom we met in Wall of Eyes) followed a long trail which took him to the ugly cadaver of an ex-convict in the Toronto morgue, through the maze of fears which tortured the mind of Lucille Morrow in her last days, and even back to the bloody death of Dr. Morrow’s first wife sixteen years before. As his case progressed, Sands observed, with the cold and catholic sympathy which made him a great detective, the deterioration of the Morrow family under the influence of fear and guilt.

The Iron Gates is a strange and fascinating novel of murder psychological horror and inevitable retribution. Few writers have approached insanity, human fear and human evil with more relentless honesty and more precision of style.

Gabriela waits desperately for news of her abducted daughter.

At last, the door opens.

But it’s not the negotiators. It’s not the FBI.

It’s the kidnapper.

And he has a gun.

How did it come to this?

Two days ago, Gabriela’s life was normal. Then, out of the blue, she gets word that her six-year-old daughter has been taken. She’s given an ultimatum: pay half a million dollars and find a mysterious document known as the “October List” within 30 hours, or she’ll never see her child again.

A mind-bending novel with twists and turns that unfold from its dramatic climax back to its surprising beginning, THE OCTOBER LIST is Jeffery Deaver at his masterful, inventive best.

The three of them were spawned in the same ugly slum — the Sink, where crime was commonplace, and all the sordid, brooding streets led to dead ends.

But these three were hard. They managed to get through the No Exit sign...

While I should never suggest that you or I assume the role of a Mr. Pruyn, it was with a sigh of regret, I admit, that I concluded my association with the main character in this remarkable off-beater. I think you will feel quite as I do about this murderous little man, and the police, when you have finished with him. Or, rather, when he has finished with you...

Alfred Hitchcock

Four years after serial killer Rudy Cutter was sent away for life, San Francisco homicide inspector Frost Easton uncovers a terrible lie: his closest friend planted false evidence to put Cutter behind bars. When he’s forced to reveal the truth, his sister’s killer is back on the streets.Desperate to take Cutter down again, the detective finds a new ally in Eden Shay. She wrote a book about Cutter and knows more about him than anyone. And she’s terrified. Because for four years, Cutter has been nursing revenge day after stolen day.Staying ahead of the game of a killer who’s determined to strike again is not going to be easy. Not when Frost is battling his own demons. Not when the game is becoming so personal. And not when the killer’s next move is unlike anything Frost expected.

LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a fine homicide detective, but when he needs to get into the mind of a killer, he leans on the expertise of his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. While Sturgis has a knack for piecing together the details of a crime, Delaware can decipher the darkest intents driving the most vicious of perpetrators. And there’s no better place for the doctor’s analytical skills to shine than a rowdy hall full of young men and women intoxicated on life and lust... and suddenly faced with the specter of death.

Summoned to a run-down former strip joint, Delaware and Sturgis find themselves crashing a wild Saints and Sinners — themed wedding reception. But they’re not the only uninvited guests. A horrified bridesmaid has discovered the body of a young woman, dressed to impress in pricey haute couture and accessorized with a grisly red slash around her neck. What’s missing is any means of identification, or a single partygoer who recognizes the victim. The baffled bride is convinced the stranger snuck in to sabotage her big day — and the groom is sure it’s all a dreadful mistake. But Delaware and Sturgis have a hundred guests to question, and a sneaking suspicion that the motive for murder is personal. Now they must separate the sinners from the saints, the true from the false, and the secrets from those keeping them. The party’s over — and the hunt for whoever killed it is on.

A crumpled five-dollar bill, a ticket to San Francisco, a legal document terminating a marriage lost long ago in angry words— These were all she had. But between today and tomorrow a strange thing happened. She had a chance to build a whole new life, a life based on a lie.

Alice told the psychiatrist about her blind sister.

“She has built a wall of eyes around her, the good eyes of the rest of us, the eyes of the people who hate her and watch her and wait for her to die. That’s what she says, that the eyes are watching and waiting.”

Soon the waiting would be over.

Somewhere in the desert a girl has only minutes to live.

A freaked-out rock group, a tyrannical industrialist, a very clever Mexican cop — the ingredients of a highly explosive confrontation.

Terry Naughton, head of Orange County’s Crimes Against Youth unit, is the champion of children. He is their shield and their sword, their protector.

He’s come up against his share of heinous criminals in his years on the force — but nothing has prepared him for the Horridus. Abducting children from their beds, dressing them like little angels, and releasing them the next day, the only clue he leaves is a piece of snakeskin tucked into the folds of their gowns. So far he hasn’t physically harmed any of them, but as Naughton well knows, it’s only a matter of time.

As he races to find the madman before his crimes escalate, Naughton learns that the Horridus may not be the only enemy. When shocking (and seemingly irrefutable) accusations put his career on the line, he is forced to confront his dark and violent past in his search for the truth. Who is behind the setup? And even if he can clear his name, can he do the same for his conscience?

Where Serpents Lie pits the most memorable villain since Hannibal Lecter against an equally unforgettable hero in a thriller that is not only terrifying, but rich in psychological and moral complexity. It’s a novel that will keep readers up at night, long after they’ve turned the last page.

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in ’50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp — and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine.

Confidential presaged the idiot internet — and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson — Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS.

“I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.”

In Freddy’s viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950s Hollywood to the ground. It’s a blazing revelation of coruscating corruption, pervasive paranoia, and of sin and redemption with nothing in between.

Here is James Ellroy in savage quintessence. Freddy Otash confesses — and you are here to read and succumb.

Nighttime. A young woman appears at the door of an isolated house. She is frightened and hurt. She speaks with a foreign accent. The man and woman inside take her in. Other strangers appear, in obvious pursuit of the girl. There is menace in the air — some unspoken, unexplained aura of violence and misdeed...

THEY LIVED ALL THE WAY

Clint Sewell was a rising young career man on the loose in a strange town when he slammed into trouble in the shape of a restless secretary, his boss’ blonde wife, and the town’s easy-loving belle.

Clint couldn’t resist playing around with all three. But one of them was raw dynamite. And when the explosion came, it shattered the smug peace of the town, and re-shaped the lives of his women.

For the first time, the novel was published in the abbreviated version in Cosmopolitan, April 1955 called the “Deadly Victim”.