Showing results for "sleep" in Crime Fiction

All Anna wants is to be able to sleep. But crushing insomnia, terrifying night terrors and memories of that terrible night are making it impossible. If only she didn’t feel so guilty. To escape her past, Anna takes a job at a hotel on the remote Scottish island of Rum, but when seven guests join her, what started as a retreat from the world turns into a deadly nightmare. Each of the guests has a secret, but one of them is lying—about who they are and why they're on the island. There's a murderer staying in the Bay View hotel. And they've set their sights on Anna.

When Olivia calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. Two years later,Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas is called to investigate, but this time it’s Olivia who has disappeared. Her car is in the garage, and her purse is in her handbag. For some reason every single picture of this family has been removed from albums, phones, and computers. Then they find the blood...

A decomposed body washes up on a beach near Glasgow. The victim, Tracy Eadie. Junkie. Prostitute. Fourteen years old. Rosie Gilmour, tabloid journalist and crusader for justice, receives evidence linking police officials with Tracy's disappearance. Digging deeper, Rosie uncovers a sickening network of corruption and abuse, leading back to the very top of the establishment. And to powerful figures who want their secrets kept hidden. Rosie has found the story of a lifetime.

Twenty-two-year-old Annie Schrijver works in the picturesque Albert Cuyp flower market. But then she goes missing, only to be found barely alive, tied to a stone angel in a graveyard. But Annie seems to have been the lucky one, as a body is found nearby. Detective Pieter Vos knows that if he is to outwit the murderer, he will need to employ everything he has to avert a greater tragedy.

The acknowledged 'Queen of Crime', P. D. James, was a past master of the short story, weaving together motifs of the golden age of crime writing with deep psychological insight to create gripping, suspenseful tales. The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories contained four of these perfectly formed stories, and this companion volume contains a further six, published here together for the first time. As the six murderous tales unfold, the dark motive of revenge is revealed at the heart of each.

A killer stalks the streets of East London. All over the area, murdered young women are discovered, their bodies posed into disturbing recreations of fairy tale princesses. Detective Ruby Preston is determined to hunt down the murderer who is using the women to realise his dark fantasies. But when body parts are found at the home of her lover, Nathan Crosby, Ruby is torn between her job and her heart. Convinced that he is being framed, Ruby must catch the killer before Nathan becomes the number one suspect.

There's a hit man in Glasgow: unpaid and angry, he's decided to settle his own debts.... Elsewhere in the city, Marianne Brogan can't sleep. She's plagued by a nightmare: someone in the shadows, whispering threats, stalking her every move. To make matters worse, Marianne can't get hold of her brother, Billy. Despite knowing some shady characters from Glasgow's underworld, Billy's always been there for her - until now.

Three brothers are at the funeral. One lies in the coffin. Will, Brian and Luke grow up competing for their mother's love, but she is unable and unwilling to love all of them. As adults, the competition continues. One brother always has what another one wants - status, money, success, a woman, the love of a child, his mother's attention. But maybe there's a chance to even things up. Perhaps with one brother gone there would be more to go around. Which will it be?

On a cold winter's morning, the body of a young boy is discovered in Epping Forest. The body is pristine and peaceful, his head resting gently on a pillow, an angel pendant clenched in his small fist. It is a murder as carefully planned as it is brutal, and there's one person DI Bishop needs back on his team to help solve such a calculated crime. Holly Wakefield, clinical psychologist for the Met Police, is better than anyone Bishop knows at getting inside the brains of psychopaths.

When an early morning call brings Deputy Ben Packard to the scene of a home invasion, he finds Bill Sandersen shot in his bed. Bill was a well-liked local who chased easy money his whole life, leaving bad debts and broken hearts in his wake. Everyone Packard talks to has a story about Bill, but no one has a clear motive for wanting him dead. The business partner. The ex-wife. The current wife. The high-stakes poker buddies. Any of them—or none of them—could be guilty.

Human remains are recovered from the bottom of the River Clyde. Not an unusual occurrence, but these have been sleeping the deep, dark sleep for eighteen years. Suddenly Glasgow’s underworld is buzzing with the news that the dredged up bones belong to Gentleman Joe Strachan, Glasgow’s most successful and ruthless armed robber.

Countersurveillance expert Devin Gray is unwittingly thrown headfirst into dangerous new territory after the death of his mother. Helen Gray, a paranoid and disgraced former CIA officer, believed she was on the verge of preventing a national catastrophe - a mission worth dying for. Others, including Devin, believe she was chasing delusions. Until he finds what she left behind.

When prize-winning photojournalist Jordan Glass chances upon a portrait by an unknown artist in Hong Kong, she is shocked. The face staring back at her is her missing identical twin sister. The painting is part of an exhibition entitled ‘Sleeping Women' and Jordan realizes that the portraits are all of women who have recently disappeared from New Orleans. Electrifying a case previously paralysed by a lack of bodies, this new evidence spurs the FBI's serial killer unit into action.

When Detective Natalie Ward is called to the home of 14-year-old Roxy Curtis she can’t help but empathise with Roxy’s distraught mother Cathy. Roxy hasn’t come home, last seen heading next door for a sleepover with her best friend Ellie. As the mother of two teenagers herself, Natalie knows that this is every parent’s worst nightmare. But when Roxy’s body is found in the basement of a beautiful Victorian mansion on the other side of town, Natalie’s darkest fears are confirmed. What was Roxy doing there? Cathy seems evasive, and Ellie refuses to talk.

When DC Rose Gifford is called to investigate the death of a young woman suffocated in her bed, she can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to the crime than meets the eye. It looks like a straightforward crime scene - but the police can’t find the killer. Enter DS Moony - an eccentric older detective who runs UCIT, a secret department of the Met set up to solve supernatural crimes. Moony wants Rose to help her out - but Rose doesn’t believe in any of that. Does she? As the killer prepares to strike again, Rose must pick a side - before a second woman dies.

London had Sherlock Holmes. The dark alleys of Edinburgh had Inspector McLevy. Known as the father of forensics and a likely influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, real-life police inspector James McLevy is here reinvented by David Ashton in a thrilling mystery - the fourth in a series - set in dark, violent Victorian Edinburgh. It's 1887. The streets of Edinburgh seethe with anarchy as two gangs of students rival each other in wild exploits.

Felicity Holland is missing. She left her handsome West London house to go to her weekly pottery class and didn't come back. She's a mature, sensible woman with a stable home life and a happy marriage - no reason to abscond. Her distraught husband is convinced she must have been snatched. DCI Bill Slider and his team know that when a woman goes missing, you have to move fast if there's to be a hope of finding her alive. But with no evidence of foul play - nothing to go on at all - where do you even start looking?

Jason Crandall, recently widowed, is left to raise his young daughter and rebellious teenage son on his own - and the old Victorian in Shadow Springs seems like the perfect place for them to start over. But the cracks in Jason’s new world begin to show when he meets Savannah Sturgess, a beautiful socialite who has half the men in town dancing on tangled strings.

When Jake Meredith is arrested for the murder of his wife, he's adamant he isn't guilty, even though her blood is all over his hands and his prints are on the murder weapon. He has no memory of attacking her. His solicitor brother claims Jake is a sleepwalker, and he is sent to a revolutionary new sleep clinic for assessment. Jake is convinced he didn’t kill his wife, and is intent on finding answers. But locked away in a clinic, he’s impeded at every turn. Is his incarceration accidental, or part of a larger web of lies?

As a child, Grace Cooper suffered from bouts of sleepwalking. Now, after the unexpected death of her husband, she’s moved back to Woodburn Cottage, her childhood home—and the sleepwalking returns. Grace doesn’t know what she does in her sleep, but it’s stirring up dark memories that Grace would rather forget. Like the disappearance of her brother Simon as child and the tragic death of her father…