Showing results by publisher "Avon" in Literature & Fiction

Ex-MI5 operative Joe Mason is on a mission to rescue a friend who has been kidnapped. Meanwhile, ancient coins – remnants of a Chinese casino buried for six hundred years – are starting to surface in Japan's clandestine underworld. Mason knows the coins and kidnapping are linked. Someone has finally unearthed the long-buried ancient casino, and its riches – both financial and archaeological – are now up for grabs. But hidden forces are desperate to conceal the discovery and take it for themselves, kidnapping and killing to silence anyone in their path.

Becky Lawson’s life has been shattered. When she discovered her husband, John – a trusted policeman – was a monster, she reported him. But her faith in the system was crushed when it didn't lead to any charges or consequences. Now, John lives freely with a new girlfriend and her young daughter, while Becky battles guilt over missing the obvious signs.

Lottie and Nick once had a dream marriage, but a series of failed IVF attempts has left Lottie feeling insecure, and her paranoia is further stoked by the arrival of a new starter at Nick’s firm. Nuala is the spitting image of a younger, more attractive Lottie, and Nick is paying her a lot of attention. But then Lottie discovers she’s pregnant. A surprise getaway to their country cottage to celebrate Nick’s birthday will provide the perfect backdrop to give him the news and start to heal the rifts in their relationship.

On a remote Highland mountain, the body of Elaine Buxton is burning. All that will be left to identify the respected lawyer are her teeth and a fragment of clothing. In the concealed back room of a house in Edinburgh, the real Elaine Buxton screams into the darkness…. Detective Inspector Luc Callanach has barely set foot in his new office when Elaine’s missing persons case is escalated to a murder investigation. Having left behind a promising career at Interpol, he’s eager to prove himself to his new team.

For forty-two years, Sally Harrison has been building a library. Each year, on her daughter’s birthday, she adds a new book to her shelves – with a note in the front dedicated to her own greatest work. But Ella – Sally’s only child – fled to Australia twenty-two years ago after a heated exchange, and never looked back. And though Sally still dutifully adds a new paperback to the shelves every time the clock strikes midnight on July 11th, her hopes of her daughter ever thumbing through the pages are starting to dwindle.

As three very different women come together at the house in the olive grove, unlikely friendships blossom and a season of self-discovery begins. Will the sumptuous flavours, sapphire waters and golden sands of Greece give each of them the answers they so desperately seek?

Tucked into a crook of the Norfolk coast lies Nelson’s Bar – an idyllic village where time seems to stand still. Maddy Austen has called this beautiful spot home all her life, as had her husband Adey – until one snowy night an epic row sent him storming out, never to be seen again. Six years on, and Maddy’s life in the village has settled into a gentle pattern with her daughter Lyla and Great Aunt Ruthie. However, when handsome stranger Raff turns up at Ruthie’s door with a handful of long-forgotten love letters, their quiet life is upended as family secrets from the past are unearthed.

Two weeks before her wedding, a stranger stops Amy in the street and warns her she’s in danger. Then that night, Matt, her fiancé, doesn’t come home. Desperate, Amy calls the police - but when Matt fails to emerge, she’s forced to call off her wedding day. Then another man is reported missing, by a woman called Fiona - a man meeting Matt’s description, who was about to leave his fiancée for her. He was supposed to be moving in with her - but instead, he’s vanished.

New Year’s Eve, 2023. When Hannah and her friends rent a luxury yacht in an Italian marina, they party in style under the stars until they pass out. The next morning, they are horrified to find they have been cut adrift into the open ocean, with no sight of land and no fuel in the engine. And that’s when the first person goes missing.

Mila and her husband Ethan are on their way to her sister’s wedding at a luxurious ski resort. As they drive through the mountains, surrounded by snow covered forests, Mila feels like everything is finally going to plan. When the car engine suddenly stops and won’t start again. Stranded, with night closing in, they make their way on foot back to where they saw a sign for some cabins. When they finally reach them, they find the windows boarded up and the buildings in disrepair. They have the eerie sense they shouldn’t be there.

Kate is sick of being taken for granted by her husband Vince. It’s bad enough that she allowed herself to be dragged away from the London life she loved, but now she’s constantly compelled to keep up with the (very smug) Joneses in this small home counties town. She hates it here. What happened to the fun-loving woman she used to be? At almost 50 Kate feels lost, overlooked and like nothing is ever going to change. That is, until she comes home to an unexpected party – one that she has to cater. And that’s it. The final straw. Breaking point.

The day Heather, Niamh and Lauren met, they promised to be best friends for life, and that instant connection only grew stronger with their weekly sunrise swims in their stunning local lake. When they left school, they agreed that every year on midsummer’s dawn, they would meet at their old spot and swim together. Now, fifteen years later, the tradition has disappeared in the face of life’s realities. In fact, they don’t speak any more. But this summer, they find themselves back in their Irish hometown and realise this could be their last chance to recapture what they have lost.

April 1942. Enemy gunfire on Penzance beach brings the Cornish Girls rushing to the rescue. But even as the war rages around them, the biggest challenge facing each woman turns out to be one of the heart. Can the Cornish Girls help one another to open themselves up to love?

Norway, 1942. War rages, and, under cover of darkness, Rumi Orlstad and her fellow resistance fighters smuggle British agents, fugitives and supplies across the North Sea into Nazi-occupied territory. One night, when he braves a storm to complete an ill-fated mission, Rumi’s fiancé is lost to the dangerous waters. Broken-hearted, she withdraws from the clandestine group, vowing never to let her loved ones put themselves in the line of fire again.

When Alice is forced away from her spy training in London under tragic circumstances, she is distraught. That is, until she’s asked to join a local branch of codebreakers that might just be finding the key to winning the war. Young Imogen feels impotent to help her beloved Bude as war rages on. When she suspects the attractive new Vicar of betraying their country, she gets to work to uncover his deceit. Meanwhile, American entertainer to the troops Pearl pours her heart into supporting the troops to stop their moral from waning, but is jilted by her young soldier love.

It’s a snowy, peaceful Christmas at Le Val, the rural haven that is home to ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope and his associates. With most of the team away for the festive holiday, Ben, recovering from an accident, is one of the skeleton crew guarding the compound. That’s when a ruthless Corsican crime gang, knowing that Ben is injured and out of action, target the location for a violent raid.

Following a chance encounter with a terrified young woman in the streets of Paris, former SAS soldier Ben Hope finds himself hurled into a violent new mission involving murder, international terrorism and stolen historic artefacts. A mission made even more perilous by the reappearance of an old enemy from Ben’s military past. A man he knew and fought years ago. A man he thought was dead. Teaming up with the enigmatic ex-Delta Force warrior Tyler Roth, Ben travels from the seedy underworld of Paris to the islands of the Caribbean in his quest to piece together the puzzle.

After having given up her baby at seventeen, Sonya is inspired by her work at an orphanage to discover what happened to her daughter twenty-five years ago. Reunited, they struggle to bond whilst braving the war together. Nurse Lily has returned to St Ives to finish training as a midwife. But when old flame Tristan is brought in wounded, she must put the past firmly to bed in order to care for him. And working at Tristan’s convalescent home, Mary longs for the romance she reads of in her novels. But her overprotective mother is making that more difficult at every turn.

When four trail hunters go missing in the fells of Cumbria on Christmas Eve, the race is on to find them before nightfall – when the temperature plummets. After hours of searching, the first body is found… Not frozen in the snow, but brutally murdered and bearing a warning: the real hunt has begun. As a snowstorm descends, three lives hang in the balance. But can the killer be caught before the trail goes cold?

Ever since her ex-husband Ollie filed for a divorce last Christmas, Naomi is a self-confessed scrooge. She hates her job, has exactly zero hobbies, and on top of that she’s all alone this holiday season. Spurred on by her best-friend Mia – who has invited her to spend Christmas at her snow-kissed Chateau in the Swiss Alps – she decides it’s time for change. But, when she arrives, she’s shocked to see Mia’s big brother Gabriel. It’s been fifteen years since they last saw each other, forcing her to face memories she’d rather forget.