Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

She's only been gone two hours. Her husband, David, was meant to be looking after their two-week-old daughter. But when Alice Fancourt walks into the nursery, her terrifying ordeal begins, for Alice insists the baby in the cot is a stranger she's never seen before. With an increasingly hostile and menacing David swearing she must either be mad or lying, how can Alice make the police believe her before it's too late?

As an MI5 agent, Spider is used to going undercover, but when he's asked to assume the identity of the contract killer hired to take out President Vladimir Putin, he knows he'll become a wanted man. And things are about to get more complicated: Spider is told that his MI5 controller and close friend Charlotte Button has been running an off-the-books assassination operation, taking vengeance on the men who killed her husband.

Winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, Silver PEN Award, 1987.The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across 1930s Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania.

Nico Storm and his father drive across a desolate South Africa, constantly alert for feral dogs, motorcycle gangs, nuclear contamination. They are among the few survivors of a virus that has killed most of the world's population. Young as he is, Nico realises that his superb marksmanship and cool head mean he is destined to be his father's protector. But Willem Storm, though not a fighter, is a man with a vision. He is searching for a place that can become a refuge, a beacon of light and hope in a dark and hopeless world.

Marcus Aquila and his patron Rutlius Scaurus have fought a superior enemy force to a standstill in Thracia, gaining the favour of the gods but paying a grievous cost in their family's blood. Battle-weary and mourning their losses, they are tasked with rooting out a spy ring operating in the lands into which their imperial master Severus's armies are advancing. Hunting down informers operating under the skilled and ruthless command of their sworn enemy Sartorius, spymaster to the usurper Niger, will not be easy.

Villains across London are being beaten, crippled and killed by vigilante cops. Crime rates are falling, but the powers that be want Dan 'Spider' Shepherd to bring the wave of rough justice to an end. Shepherd has always known that there are grey areas in the fight against crime. And that sometimes justice gets lost in the process. He has never been comfortable investigating cops, but working for the Serious Organised Crime Agency means that he has no choice.

Former SAS Warrant Officer Joe Gardner has fought the Regiment's deadliest enemies, in some of the most desolate places on earth. And he's always won. Now he's about to face his toughest challenge yet. After losing his hand whilst on a covert operation in Afghanistan, Gardner is forced to stand down from active duty. Now he lives off the grid. But trouble finds him in the shape of a phone call from an old friend.

Kidnapping is one of the cruellest crimes - lives are put at risk for cold, hard cash. But when Somali pirates seize the crew of a yacht off the coast of Africa, they bite off more than they can chew. One of the hostages has friends in high places, and Spider Shepherd is put on the case. He goes deep undercover in an audacious plan to bring an end to the pirate gang's reign of terror. But as Shepherd closes in on his quarry, he realises that there's much more at stake than the lives of the hostages.

When Navy SEALS track down and kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, it's obvious there was a traitor on the inside. After the false friends are revealed to be two British students, Malik and Chaudhry - former Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5 - they become targets themselves. Dan 'Spider' Shepherd must teach the pair how to survive undercover with al-Qaeda closing in. But Spider is not used to playing the handler.

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. But now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates their real-world resourcefulness in an age of technology. When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realise they've been marked for death.

A British cabinet minister is gunned down on a London street by an IRA assassin. In the wake of national outcry, the authorities must find the hitman. But the trail is long cold, the killer gone to ground in Belfast, and they must resort to more unorthodox methods to unearth him. Ill prepared and poorly briefed, undercover agent Harry Brown is sent into the heart of enemy territory to infiltrate the terrorists. But when it is a race against the clock, mistakes are made and corners cut. For Harry Brown, alone in a city of strangers, where an intruder is the subject of immediate gossip and rumour, one false move is enough to leave him fatally isolated....

The 14th thriller in the Spider Shepherd series promises even more gripping action from The Sunday Times best seller Stephen Leather. Working undercover is all about trust - getting the target to trust you and then betraying them in order to bring them to justice. But what do you do when you believe an undercover cop has crossed the line and aligned herself with the international drugs smuggler she was supposed to be targeting?

The 15th thriller in the Spider Shepherd series promises even more enthralling action from the Sunday Times best seller Stephen Leather. He is one of the world's most ruthless terrorists, codenamed Saladin. He plans and executes devastating attacks, and then, ghostlike, he disappears. Ten years ago he blew a plane out of the sky above New York - and now he's struck again, killing dozens in a London strike. But one of the latest victims is related to the acting head of MI5, who knows exactly who she wants on the case: Spider Shepherd.

A violent South London gang will be destroyed if Dan 'Spider' Shepherd can gather enough evidence against them while posing as a ruthless hit man. What he doesn't know is that his work as an undercover agent for MI5 is about to intersect with the biggest terrorist operation ever carried out on British soil. Only weeks before, Shepherd witnessed a highly skilled IS sniper escape from a targeted missile strike in Syria. But never in his wildest dreams did he expect to next come across the shooter in a grimy East London flat.

Mickey and Mark Moore are ordinary decent criminals - hard men who live by their own code and leaders of a gang that has made millions at the point of a gun. But when Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is sent to infiltrate the tightly knit team of bank robbers, he discovers that he has more in common with them then he first thought. And that perhaps being a career criminal isn't the worst thing in the world.

When an ISIS bombmaker arrives at Heathrow Airport asking for asylum in exchange for revealing details of his paymasters, Shepherd is given the case. The bombmaker specialises in drone strikes, and homegrown jihadists that he has trained are already back in the UK, planning their attacks. But before he'll agree to talk, the terrorist insists that his wife and son are rescued from a refugee camp in Turkey. Shepherd is tasked with bringing the family back to London, but he soon discovers that dark forces are out to stop him. And if he fails, hundreds will die.

Islamic State is here, all around us. There is no defence. Only attack. On the Syria/Iraq border, a British hostage is beheaded by IS terrorists. When the executioner breaks down, he is led into a nearby tent, where a masked figure is waiting for him. This mysterious person is treated with a mixture of respect and terror. They call him the Caliph.

Treason waits at the furthest reaches of Empire...When the deputy commander of Rome's Imperial Security Service is assassinated on the island of Rhodes, Cassius Corbulo swiftly finds himself embroiled in the investigation. Assisted once more by ex-gladiator bodyguard Indavara and servant Simo, his search for the truth is complicated by the involvement of the dead man's headstrong daughter, Annia.

Connie lost her words at the age of five, the day she witnessed her mother and father's untimely death. Since then she has been all but mute, only being able to choke out a few select words. Now, years on, Connie's husband is on his deathbed, and all she can do is quietly sit by his side. But there are so many dreadful secrets locked up in Connie's silent prison. And time is running out to set them free....

Humble layman Will Bowman lives in the countryside with his pregnant wife, when soldiers from Richard Lionheart's army tear through his home. Will is beaten unconscious, and awakes to find his wife murdered, his farm burnt down, and his life forever changed. In vengeance, Will infiltrates Richard's army to find the marauding gang, and finds himself swept along in the march of the Crusades. With the help of new allies and fuelled by his loss, Will crosses Europe with the King's army.