Showing results by publisher "Quercus" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

The memory of 31 August 1969 has been at the back of Commissario Michele Balistreri’s mind for over four decades. It was not only the day that preceded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s seizure of power in Balistreri’s birthplace of Libya but that on which his beloved mother, Natalia, fell to her death and the resulting suicide verdict that Balistreri has always suspected to be a flagrant cover-up for her murder.

Tripoli, 1960s: During the years in which post-colonial Libya fell prey to the sprawling greed of the West, Michele Balistreri suffered a succession of blows that would scar him for life. The death of his mother; the unspeakable horror that befell his best friend's family; his father's role in Gaddafi's ascent to power; and the innocent blood pact that would corrupt the course of his future.

It is 1944 in war-battered London. Freya and Shona are identical twins, close despite their different characters. Freya is a newly qualified doctor treating the injured in an East End hospital, while Shona has been recruited by the SOE. The sisters are so physically alike that they can fool people into thinking that one is the other. It's a game they've played since childhood. But when Shona persuades her twin to swap roles to meet her Polish lover, he is angered at being tricked.

Amid the desolate wilderness of the Great Plains of Nebraska, a region so isolated you could drive for hours without seeing another human being, sits Hatchery House. Having served as a church, an asylum and an orphanage, Hatchery is now a treatment facility for orphaned or abandoned children with psychiatric disorders. Haunted by patients past and present, only the most vulnerable find a home within its walls. Dr Lorelei 'Lore' Webber, a former FBI psychiatrist, has almost grown used to the unorthodox methods used at Hatchery House.

Delia Maxwell is an international singing sensation, an icon of 1950s glamour who is still riding high on the new '60s scene. Adored by millions, all men want to be with her, all women want to be her. But one woman wants it maybe a little too much...Lily Brooks has watched Delia all her life, studying her music and her on-stage mannerisms. Now she has a dream job as Delia's assistant - but is there more to her attachment than the admiration of a fan? Private Investigator Frank is beginning to wonder.

Two hours to get away, 22 more to survive. Security consultant and private investigator Michael Sander is tasked with the investigation of a video that seems to show two people being hunted to their deaths. His job is to find out who they are, and why they were murdered. But this isn't just another case, and these deaths are only one piece of the puzzle. This time Michael is investigating the darkest reaches of humanity, uncovering crimes that reach further than he ever imagined.

Carmen is happily married to Tom, a successful London lawyer and divorcé with three children. She is content to absorb the stresses of being a stepmother to teenagers and the stain of 'second wife'. She knows she'll always live in the shadow of another woman - not Tom's first wife, Laura, who is resolutely polite and determinedly respectable, but the lover who ended his first marriage: Zena. Zena, who was shockingly beautiful. Zena, who drowned swimming late one night.

For twenty-four-year-old Jane, finding love in New York City is even harder than making it as a playwright. So, when Jane meets Colin, a sweet software engineer, she can't believe her luck: they're perfect for each other. Even when Colin breaks off their blooming relationship after six dates, Jane is certain that this is just a stumbling block. She'll get him back. She knows she will. That is, until Colin starts dating Zoe, a perfect, luminous, up-and-coming Brooklyn artist.

When night falls, fear spreads...The Lake District: a wild landscape, rife with stories. Detectives Zoe Barnes and Sam Taylor are called to investigate the disappearance of two children. But they quickly realise they have been drawn into a complex and unnerving case that hides a much darker intent: as they dig deeper, whispers grow of a community hiding a deadly secret - and talk of witches, the like of which hasn't been heard since the seventeenth century, is spreading.

The spy novel that anticipated the Snowden revelations. Carina Dymek is on a fast track for promotion at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when she is approached by a stranger and given a USB stick containing a report to circulate in her department. Unwittingly, she delivers a time bomb of classified information that sends her career up in flames and puts her on the radar of the security service,

On a misty autumn afternoon, a woman covered in blood clutching a baseball bat walks silently into a London police station. The two officers assigned to her case are DI Leah Hutch and DS Benjamin Randle. But the woman refuses to speak. She is not injured and the blood on the bat is not hers. What has she done? Is she the victim or the perpetrator? As Leah and Randle start their inquiry, a man is found battered to death in a nearby park. Journalist Odie Reid receives a tip off and is determined to solve the case first, trying to link this death to the woman held in custody.

When one of their own found unconscious in the boot of her car, Scotland's Sierra Leonean community is cast into a state of shock. And the young woman's death a few days later sparks a murder investigation. Though Hawa Barrie lives on the fringes of that community, which revolves around the Lion Mountain Church, the disappearance of a second woman - her childhood friend Othella Savage - draws her in.