Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Mystery

How do you catch a killer when no one knows he's out there? How can you be saved when no one knows you're lost? No one knew about the Puppet Maker...until DI Brady found what remained of his victims. The murderer never meant them to be found. They are his private collection: each body identical, each...altered. Brady knows that now his secret is out, the killer will destroy the evidence - including his latest captive. He must find a man who has hidden the worst of crimes for over 20 years. And whose nameless victims were never even missed....

In the 1970s, a terrifying serial killer stalked the streets of Tynemouth. The press called him the Joker. The crimes stopped - but the man was never caught. And now he's back. A body has been found in a sleazy motel room, murdered in exactly the same way as the Joker's first victims. Is it a copycat? A trick? Or is the Joker at work once more? It's only DI Jack Brady's first day back - and this will be his most twisted case yet.

Florence, 1967. It is winter, and one year has passed since the historic and devastating flood of the Arno, though the memories of that day still linger with the stains on the city walls. The anniversary of the flood brings with it a new case for Inspector Bordelli, who is weighed down with remorse for having taken justice into his own hands and yearning for Eleonora, the woman he's lost, when the mystery opens. A local wealthy industrialist - fiercely loved and respected by everyone he knew - has been found murdered in his grand villa in the Fiesole hills.

During a remote meeting, an official watches from Lisbon as his colleague, Inácio Machado, a Portuguese diplomat based in London's Portuguese embassy, dies of what looks to be a heart attack. When no one comes into the room to Inácio's aid, he tries frantically to contact the embassy to get immediate help. He tries and tries again, but no one picks up the phone and he's forced to call the British emergency services. When local police arrive, they walk into a disturbing scene. Everyone inside the building is dead, all seemingly from the same cause.

Jeppe Kørner, on leave from the police force and nursing a broken heart, has taken refuge on the island of Bornholm for the winter. Also on the island is Esther de Laurenti, a writer working on a biography on a female anthropologist with a mysterious past and coming to terms with her own crushing sense of loneliness in the wake of a dear friend's death. When Jeppe lends a helping hand at the island's local sawmill, he begins to realize that the island may not be the peaceful refuge it appears to be.

A suicide. A drowned man. A sudden death. For some people it's just another day's work. In Amsterdam there's a council department known affectionately as the Lonely Funerals team. It exists to arrange burials for the abandoned or unknown dead, with the care and dignity that every life deserves. Pieter Posthumus hasn't been doing the job long, but he's determined to do it well. He finds that he cares deeply about the people whose files land on his desk.

It's late August in Shady Hollow, and intrepid reporter Vera Vixen agrees to chaperone the school's annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture. Naturally, her good friend Lenore Lee comes along to help her. But when the group enters the tomb one morning, they find a corpse that is distinctly more. . . modern than expected. Digging deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in the recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues-including Lenore's sister, Ligeia.

Three brutal attacks. One near-fatal beating. A deadly score to settle. DI Jack Brady is riding high after the successful outcome of his previous case, but his world is about to come crashing down. There's a serial rapist plaguing the streets of Whitley Bay. Three young women have been horribly abused, and his boss and the press are screaming for answers. Everything seems to point to his old friend and foe, gangster Martin Madley, though Brady still struggles to believe he's capable of such acts.

A minute can make all the difference.... Pieter Posthumus is enjoying a quiet drink in his favourite bar when the screaming starts. A minute later the owner of the guesthouse next door rushes in: one of her tenants has been murdered. Marloes, the guesthouse owner, is an odd but kind soul. Posthumus cannot believe it when she is arrested - for both her tenant Zig's murder and another death years before. He knows there are questions unanswered: what is the link between the two cases?

Nuala knows nothing of her husband James' past. He made her swear that she would never contact his family and never, ever visit the place he was from. But now James is dead, and Nuala is alone. Grieving and desperate, she decides to ignore his warning. Nuala is about to find out that some secrets are better left buried - and that uncovering the truth about the man she married will have terrible consequences....

Sam is catapulted back to those teenage years spent with her best friends, teasing out each other's secrets by announcing things they had never, ever done. Pushing each other's boundaries, growing closer and growing up. If only they had stopped there. But they added their own rules. They went from sharing secrets to sharing firsts. First kisses, first drinks, first fake IDs. And that was before it all went spiralling out of control. Before that day in the woods ended it all.

Maggie is a husband watcher. A snooper, a marriage doctor, a destroyer of dreams, a killer of happy ever afters. She runs her own private detective agency specialising in catching those who cheat. Helene is a husband catcher. A beautiful wife, a doting stepmother, a perfect homemaker and a dazzling presence at parties. She has landed herself with one of the most eligible bachelors in town - handsome property developer Gabe Moreau. Alice is just a teenager. A perfect daughter to Gabe, a kind stepchild to Helene, a tragic girl to a dead mother.

A stunning and original debut crime thriller starring Harry Kent, a police surgeon who uncovers a shocking conspiracy after a hostage situation goes wrong. Dr Harry Kent likes to keep busy: juggling hospital duties with his work as a police surgeon for the Metropolitan Police - anything to ward off the memories of his time as an army medic. Usually the police work means minor injuries and mental health assessments.

This is the tale of three 14-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe. Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle.

Josie is at rock bottom. Burned out, heartbroken and recovering from an abusive relationship, she lives a haunted existence after returning to her isolated hometown on the edge of the Forest of Dean. Josie's hopes of a fresh start are horribly derailed when she stumbles across a dead woman's decaying, ant-infested body in the woods. The grim discovery sends her into a downward spiral, forcing her to face uncomfortable truths about the victim and her own past - all whilst battling the swarming black ants that seem to have burrowed into her mind . . . and her flesh.

In this spellbinding collection, Sara Paretsky showcases her extraordinary talents with 14 short stories, including one new V.I. story and seven other classics featuring the indomitable detective. In 'Miss Bianca' a young girl becomes involved in espionage when she befriends a mouse in a laboratory that is conducting dark experiments. Ten-year-old V.I. Warshawski appears in 'Wildcat', embarking on her very first investigation to save her father.

It's a brutal winter in Des Moines, Iowa, and the city is gripped by fear. A serial attacker known as the Sin Eater is stalking women and has just struck again. It's a tough time and a tough place for Riley Fisher, a former small-town sergeant, to be reporting for duty as an FBI agent on her first assignment. Teamed with a man she's not sure she can trust and struggling to prove herself - while fighting the pull of her old life and family dramas - Riley is tasked with investigating a vicious death threat against the newly elected female state governor.

Against the backdrop of pre-WWII Berlin, British pianist Audrey James and her best friend Isle face the imminent threat of Nazi oppression. When Ilse's family disappears and Nazi officers confiscate their home, Audrey becomes their housekeeper and Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic-a prisoner in her own home. As borders close and rumours of death camps swirl, Audrey makes the life-changing decision to join the covert resistance and risk everything to protect her loved ones.

What would you do to protect your family? Tell a lie? Break the law? Or solve the problem...for good? The body in Lauren James' back garden belongs to her ex-boyfriend, Ritchie. DI Gardner thinks it's an open-and-shut case. But he reckoned without the interference of Lauren's father, local businessman and aspiring politician Walter James. And he couldn't know about the secrets that everyone involved wants to hide.

A provocative thriller posing a dangerous question: what if federal income tax is illegal? The 16th Amendment to the Constitution legalized federal income tax, but what if there were problems with the 1913 ratification of that amendment? Problems that call into question decades of tax collecting and could even bring down the US economy?