Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Suspense

Villanelle is the ultimate assassin. Beautiful and heartless, she's been trained to be the best. Her latest target is a firebrand Russian leader whose extreme political theories threaten to unleash global conflict. But lying in wait for Villanelle is intelligence officer Eve Polastri. A hunter by nature, fiercely clever, Eve is ready to pursue her adversary wherever the search leads her. And so starts a deadly game between two brilliant and determined female protagonists…

AD 260 - Betrayed by his most trusted adviser, the Roman Emperor Valerian has been captured by the Sassanid barbarians. Ballista looks on helplessly, but vows to avenge those who have brought the empire to the brink of destruction with their treachery. First he must decide what price he will pay for his own freedom. Only the fearless and those whom the gods will spare from hell can now save the empire from a catastrophic ending. Ballista, the Warrior of Rome, faces his greatest challenge yet.

Meet Happy Doll. Hap to his friends. He's a LA private detective living a quiet life along with his beloved half-Chihuahua, half-terrier, George. He's getting by just fine When he's not walking George or sipping tequila, Hap works nights at the Thai Miracle Spa, protecting the women who work there from clients who won't take 'no' for an answer. Until he kills a man. Usually Doll avoids trouble by following his two basic rules: bark loudly and act first. But after a deadly fight with a customer, even he finds himself wildly out of his depth.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for - but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important - so terrifying - that they will exterminate anyone in their way.

The body of a woman has been discovered inside the gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth. An examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue. As Kay Scarpetta pieces together the evidence, she draws herself and her team deeper into the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology and shocking corruption at the highest level.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

Vincent Naylor is a professional thief; just 10 days out of jail and he's preparing his next robbery. But his plan is already unraveling. Maura Coady, a retired nun, calls Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey believing there's something suspicious happening in her Dublin backstreet. Maura's call inadvertently unleashes a storm of violence that will engulf Naylor and force Tidey to make a deadly choice.

The life of secret agent James Bond has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency…until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island, where Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi atrocity expert in a world-menacing conspiracy. Stripped of all professional aids, Bond faces, unarmed, the monstrous devices of Colonel Sun....

Last year, DS Katie Maguire and her team destroyed the biggest drug trafficker in Cork. So how is the city's drug trade at an all-time high? Meanwhile, a spate of violent attacks which leave victims severely disabled has brought confidence in the Garda to an all-time low. As Katie investigates, she realises that the two cases might be connected. Someone is using brain-damaged victims to smuggle drugs into the country. And the only way to find out more is to go in undercover....

Rosa has arrived in London from Poland to look for her younger brother, Mikhail. He is supposed to be staying with their English father, but when she visits the house she finds it's locked up, and there's no sign of either of them. Stef is running away from her boyfriend, Oliver. Frightened, friendless and far from her family, she needs somewhere to hide. All three find refuge at 11 Bellevue Gardens. Here its owner, Leonie, once herself found sanctuary and now opens her house to others in need.

Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia with his partner and lover, a fiery UK-based Treadstone agent code-named Nova. Their job was to rescue a Russian scientist and activist, the leader of an anti-Putin protest movement, who'd recently been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt. They failed. Now, three years later, everything has changed for Bourne. Nova is gone, killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bourne is a lone operative working in the shadows for Treadstone. He's ready for a new mission when his handler brings him shocking news.

It's Saturday evening, 9th March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party. Outside, Edinburgh is bustling. It’s full of the great and the good and the idiot sons of the rich, here for a Parliament that will take Scotland by the shoulders and turn it from England to face Europe. Mary doesn't know that her palace is surrounded - that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They're coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her.

You see the people you work with every day, but what can't you see? Amira, Sarah, Paula, Ewan and Charlie have worked together for years - they know how each other likes their coffee, whose love life is a mess, whose children keep them up at night. But their comfortable routine life is suddenly shattered when an aggressive new boss walks in.... Now there's something chilling in the air. Who secretly hates everyone? Who is tortured by their past? Who is capable of murder?

Millie Spark can kill anyone. A special effects make-up artist, her talent is to create realistic scenes of bloody violence. Then, one day, she wakes to find her lover dead in her bed. Twenty-five years later, her sentence for murder served, Millicent is ready to give up on her broken life - until she meets troubled film student and reluctant petty thief Jerry. Together, they begin to discover that all was not what it seemed on that fateful night...and someone doesn't want them to find out why.

When Robbie Bishop, star midfielder for the Bradfield Vics, is poisoned by a rare and deadly toxin, profiler Dr Tony Hill and trusted colleague DCI Carol Jordan have their work cut out for them. Then a bomb explodes in the football stadium, causing massive casualties - and another man dies from poisoning. Is there a link between the cases? What are the motives for these crimes? The clock is ticking, and the death toll keeps rising....

When a hotelier announces that he will be converting Springwood Hall into a smart country hotel, his plan is greeted with a chorus of local disapproval, led by the fearsome Hope Mapple, head of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Bamford. So the grand opening, to which all are invited, promises to be a lively affair, particularly since Hope is planning a disruptive protest "streak". However, Hope is to be unwittingly upstaged by the discovery of a recently murdered body on the premises.

One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a bundle of rags floating in the Blackwater River. It is the bloated body of Father Heaney. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the marks of garrotting wire. Worse still, he has been castrated. When a second priest is found murdered, his body bruised and beaten and the same savage wound hidden beneath his soutane, Detective Inspector Katie Maguire finds evidence of a sinister cover-up at St Joseph's Orphanage.

London is known for its bustle and intrigues, but the sedate English countryside can host - or hide - any number of secrets. Frances, the widowed Countess of Harleigh, needs a venue for her sister Lily's imminent wedding, away from prying eyes. Risings, George Hazleton's family estate in Hampshire, is a perfect choice, and soon Frances, her beloved George, and other guests have gathered to enjoy the usual country pursuits - shooting, horse riding, and romantic interludes in secluded gardens.

Ruth and Lucy are called to the brutal killing of young actress, and it seems that her murder might be connected to a cover up of serious sexual misconduct in London’s film industry. However, when the investigation is thwarted at every turn, they begin to wonder if they will ever solve the case. When a lucky break turns their attention to a man suspected of stalking the actress, Ruth and Lucy think they now have the prime suspect in their sights. With the clock ticking, will they be able to collect enough evidence to charge the man before he escapes abroad?

Dan Starkey arrives on Wrathlin Island to investigate the residents' belief that the Messiah is alive, female, and about to start school there: It's not a commission that turns up everyday. He finds a mess of religious intolerance and illicit drinking in a tiny community that is big on religious fervour but small on hospitality. Apart from the Messiah's mum of course, who's clung to her sanity. And her lager.