Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in All Categories

When their father dies, none of the three Harcourt girls are particularly upset. The loss of the family's income, however, is not something so easily overcome. When their mother Anna discovers that they have been left penniless, she decides to move them out of London and back to her hometown in Scotland.

When William X dies, the duchy of Aquitaine is left to his 15-year-old daughter, Eleanor. But such a position for an unmarried woman puts the whole kingdom at risk. So on his deathbed William made a will that would ensure his daughter’s protection: he promised her hand in marriage to the future King of France. Eleanor grows into a romantic and beautiful queen, but she has inherited the will of a king, determined to rule Aquitaine using her husband’s power as King of France. Her

The Skelf women are back on an even keel after everything they've been through. But when a funeral they're conducting is attacked by a drone, Jenny fears they're in the middle of an Edinburgh gangland vendetta. At the same time, Yana, a Ukrainian member of the refugee choir that plays with Dorothy's band, has gone missing. Searching for her leads Dorothy into strange and ominous territory. And Brodie, the newest member of the extended Skelf family, comes to Hannah with a case: Something or someone has been disturbing the grave of his stillborn son.

It is November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night, 1930. Bonfires are blazing, rockets burst. In a country lane, revellers discover a car that has been set on fire. At first they assume that this is the work of vandals taking the Guy Fawkes spirit a little too far, then they notice, sitting at the wheel, a body, charred beyond recognition. The initial assumption is that the owner of the car, Mr William Hodge, a successful travelling vacuum cleaner salesman has taken his own life by flooding the car with petrol and lighting a match.

On a stifling summer's day, 11-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. 'Jack's in charge,' she said. 'I won't be long.' But she never comes back. Three years later, mum-to-be Catherine wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note that says: 'I could have killed you'. Meanwhile Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother. But the truth can be a dangerous thing....

Cait is a bookshop owner and book nerd. Her social life revolves around her mobile bookselling service, which hand-picks titles for elderly clients, particularly the grandmotherly June. After a tough decade, Book Fiend is the last bookshop in the central business district and the last independent retailer on a street given over to high-end labels. Profits are small, but clients are loyal. When James breezes into Book Fiend, Cait realises life might hold more than her shop and her cat.

The small community of Akranes is devastated after a young man dies in a mysterious house fire. When Detective Elma and her colleagues from West Iceland CID discover the fire was arson, they become embroiled in an increasingly perplexing case. For the dead man's final online search raises fears that they could be investigating not one murder, but two.

The heat is on for DCC Bob Skinner. His career hangs by a thread, as a recent illness has given his enemies a weapon to use against him. A body found in the detritus of a flood is identified as the hated brother whose existence he has kept hidden for years. And an incendiary device destroys a valuable painting in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. As Skinner and his team tackle these crises, his wife Sarah, recovering from the loss of her parents, finds comfort with an old college lover.

A long buried and shocking secret has been uncovered. In 1940, President Roosevelt and Canada's Mackenzie King secretly agreed to abandon the Allies and make peace with Hitler if the Nazis successfully invaded Britain. Decades later, Soviet agents are ready to use this information to shatter the NATO alliance and use the ensuing geopolitical chaos to strengthen their position in Europe. Only one man stands in their way.

Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop. Now he needs to save a soul – his sister's. But to save her he has to find her and they’ve been separated since birth. When everyone Jack talks to about his sister dies horribly, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart. If he's going to save his sister, he's going to have to do what he does best - negotiate. But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price.

July 1794, and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Laurence Jago - clerk to the Foreign Office - is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press, and Laurence is a suspect. Then, he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly a suicide. Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence and that he was murdered.

“The dead can't speak to us,” Professor Madoc had said. But that was a lie. Sometimes, only an outsider can get to the truth. Patrick had been on the outside all his life. Thoughtful, but different, infuriating even to his own mother, his life changes when he follows an obsession with death to study anatomy at university. When he uncovers a crime that everybody else was too close to see, he proves finally that he has been right all along: Nothing is exactly as it seems. And there have been many more lies closer to home....

Dallas, November 2, 1963. Wayne Tedrow, Jr., has arrived to kill a man. The fee is $6,000. He finds himself instead in the middle of a cover-up following JFK’s assassination. There follows a hellish five-year ride through the sordid underbelly of public policy via Las Vegas, Howard Hughes, Vietnam, CIA dope dealing, Cuba, sleazy showbiz, racism and the Klan. This is the 1960s under Ellroy’s blistering lens, the icons of the era mingled with cops, killers, hoods and provocateurs.

1944. Paul Brandt, a German soldier, returns wounded and ashamed from the chaos of the Eastern front to find his village home existing in the dark shadow of an SS rest hut - a luxurious retreat for those who manage the concentration camps, run with the help of a small group of female prisoners. When Brandt glimpses one of these prisoners, he realises that he must find a way to access the hut. For inside is the woman to whom his fate has been tied since their arrest five years before, and now he must do all he can to protect her.

The British government is worried. Rumours have spread about a new monster in the armoury of the Irish terrorist movement: an utterly ruthless team of American special forces mercenaries. The top secret, top priority order goes out: seek and destroy - no matter where. For the four-man Sabre team this will be their toughest ever assignment...probing the inner sanctum of the IRA's terror machine, fighting in the bloody carnage and chaos of Ulster. Never before has so much been at stake.

Christmas: a time for family and festivity. Unless you’re in Adder’s Fork, home of the Essex Witch Museum, where it’s a time for ghostly spirits and demonic visits. In these 12 short stories, menacing ghosts and supernatural terrors haunt Rosie Strange and Sam Stone, as well as characters past and present from beyond the Essex Witch Museum. Featuring stories from The Strange Casebook as well as original short stories.

She tries hard to be the perfect mother, the perfect partner, the perfect daughter - but Ellie never seems to get it right. When an old friend from university re-enters her life, dark memories from Ellie's past begin to resurface. As Ellie starts to unravel some shocking and sinister realities, she realises that she must choose between keeping the family she loves - and facing the truth.

March, 1941. After Flo Butterworth loses everything in Manchester's Christmas Blitz, she decides to leave the area and join the Women's Land Army. Putting the past firmly behind her, she arrives at Rookery House in Norfolk hoping for a new start and a chance to do the gardening work she loves. The grip of war has intensified and growing more food is vital to keep the nation going. Thea buys an extra field to grow crops, and in the village, her sister Prue leads members of The Mother's Day Club and Women's Institute as they take on a derelict allotment.

Reckoned by those about him to be the most handsome man in the country, Edward IV has risen to the throne with the help of Warwick, the kingmaker. But even Warwick’s trusted advice cannot convince the king to ignore his passion for the beautiful widow Elizabeth Woodville – and when she refuses to become his mistress the two are married. Beloved of the people, Edward proves himself to be a strong king. Despite his mistresses, Elizabeth is loyal to the illustrious king, provding him with many children....

Power is shifting. Queen Elizabeth I is dying, James waiting to become King. Everywhere, there is opportunity to ascend. But who will thrive, and who will fail, under the new King? Will it be the scholar Francis Bacon, whose brilliant mind is the envy of the royal court? Or his hated rival the attorney Edward Coke, already acclaimed as the greatest lawyer of his generation? The Winding Stair tells the gripping story of these two founders of our modern world and their battle for power, pre-eminence - and the hand of the most eligible woman in the realm.