Showing results by publisher "Zaffre" in All Categories

Dover 1940 As firebombs fall on Dover, Edie Castle's life is thrown into turmoil when the garage where she lives and works is damaged and her beloved boss is arrested. With no job and nowhere else to go, Edie returns to Castle's Café and her formidable mother, Nellie. Living with her mother is never easy, but tensions reach boiling point when an old friend of Nellie's arrives looking for a place to stay. Meanwhile, desperate to clear her boss's name, Edie turns to his nephew for help.

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a break. Sure, his life has been average at best and, yes, he has never has quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Bud Lites in paradise with his girlfriend Mara, things are starting to look up. Then the sun explodes. With the island suddenly plunged in darkness, the ultra-rich guests hijack the remaining supplies and declare themselves as the new ruling class.

The landline rings as Agneta is waving off her grandchildren. Just one word comes out of the receiver: 'Geiger'. For decades, Agneta has always known that this moment would come, but she is shaken. She knows what it means. Retrieving her weapon from its hiding place, she attaches the silencer and creeps up behind her husband before pressing the barrel to his temple. Then she squeezes the trigger and disappears - leaving behind her wallet and keys.

When Lily returns home to her aunt's manor house, she discovers that in order to inherit, she and her estranged cousins must stay together over the Christmas week and take part in a family tradition: the annual treasure hunt. But as they are drawn deeper into the game, the clues seem to point not to the deeds to the manor house, but to the key to a 20-year-old mystery: what really happened to Lily's mother? As a snowstorm cuts them off from the village, it becomes apparent that the game has turned deadly and that Lily is fighting for more than just an inheritance.

It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living alone with her eccentric mother - who conducts seances for the local Ludthorpe community - she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life. When the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. But Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep. Then Lucy goes missing.

When Nicola's husband, Dominic, retires they decide not to spend their days finding hobbies to fill the time until Countdown is on. Instead, they fulfil their life-long fantasy of buying a country house and filling it with their dearest friends. Reliving their youth and spending their children's inheritance. Joined by seven of their friends they club together to invest in a château in Normandy. Group dinners, fine wine, beautiful scenery - they're living the dream!

At the heart of Dover's Market Square lies the Castle's Café. A bustling, homely place run by the formidable Nellie Castle and her six children. Since the scandalous birth of her beloved son 10 years before, Marianne, Nellie's eldest daughter, has preferred to stay in the kitchen, hidden away from the town gossips. Overcome with shame, Marianne has never revealed the name of Donny's father - not even to her own mother. But with World War II just around the corner, Marianne's past catches up with her. And suddenly the lives of the Castle family become a lot more complicated.

Years of Hyksos rule have seen the ruin and suffering of a once-mighty Egypt. Though Pharaoh is now restored to his rightful throne, his power fragile as some seek to take advantage of the ensuing chaos following the overthrowing of the Hyksos. Desperate to unite the two divided kingdoms of Egypt under Pharaoh's rule, great mage Taita sends his protégé, Piay, to discover the answer to a millennia-old riddle which has the power to secure the fate of Egypt forever. But in the chaos of war, a dark evil has thrived.

Globetrotter Addie Macrae always follows her wanderlust. As a travel consultant, she jet sets around the world - anywhere but Scotland. But when she's sent on assignment to help a struggling family-run tour company in the Highlands - and save her own job - Addie packs away her emotional baggage and turns on the professional charm.

Scott Jericho thought he'd worked his last case. Fresh out of jail, the disgraced former detective is forced to seek refuge with the fairground family he once rejected. Then a series of bizarre murders comes to light - deaths that echo a century-old fairground legend. The police can't connect the victims. But Jericho knows how the legend goes; that more murders are certain to follow. As Jericho unpicks the deadly mystery, a terrifying question haunts him. As a direct descendant of one of the victims in the legend, is Jericho next on the killer's list?

Despite living firmly in her comfort zone, Frankie McKenzie feels unsettled. She can't help feeling something's missing. Is it a home to call her own? Travel? A more rewarding job? A relationship? Before she can work it out, she dies in a freak kebab-related accident after yet another dud of a first date.

After serving a lengthy sentence for the murder of her husband, Dolly Rawlins is free from prison. And she's only got one thing on her mind: the diamonds she stashed before the police caught her. But there are people waiting for Dolly on the outside ­- tough ex-prisoners who know about the diamonds, and they all want a cut. Also waiting for Dolly is DS Mike Withey. He holds her personally responsible for the death of his sister in the diamond raid 10 years earlier. And he wants her back inside. Dolly Rawlins has other plans.

Following a controversial mission in Tajikistan, SAS loner Jamie 'Geordie' Carter has spent the past six months in Regiment purgatory. Now he's brought in from the cold and assigned to a new squadron. It's a fresh start for Carter. Or so it seems. But there are some bad apples in his troop, and troubling rumours about the company they keep. And when someone tries to silence him, Carter is unexpectedly pulled from the team. Instead, he's given an even more deadly assignment.

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

Mortuary technician Cassie Raven is shocked to find the body of Bronte, a talented singer on the brink of stardom, in her fridge. The two of them were once schoolmates, although not exactly friends . . . The police say Bronte jumped from her tenth-floor apartment, but Cassie's instincts are telling her it's murder. The death ignites a social media frenzy, and when police watchdog Phyllida Flyte is sent in to assess the handling of the case she is the only one willing to listen to Cassie.

When fiercely independent chambermaid Nancy Nettleton first moved to London and the Buckingham hotel, the last thing on her mind was finding love, let alone falling for the debonair demonstration dancer Raymond de Guise. As the festive season approaches, life at the exclusive hotel is busier than ever, with guests arriving from around the world, seeking comfort, relaxation and refuge as tensions build across Europe and it looks like another war is imminent.

1942, Manchester. World War II is in full swing, and Lily Mullins is determined to do her bit for the war effort. Her friends and sweetheart have all joined up, and Lily's sure there must be a role for her that goes further than knitting socks for the troops! When she decides to volunteer for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, Lily soon discovers that she has a talent as a wireless operator. Helped along the way by a special gang of girls, she finds strengths she didn't know she had and realises that the safety of the country might just be in her hands....

Sweden, 1942—Two old friends meet. They are cousins. One is Prince George, Duke of Kent, brother of the King of England. The other is Prince Philipp von Hessen, a committed Nazi and close friend of Adolf Hitler. Days later, the Prince George is killed in a plane crash in the north of Scotland. The official story is that it was an accident—but not everyone is convinced. There is even a suggestion that the Duke's plane was sabotaged, but with no evidence, Cambridge spy Tom Wilde is sent north to discover the truth . . .

Against all the odds, Dolly Rawlins and her gangland widows managed the impossible: a heist their husbands had failed to pull off - at the cost of their lives. But though they may be in the money, they're far from easy street. Shocked by her husband's betrayal, Dolly discovers Harry Rawlins isn't dead. He knows where the four women are and he wants them to pay. And he doesn't just mean getting his hands on the money. The women can't keep running. They have to get Harry out of their lives for good. But can they outwit a criminal mastermind who won't hesitate to kill?

It's late at night, and the rain is pouring down on the Dublin city streets. A mother is grieving for her dead child. She stands silently outside the home of the teenage boy she believes responsible. She watches.... In a kitchen on the same square, a girl waits anxiously for her mum to come home. She knows exactly where she is, but she knows she cannot reach her. A few doors down, and a widow sits alone in her room. She has just delivered a bombshell to her family during dinner, and her life is about to change forever.