Kategoria BISAC: Fiction >> Crime

Thief, kleptomaniac... or innocent victim of a malevolent plot to implicate her?

That's Shirley Dale. First there had been the strange appearance of someone else's pocketbook on her person as she was getting on a crowded bus one evening. The next night when she was dining with the attractive Anthony Leigh, the flashy little purse of another woman mysteriously turned up in Shirley's own black hand-bag.

When she finds her employer's diamond brooch in the hem of her coat, Shirley flees in panic to Anthony for the help she so desperately needs. Anthony's devoted efforts...

When she had let down her case, she locked her bedroom door. And then she put out the light and climbed out of the window.

Marooned as a baby, Valentine Ryven has been on a deserted South Sea island for twenty years, before she is rescued and returned to civilization--as heiress to a great fortune.

However, since she was given up for dead, her inheritance had passed to cousin Eustace. Now that Valentine is back, Eustace stands to lose it all. Pressed by an intimidating villainess, the unworldly Valentine finds a way to let Eustace keep the money. But when she finds...

"Are you sure? Don't I inherit anything?"

"Not unless something happens to Miss Ann Vernon."

Ann Vernon won't marry her boyfriend Charles Anstruther, opting instead to become secretary to an old lady. She accompanies Mrs Halliday aboard the cruise-ship Emma, which eventually drops anchor at Loch Dhu, a remote and almost deserted Scottish lake. But what monstrous terror holds the region in its thrall? What is the secret of the island to which Ann gets taken? And what does Charles Anstruther find there when he comes to look for Ann?

Fear by...

A singularly compelling debut novel, about a desert where people go to escape their past, and a truck driver who finds himself at risk when he falls in love with a mysterious woman.

Ben Jones lives a quiet, hardscrabble life, working as a trucker on Route 117, a little-travelled road in a remote region of the Utah desert which serves as a haven for fugitives and others looking to hide from the world. For many of the desert's inhabitants, Ben's visits are their only contact with the outside world, and the only landmark worth noting is a once-famous roadside diner that hasn't...

Underneath the surface of a small Central Texas town, where people know each other and adhere to the old values of hard work and neighborliness, a dark secret life flows silently. People congregate at an old-time country store and at their churches, but are not immune to the modern complications of divorce and remarriage-and murder.

Carla, a petite pretty girl, is one of three sisters in a poor but respectable family. Unlike her passionate, acting-out younger sister, she never gives her parents a moment's trouble. Nor is she like her self-sacrificing older sister, June. Carla harbors a...

Life Below Decks - Meet The Crew: You want the truth? Listen to their stories and decide for yourself: Pete Grippa, the scam artist who knows a lot less than he thinks; Viktor Viktorious, the young boxer from Poland smuggled in by the Russian mafia so he can work off his murdered father's debt; Dan Tucker, the ring-man and enforcer, changed beyond recognition by love and shame; Andrea Goodhall, high-class escort and ex-wife of a prominent local politician; 'Fahrenheit' Freddy Smith, a fine musician when he's not taking the drugs he sells; Pepi the Sicilian pizza maker driving a cab...

A Cold Death in Amsterdam is a smart and engaging police procedural about a Dutch detective struggling to come to terms with her past.

When an Afrikaans police captain is murdered in a small South African country town, Detective Emmanuel Cooper must navigate his way through the labyrinthine racial and social divisions that split the community. And as the National Party introduces the laws to support the system of apartheid, Emmanuel struggles - much like Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko - to remain a good man in the face of astonishing power. In a considered but very commercial novel, Malla Nunn combines a compelling plot with a thoughtful and complex portrayal of a fascinating period of history, illustrating the human...

"He had his enemies, I suppose?"

"Disputes, you mean? Over the merits of Puccini and Wagner, Strauss and Verdi But people do not entice an old man from his home many years afterwards to avenge Wagner or Puccini "

It was a shock to the Duchess of Steynes when her son announced his engagement to the grand-daughter of an obscure violinist, Julius Anthony; but still more of a shock was the discovery of Anthony's murdered body in the cinema at which he played.

Dr. Constantine and Detective-Inspector Arkwright join forces in their third (and final) case...

"There'll be blue murder here before Christmas "

A number of parties heading for a luxurious holiday spot, are forced by severe winter weather to put up at the 'Noah's Ark', a hostelry they will share with Dr. Constantine, a shrewd chess master and keen observer of all around him. Other guests include bestselling novelist Angus Stuart, the aristocratic Romsey family, a pair of old spinster sisters, and a galloping major whose horseplay gets him into hot water - and then gets him murdered.

Who is the masked intruder who causes such a commotion on the first night? Who...

Constantine reflected on the various means dentists have at their disposal, should they wish to silence their patients ...

Mr Humphrey Davenport, society dentist, has an embarrassing problem - he has managed to get locked out of his own surgery. And to make matters worse, Mrs Charles Miller is locked inside, minus her false teeth. When the door is finally opened, the patient is found with her throat cut.

Dr. Constantine, a fellow patient at the clinic, is a witness to the gruesome discovery. He lends his chess player's brain to solving a locked room mystery...

"The blood's coming from a cut at the back of his neck," she said slowly. "He couldn't have done that in falling. Some one must have--"

Sir Adam Braid, the distinguished artist, was a cantankerous old man. Not well-liked by most of his family and associates, he was about to add one more enemy to the list by changing his will ... but not before death paid a visit to his London flat, and Sir Adam was found stabbed through the neck.

Chief-Inspector Fenn takes charge of the case and soon notices the butler seems more frightened than shocked - but what if anything,...

News travels quickly and mysteriously on board ship. By the time lunch was over, the rumour began to spread that Mr. Smith's death had not been due to natural causes.

The bibulous Mr Smith was no pillar of virtue. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Enriqueta, he met someone he knew on board at midnight - and was strangled. Chief Inspector Shand of the Yard, a fellow traveller on the luxury liner, takes on the case, ably assisted by his friend Jasper Mellish. At first the only clue is what the steward saw: a bandaged face above a set of green pyjamas. But surely the...

There was something about those hands, with their strangely crisped fingers, as though they had been arrested in the very act of closing, that somehow gave the lie to the woman's attitude of sleep.

A howling gale ... A lonely farmhouse ... the tread of a mysterious stranger ... and then the corpse of a beautiful blonde, seemingly stopped in the act of writing.

This is all a bit much for local bobby PC Gunnet, especially when it seems the dead - and aristocratic - woman shouldn't even have been there in the first place. But nonetheless the owner of the farm, John...

From the author of Family Business and Lucifer's Children comes FAMILY BUSINESS: Live Bait, an epic novel of criminal activity and unimaginable atrocities which span two rural counties. Worlds collide when Allen Chambers, pit bull breed advocate and country boy, begins his search for his father, who has gone missing during a weekend fishing trip. Allen's hunt will lead him to an epicenter of criminal activity, with ties as far-reaching as Kansas City. The delicate ecosystem of backwoods dogfights, crooked lawmen, hidden methamphetamine cook sheds, narcotics trafficking and prostitution...

The year is 1972. America is awash in violence, and Los Angeles is drowning in it. The gruesome Tate-LaBianca slayings by the Manson Family attempting to ignite a Helter Skelter race war remain front page news as the bizarre trial unfolds. With the hot embers of racial hatred that ignited the Watts Riots still smoldering just below the surface, the tension makes LA's smoggy air even harder to breathe. Most folks go about their daily routines and simply hope for the best.

Max Stoller isn't like most people. Confident he can make a difference, and anxious to test his mettle, the naive...

Frankie Bosser has been lying low in Italy for three years after the accidental shooting of a policeman in England. When he hears about his father's sudden death, he decides to risk all to return home for his funeral. On arrival, he finds out that his father was actually the victim of a beating, so he decides to hang around to see if he can find the person responsible. While killing time with old friend Jason Campbell, Frankie realises that he won't have to look very far for the killer at all. And when their two worlds collide the only outcome can be a bloody mess.

Chris Small is an ordinary guy working in an off-licence in the London suburbs and living in the local YMCA. Both are just temporary measures, at least that's what he tells himself. Then one day Chris is mugged while taking the shop's money to the night-safe, and suddenly his world is turned upside down. As he trys to find out the identity of his attacker, Chris is drawn into some things he would normally leave alone, whilst trying to make up his mind about the attentions of three women.

Five criminals. Two forgeries. And one masterpiece of a heist.

Violet Winters-a professional thief born of a good, honest thief-and-con-artist stock- has been offered the heist of a lifetime. Steal a priceless Salvador Dali from the security-obsessed chairman of the Kilchester Bank and replace it with a forgery.

The fact that the "painting" is a signed, blank canvas doesn't matter. It's the challenge that gives Violet that familiar, addicting rush of adrenaline. Her quarry rests in a converted underground Cold War bunker. One way in, one way out. No margin for error.

But the...