Banged Up

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Rosie Harris

A mother will do anything to protect her child ... Karen and Tudor Morgan have moved from a small mining community to the bustle and noise of Cardiff in search of a new life. Tudor longs to be a star entertainer and so Karen gets a job, leaving her husband to look after their young daughter Delia, doing stints at clubs in the evening, whenever he can get them. Until one day Tudor is arrested for begging and Karen is horrified to learn that he has been busking during the day and taking three-year-old Delia with him to collect the money. When Tudor comes out of prison he gets an honest job but soon he is back to his old ways. On the run, his life of petty crime quickly turns into something far more sinister and it is all Karen can do to ensure she and her daughter survive.

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Joseph Hansen

Fadeout is the first of Joseph Hansen's twelve classic mysteries featuring rugged Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who is contentedly gay. When entertainer Fox Olson's car plunges off a bridge in a storm, a death claim is filed, but where is Olson's body? As Brandstetter questions family, fans, and detractors, he grows certain Olson is still alive and that Dave must find him before the would-be killer does. Suspenseful and wry, shrewd and deeply felt, Fadeout remains as fresh today as when it startled readers more than thirty years ago.

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Catherine Ryan Hyde

Fourteen-year-old Angie and her mum are on the brink of homelessness ...again. The problem is her little sister, Sophie. Sophie has a form of autism, and a tendency to shriek. Home never seems to last long. Until they move in with Aunt Vi, across the fence from a huge Great Dane. Sophie falls in love, and begins to imitate the dog's calm nature.

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Laura Wilson

In 1987 Sheila Shand was given a suspended sentence for murdering her father. At her trial, it emerged that she, her mother and her sister, were all subject to brutal abuse at the hands of Leslie Shand. Years later, investigative journalist Amy Vaughan discovers letters and a newspaper cutting about the Shand case while clearing out her late mother's flat. Curious about the case, she decides to visit Sheila's mother who is in a care home. Amy herself had a difficult childhood, subjected to Munchausen By Proxy by her mother in order to keep the affections of Amy's father George. Then George appears on Amy's doorstep after a long absence, saying he is dying... As she pursues her investigation of the Shand case, Amy realises that there is more to the murder of Leslie than the police ever unearthed, including two long-buried skeletons in woods near the family's home ...