Piranha to Scurfy

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Jonathan Gash

On a dark and rainy night, amorous antiques dealer Lovejoy and his lady of the moment witness a car being forced off the road and over an embankment; the mortally injured driver turns out to be Leckie, a fellow antiques dealer and old army chum. Lovejoy's search for the villains is spiced with the promise of a valuable cache of antiques hidden somewhere at the end of the line. Spirited, vivid writing and a marvelously varied cast of characters from the shadier side of the antiques world make this Jonathon Gash's best book to date.

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Susannah Stacey

As the second most haunted village in Kent, Biddinghurst does not have to wait 'til Hallowe'en to have a Haunted House at its fête. But when two villagers are found dead in one day, the visiting ghost-hunter finds that these new murders are taking local attention away from historic hauntings. Who is the ghostly girl in the garden of the Old Rectory? Who are the real victims of which crimes? Join Superintendent Bone and Inspector Locker as they work to solve these mysteries, while Grizel and Cha go house-hunting and their two cats settle their domestic differences.

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John Bingham

Nineteen years is a long time. But when Peter Harding and Philip Bartels meet up again in the French countryside of their youth, the history and the dark secrets it holds are still there. tempered only slightly by time. The two men share more than a past friendship. Decades earlier, trapped in disenchanted marriage with his wife, Beatrice, Philip meets and falls in love with the graceful, charming Lorna Dickson. Overcome by the prospect of a humiliating divorce, Philip makes the decision to poison Beatrice. But when he invites his best friend, Peter, to meet his mistress at lunch one day, he unwittingly sets off a shocking chain of events that will forever change the lives of everyone involved. Now available for the first time in over twenty years, Five Roundabouts to Heaven is one of master writer and storyteller John Bingham's greatest works. With a chilling, expertly calibrated plot and mesmerizing prose, it is the powerful study of how murder can SO easily enter the minds of ordinary people.

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Eliot Pattison

When disgraced former inspector, Shan Tao Yun joins a group of reverent Tibetans returning a sacred artefact to its home, it seems he has at last found the peace he has struggled for since leaving prison. What starts as a spiritual pilgrimage, however, quickly turns into a desperate flight through the Tibetan wilderness as the outlawed monk who guides them is murdered and Sham discovers that the artefact has recently been stolen from the Chinese army. But why is the army so desperate to find the artefact entrusted to Shan? Why is an aged medicine lama being stalked by government agents? Why has an American woman, a geologist for an oil company, abandoned the project and fled into the mountains? Shan discovers not answers, but only new mysteries as he is drawn to such unexpected places as the raucous headquarters base of the Western oil venture and a monastery that seems more attuned to the teachings of the party than those of Buddha. And the further he travels into the mountains, the more Shan realises that what is at stake is not only justice but the spiritual survival of those who have joined his strange quest. At the heart of Pattison's powerful tale is a story of a brave, oppressed people who have learned to endure by drawing strength from their land and their rich spiritual traditions.