Yet, even as he matches wits with his seemingly clairvoyant opponent, Gurney’s tragedy-marred past rises up to haunt him, his marriage approaches a dangerous precipice, and finally, a dark, cold fear builds that he’s met an adversary who can’t be stopped.In the end, fighting to keep his bearings amid a whirlwind of menace and destruction, Gurney sees the truth of what he’s become – what we all become when guilty memories fester – and how his wife Madeleine’s clear-eyed advice may be the only answer that makes sense.A work that defies easy labels -- at once a propulsive masterpiece of suspense and an absorbing immersion in the lives of characters so real we seem to hear their heartbeats – Think of a Number is a novel you’ll not soon forget.

    After the death of her only child, 73 handwritten notebooks came to light, from single jots to lists, to full outlines of memorable plots and characters, plus grocery and schedule memos from a bountiful creative mind - a complex web of connections to unravel and link. Actual notebook page reproductions. 2 unpublished Hercule Poirot short stories: "The Capture of Cerebrus", and "The Incident of the Dog's Ball".

    The novel is the first in a new series featuring the Butterfield Institute, a Manhattan sex therapy clinic employing psychiatrist Dr. Morgan Snow. One of Morgan's patients, the clever and selective call girl Cleo Thane, has written a memoir full of thinly disguised portraits of her clients, powerful men with odd fantasies and fetishes. She leaves this potentially explosive manuscript with Dr. Snow and then misses several appointments, causing Morgan to suspect foul play. Yet NYPD Det. Noah Jordain and his team, diligently pursuing leads in what's become a gory, ritualistic series of prostitute murders, have no evidence that Cleo, whose clientele puts her in a class by herself, might be a victim. Noah and Morgan are drawn to each other, but when Morgan can't persuade Noah to devote more effort to the search for Cleo, she determines to go undercover and meet Cleo's principal clients herself. Ill-equipped for this masquerade, Morgan is soon in over her head and in peril. The mystery takes second place to the catalogue of sexual eccentricities, but Cleo is an engaging guide to the world of dysfunction Rose painstakingly constructs.

    The Secretary of the Presidency of the Republic is murdered at the former home of the Marquesa de Santos, known as the House of Exchanges, a sophisticated brothel where secret meetings take place. Under the guise of a medical clinic, the brothel is run by a scientist obsessed with the study of female sexual fantasies. During the criminal investigation, a forensic expert who frequents the House comes face to face with a rogue from Cais do Porto possibly involved in the murder. The two begin a competition to figure out who is the greatest seducer.

    And, like his seventeen previous books, it is destined for a top place on bestseller lists everywhere. In New York, Denver, Paris and Berlin, four people have died separately in apparent accidents. Two women -- the widows of two of the dead -- find themselves under ruthless attack and are drawn together in fear, confusion and for mutual protection. But are they being targeted because one of them is the prosecution witness at a famous criminal trial? Or is there a connection to the mystery behind their husband's deaths? Meanwhile, Tanner Kingsley, Chief Executive of an international Think Tank created only seven years ago, is on the cusp of an amazing discovery which could alter the future of the world. If properly handled, the outcome of this could deliver unbelievable power into the company's hands. But are the mysterious deaths connected to this volatile secret? And can it be further protected? Thrown together, the women could not be more different: Diane Stevens is a well-connected, affluent artist from the Upper East Side. Philadelphia neighbourhood with a new 'uncle' every month, believed she had at last found safety and contentment in Paris, married to a brilliant scientist. Taut with suspense and vivid characterization, and with an unnervingly realistic premise that could alter our lives, ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK is Sheldon at the top of his form.

    Just after Great War, there are few jobs available and the couple are desperately short of money. Restless for excitement, they decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd.—"willing to do anything, go anywhere." Hiring themselves out proves to be a smart move for the couple. In their first assignment for the mysterious Mr. Whittingtont, all Tuppence has to do in their first job is take an all-expense paid trip to Paris and pose as an American named Jane Finn. But with the assignment comes a bribe to keep quiet, a threat to her life, and the disappearance of her new employer. Now their newest job are playing detective.Where is the real Jane Finn? The mere mention of her name produces a very strange reaction all over London. So strange, in fact, that they decided to find this mysterious missing lady. She has been missing for five years. And neither her body nor the secret documents she was carrying have ever been found. Now post-war England's economic recovery depends on finding her and getting the papers back. But he two young working undercover for the British ministry know only that her name and the only photo of her is in the hands of her rich American cousin. It isn’t long before they find themselves plunged into more danger than they ever could have imagined—a danger that could put an abrupt end to their business… and their lives.

    Then three stories break: an attempted suicide, a hijack, and a takeover bid. They seem unrelated – until Evening Post reporters ask questions. Why is a Jamaican bank in trouble? Who drove the Rolls-Royce seen near the raid? Who was the man with gunshot wounds? As the day wears on, new questions arise – about paper money.

    from the French "D'entre les Morts" by Geoffrey Sainsbury. First published as "The Living and the Dead" in Great Britain in 1956.

    Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he’ll murder Haines’s wife if Haines will murder Bruno’s father. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy finds himself trapped in Highsmith’s perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary crimes. The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith’s prolific career, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday life.

    In the AFC Championship game against Denver, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually got into the game. With a 17-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provided what was arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he became a national laughingstock and, of course, was immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams.But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent, Arnie, find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds Arnie finally locates just such a team and informs Rick that, miraculously, he can in fact now be a starting quarterback–for the mighty Panthers of Parma, Italy.Yes, Italians do play American football, to one degree or another, and the Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player–any former NFL player–at their helm. So Rick reluctantly agrees to play for the Panthers–at least until a better offer comes along–and heads off to Italy. He knows nothing about Parma, has never been to Europe, and doesn’t speak or understand a word of Italian. To say that Italy holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement.

    Backgrounded by these wars, the story follows the history of the Terra-Cambaras, during 150 years, in the southern part of Brazil. The men ... Mais were lusty fighters and lovers; the women pulled the strings and ran their men's lives behind the scenes. They bore them children, legitimate and illegitimate, and buried them when need came. Bandits became respectable. Foreigners, Germans chiefly, made and kept their places in the community. And certain symbols stood, through successive generations, for the family:- the silver dagger, brought by a missionary priest, and kept in site as a reminder of a sin almost committed; old pruning shears, which had cut the umbilical cords of successive new born babies; the wind, destined to herald events in the family history, and the Sobrado, the great castle like mansion, which tempted and betrayed them, and housed them all, though the Cambaras had come by it through intermarriage with the Amarals, titular owners. There's a kind of authenticity in the feel and mood of story and setting, in the characteristic blend of realism, superstition, violence and poetry, but the story itself seems to ride off in all directions, and the thread loses itself again and again. Possibly, the shift back and forth in time, from 1745 to 1895, makes it not wholly successful in what the author aims to do, but at its close, the scattered pieces seem to fit into a whole. Not always easy reading, there are moments when it recalls the traditional novels of the picaresque pattern. The publishers have perhaps more confidence in its sales potentials than we have, so watch it.

    Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax, and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.

    Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the untimely death of the previous owner. A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs. Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield that launches the investigation. Within hours she will regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime suspect. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime or exploit it? One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape -- home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the ages.

    Everything changes when he meets his wife Rosa thanks to the help of the Happy Heart Marriage Agency. They seem to have an understanding: Jose isn't bothered by Rosa's dishonesty, extra weight, and fantastically promiscuous past; Rosa isn't too put off by Jose's clubbed foot, periodic blackouts, or lack of direction--she just wants a house. Pragmatic, Jose sets out to get the money necessary to make that possible. And in doing so, he manages to become a robber, sniper, and political subversive wanted by the government. Deploying fast-paced, short chapters in a number of styles, Brandao deftly presents an array of engaging characters and conflicts, vividly depicting the absurdity of a repressive political regime with exceptional daring and humor.

    Its seclusion suits former Boston police detective Bill Robinson, novice owner and innkeeper. As long as the dozen residents pay their rent, Robinson doesn’t ask any questions.Yet all too soon Robinson discovers that leaving the city is no escape from dangers he left behind. A new crew of deadly criminals move into the small town, bringing drugs and violence to the front door of the inn.Robinson feels the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. His sense of duty compels him to fight off the threat to his town. But he can’t do it alone. Before time runs out, the residents of the inn will face a choice.Stand together? Or die alone.