Party activists develop the plan - code name Zima and lie in wait...London 2013 - Richard is in London, working for a financial software company. He has held onto the Zima plan all this time and has been signalling he can activate it. Is anyone listening? Have others stayed true to the ideology?The "suicide" of Richard's work colleague shows British and Russian Intelligence have been listening and waiting too. Tension mounts as more players reveal themselves and the battle for power and control moves to Moscow. As the coil of agents, misinformation and mind control experiments connected to Zima unravel - where do allegiances lie? Can Richard trust anyone - even himself?Can MI9 stop a catastrophic act of sabotage on the banking system? Will the revolution succeed? Can Richard uncover the TRUTH and save himself?

    . . and betrayal.

    Tillie Pembroke’s sister lies dead, her body drained of blood and with two puncture wounds on her neck. Bram Stoker’s new novel, Dracula, has just been published, and Tillie’s imagination leaps to the impossible: the murderer is a vampire. But it can’t be—can it?A ravenous reader and researcher, Tillie has something of an addiction to truth, and she won’t rest until she unravels the mystery of her sister’s death. Unfortunately, Tillie’s addicted to more than just truth; to ease the pain from a recent injury, she’s taking more and more laudanum…and some in her immediate circle are happy to keep her well supplied.Tillie can’t bring herself to believe vampires exist. But with the hysteria surrounding her sister’s death, the continued vampiric slayings, and the opium swirling through her body, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a girl who relies on facts and figures to know what’s real—or whether she can trust those closest to her.

    When Mary, his therapist, suggests hypnosis as a way to help him understand why he doesn’t identify as a boy, Ben finds himself the unlikely conduit for a herring girl called Annie, who lived over a century earlier in the same fishing port.Under the spell of hypnosis, Annie comes alive through Ben, and with her the startling story of her life, and her mysterious death. As the events surrounding Annie’s final days start to emerge – her secret affair with young fisherman Sam; the violent jealousy of his rival Tom; the pregnancy fears of her best friend Flo; the abject paranoia of her brother Jimmy – both Ben and Mary find themselves embroiled in a puzzling saga from the past. And if – as psychoanalytic research suggests – souls tend to reincarnate in groups repeat­edly down the centuries, it could be that those close to Ben today were involved in the dramas of 1898, and a murderer could still be among them, waiting to strike again.Moving back and forth in time between 1898 and the present day, 'Herring Girl' is an extraordinarily ambitious novel which evokes a long-vanished world and reveals how the secrets of our past hidden lives are never too far away.

    All the stories are traditional Sherlock Holmes pastiches.The authors are donating all the royalties from the collection to preservation projects at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's former home, Undershaw.This volume covers the years from 1881 to 1889.Contents“Undershaw: An Ongoing Legacy for Sherlock Holmes” ©2015 by Steve Emecz.“The Case of the Lichfield Murder” ©2015 by Hugh Ashton. “The Case of the Vanishing Stars” ©2015 by Deanna Baran.“The Haunting of Sherlock Holmes” ©2015 by Kevin David Barratt.“The Case of the Vanished Killer” ©2015 by Derrick Belanger. “The Tale of the Forty Thieves” ©2015 by C.H. Dye. “The Adventure of the Defenestrated Princess” ©2015 by Jayantika Ganguly.“The Adventure of the Slipshod Charlady” ©2015 by John Hall.“The King of Diamonds” ©2015 by John Heywood. “The Adventure of the Fateful Malady” ©2015 by Craig Janacek. “Study and Natural Talent” and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson photo illustrations on back cover and within the book ©2015 by Roger Johnson.“Foreword” Part I ©2015 by Leslie S. Klinger. “The Allegro Mystery” ©2015 by Luke Benjamen Kuhns. “Sherlock Holmes of London - A Verse in Four Fits” ©2014 by Michael Kurland.“The Adventure of the Pawnbroker’s Daughter” and “Editor’s Introduction: The Whole Art of Detection” ©2015 by David Marcum. “The Adventure of the Seventh Stain” ©2015 by Daniel McGachey. “The Kingdom of the Blind” ©2015 by Adrian Middleton.“The Ululation of Wolves” ©2015 by Steve Mountain.“The Strange Missive of Germaine Wilkes” ©2015 by Mark Mower.“The Deadly Soldier” ©2015 by Summer Perkins.“The Two Umbrellas” ©2015 by Martin Rosenstock.“The Song of the Mudlark” ©2015 by Shane Simmons.“The Adventure of the Inn on the Marsh” ©2015 by Denis O. Smith.“The Adventure of the Traveling Orchestra” ©2015 by Amy Thomas. “The Adventure of Urquhart Manse” ©2015 by Will Thomas.“The Adventure of the Aspen Papers” ©2015 by Daniel D. Victor.“The Case of the Vanishing Inn” ©2015 by Stephen WadeSherlock Holmes photo illustration on back cover © 1991, 2015 by Mark A. Gagen.

    T. Ellison, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Her Dark Lies"Pitch perfect suspense...The best debut I’ve read this year.” --Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling authorAn intriguing and twisty domestic suspense about loyalty and deceit in a tight-knit Texas community where parents are known to behave badly and people are not always who they appear to be.Emily, a popular but bookish prep school senior, goes missing after a night out with friends. She was last seen leaving a party with Alex, a football player with a dubious reputation. But no one is talking.Now three mothers, Catherine, Leslie and Morgan, friends turned frenemies, have their lives turned upside down as they are forced to look to their own children—and each other’s—for answers to questions they don’t want to ask.Each mother is sure she knows who is responsible, but they all have their own secrets to keep and reputations to protect. And the lies they tell themselves and each other may just have the potential to be lethal in this riveting debut.

    Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car — strange for a frigid night. Her husband and daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away. The puzzle of those missing eleven days has persisted. With her trademark exploration into the shadows of history, acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie, imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such a murky story. What is real, and what is mystery? What role did her unfaithful husband play, and what was he not telling investigators? A master storyteller whose clever mind may never be matched, Agatha Christie’s untold history offers perhaps her greatest mystery of all.

    The star of the restoration team is a handsome Italian named Anthony Bataglia, world renowned for his ability to bring pre-Renaissance treasures back to life. Despite a rocky start, the two form a close working relationship, which Mackenzie hopes will blossom into something more. But the more she works with him the more she notices peculiar patterns and unexplainable similarities in all of his restorations. Is Anthony really who he claims to be? Too many strange coincidences lead Mackenzie and her father, a retired detective, to think otherwise. Something is clearly not what it seems to be with the dashing Mr. Bataglia, and the resourceful Mackenzie is determined to get to the bottom of it. What she finds is even more incredible — and shocking — than she could ever imagine. Weaving its way between the dawn of the Renaissance and modern day New York, The Painter of Time explores the cost of pursuing fame and fortune at the expense of true art.

    Though Tom never makes it to the moon, his journey through life takes him to places just as unique. But not even the prestige of working in the Eisenhower White House and the CIA can take away Tom's disillusionment and despair when he loses the most important person in his life. Convinced that God has turned his back, Tom buries himself in his work and turns his back on God. Or does God even exist? Then an unexpected voice and an unpretentious Amish man change Tom Kirkman’s life. This biographical fiction echoes the true story of Thomas E. Kirkman, White House artist, CIA spy, engine designer, and Amish man.

    1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning. When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love.But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening . . .

    A profoundly moving story of love during a time of great social change, with an ending that will leave you cheering. May Callaghan is seventeen years old and on her own. At least that’s how it feels.Her devoutly religious mother and her gentle but damaged father are fighting, and May's boyfriend, Sam, has left their rural hometown for Melbourne without so much as a backward glance.When May lies to her parents and takes the train to visit Sam at his shared house in Carlton, her world opens wide in glorious complexity. She is introduced to his housemates, Clancy, an indigenous university student, and Ruby, a wild bohemian. With their liberal thinking and opposition to the war in Vietnam, they are everything that May's strict Catholic upbringing should warn her against.May knows too well the toll that war has taken on her father, and the peace movement in the city has a profound effect on her. For a while, May’s future burns bright. But then it begins to unravel, and something happens to her that will change her life forever.

    A missing battle plan. Will he find redemption or damage the Allies beyond repair? London, 1942. OSS Agent Conor Thorn is desperate for a second chance. After a botched mission in Tangier, Thorn knows failure is not an option. When confidential directives for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, go missing, the agent must recover the plans before the Nazis thwart the crucial mission. Thorn teams up with MI6 agent Emily Bright to seek out the traitor in their midst. Untangling the web of suspects leads them to Nazi sympathizers, double-crossing Soviet spies, and Vatican clergymen with motives of their own. As their mission grows more and more dangerous, Thorn and Bright have one chance to retrieve the document before it falls into enemy hands, leaving countless Allied troops in danger. The Torch Betrayal is a high-stakes WWII thriller inspired by true events.

    The daughter of one of the world’s most famous jewelers, she arrives in Cannes with a stunning new collection. But a shocking theft by the notorious thief known as the Leopard throws her into upheaval—and plunges her on an unexpected hunt that challenges everything she believes.Jerome Curtis thinks he’s seen it all, especially when it comes to crime. Until he’s hired to investigate the loss of Ania Thorne’s collection, his every skill put to the test as he chases after a mysterious master-mind responsible for some of the costliest heists in history—and finds himself in a tangled web with a woman he really shouldn’t fall in love with.From the fabled Carlton Hotel to the elegant boulevards of Paris, Ania and Jerome must race against time to catch a thief before the thief catches them. With everything on the line, can they solve the steal or will the steal take more than diamonds from them? Set in the late 1950s, THE STEAL is a romantic caper by bestselling authors C.W. Gortner and M.J. Rose.

    Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, and The Invisible Library.For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can't quite control: he can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob -- a young lawyer with a normal house, a normal fiancee, and an utterly normal life -- hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his life's duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other. But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world... and for once, it isn't Charley's doing.There's someone else who shares his powers. It's up to Charley and a reluctant Rob to stop them, before these characters tear apart the fabric of reality.

    As a teenager, her mother was committed to an asylum and then a local priest forced her into an abusive marriage. But when her husband dies in an accident Peggy sees an opportunity to start again and trains as a midwife.In 1950s Dublin it is not easy for a woman to make a living and Peggy sees a chance to start a business and soon a lucrative maternity home is up and running. But when Peggy realizes that the lack of birth control is an issue for women, she uses their plight as a way to make more money. Very soon Peggy is on the wrong side of the law. What makes a woman decide to walk down a dark path? Can Peggy ever get back on the straight and narrow? Or will she have to pay for her crimes?Set against the backdrop of Ireland in the 1950’s The Abandoned tells the story of one woman’s fight for survival and her journey into the underbelly of a dangerous criminal world.The Abandoned is a debut novel not to be missed, it will appeal to fans of authors like Cara Hunter, Joy Ellis and Helen Fields What everyone is saying about The Abandoned:  "Great fast paced book, great strong characters" Wendy Haines"An engrossing story which is so hard to look back at and think that things like this really happened not that long ago. A superb debut." Susan Hampson - Books From Dusk Till Dawn"I loved how fast-paced and chilling every part of this novel was, as it certainly kept me on my toes from start to finish, keeping my level of intrigued peaked until the very last second." Kaisha Holloway - The Writing Garnet"Brilliant. High expectations are set for future books by Sharon Thompson an author to keep your eye on. A story you won’t forget quickly." Gemma Myers - Between The Pages Book Club"The pace throughout is steady with some of the faster-paced parts providing some darker more grittier moments." Rachel Broughton - Rae Reads"The perfect mix of Historical Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, and Crime. I'm excited to read more from Sharon Thompson." Dash Fan Book Reviews"The Abandoned is a fabulous historical thriller and though I disproved of Peggy’s actions, I thoroughly enjoyed her story." Susan Corcoran - Booksaremycwtches"Cannot praise this author highly enough. I will be recommending this to anyone who listens." Philomena Callan - Cheekypee Reads And Reviews"This is a superbly written book with a good heavy plot that keeps on giving and opening more." Sue Ward - Read Along With Sue"It’s gritty, dark, vivid and sometimes very very brutal (see the blurb for her job descriptions, throw in some violence and you’re halfway there), but always gripping, with dark laughs in there to keep your head above water." Bernadette Maycock - BRMaycock's Book Blog"A very good read that will appeal to readers of thrillers and crime fiction.