The parquetry floor washed to black...As if sparked by the hard glare, a fire burst and raged through the room, the flames hot enough to crisp bones and raise the smell of marrow burning to cinders. And me in the middle, wrapped in the black shroud of the dead.Matilde of the House of Svanaten is tired of being shadow queen. Her accession to the Turasi throne is long overdue, yet her imperious grandmother, Beata, is reluctant to hand over power.When Matilde's mysterious aunt, Helena, turns up for Turassi's most important festival, suspicions abound. Why has Helena - long married into the despised Ilthean nobility - suddenly appeared? And what of the Ilthean soldiers massed at the southern border?Hard on Helena's arrival, Matilde is struck by a vision that warns of doom. And it isn't long before a powerful enemy strikes at the very heart of power, leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake.After narrowly surviving the conflagration that shatters her entire world, Matilde is forced to pit herself against her family's conqueror in a battle not just for the throne, but for her very existence.Assured writing and an unforgettable main character combine to make Shadow Queen a truly unforgettable novel.From the Publisher (Allen & Unwin)

    At 115 lbs., she hardly seems a threat. But her razorsharp intellect and resourcefulness allows her to succeed where traditional methods have failed.In The Water Rat of Wanchai, Ava travels across continents to track $5 million owed by a seafood company. But it’s in Guyana where she meets her match: Captain Robbins, a huge hulk of a man and godfather-like figure who controls the police, politicians, and criminals alike. In exchange for his help, he decides he wants a piece of Ava’s $5 million action and will do whatever it takes to get his fair share . . .

    Fans of Sebastian Faulks’s Charlotte Gray, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin will adore this gripping tale of secrets and suspicion—as a beautiful Russian woman, one of World War Two’s most decorated snipers, is caught between her government’s deadly intrigues and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

    This is the lonely world inhabited by Disciple Manning. He is able to recall every conversation, meeting and feeling he has ever had, making him an extremely dangerous private investigator.

    Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance.Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length—including murder—to keep their dark secrets buried.Soon, it seems that no one in the sleepy bayou town is safe, and after Jori’s brother is kidnapped, she knows she must drop the investigation or risk losing her family. But when protecting them means letting an evil deed go unpunished, putting family first may be the last thing she’ll ever do.

    A fragile child. Will they save each other?Harvey’s training at The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children prepared him for the most important case of his career to date, the abduction of eight-year-old Gabriel Wheeler. Nothing, however, could prepare him for the boy’s blame-shifting mother from hell who shoots up instead of alerting police when the boy goes missing. Nor is Harvey equipped to deal with the heartbreak when his girlfriend leaves him on the same night, taking Effie, the non-biological young daughter Harvey adores. The case goes cold when Harvey fails to interview Effie’s best friend, the only witness able to identify the perpetrator’s car. As police resources are wasted on dead ends and wrong suspects, Gabriel receives unlikely help to escape from Willard Crawley, a simple-minded abductor seeking a replacement for the infant brother he accidentally suffocated years before.Book 1 in the Missing & Exploited Suspense Series, All That Remains explores childhood resiliency in a dangerous adult world (previously published as Notes From a Cold Case).

    But when her father is abducted by men with crooked noses, she discovers his old stories were true—true crime, that is. What does Kat know about crime? Nothing, that's what. Her only transgression, to date, is underage drinking. Even her driving record is pristine.Her couch-to-cubicle existence shattered by his kidnapping--and the discovery of his secret and deadly past as a mobster for the Greek mafia--Kat is determined to find her father, even if it means forming an unholy and felonious alliance with Greece's boogeyman …

    He became a central figure of the avant-garde early in his life and remained at that pinnacle until his death in 1992 at the age of eighty. Now award-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman gives us the first comprehensive life of this remarkable artist. We follow Cage from his Los Angeles childhood—his father was a successful inventor—through his stay in Paris from 1930 to 1931, where immersion in the burgeoning new musical and artistic movements triggered an explosion of creativity in him and, after his return to the States, into his studies with the seminal modern composer Arnold Schoenberg. We see Cage’s early experiments with sound and percussion instruments, and watch as he develops his signature work with prepared piano, radio static, random noise, and silence. We learn of his many friendships over the years with other composers, artists, philosophers, and writers; of his early marriage and several lovers, both female and male; and of his long relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he would collaborate on radically unusual dances that continue to influence the worlds of both music and dance.Drawing on interviews with Cage’s contemporaries and friends and on the enormous archive of his letters and writings, and including photographs, facsimiles of musical scores, and Web links to illustrative sections of his compositions, Silverman gives us a biography of major significance: a revelatory portrait of one of the most important cultural figures of the twentieth century.

    And he watched it shaking its hideous head. "That's not me. You're not me."As commercial and compelling as a computer game, this is the first book in a major new series.

    Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She’d been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder.Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief—to let go of the dead and embrace the living. But that’s not easy in this house full of haunting memories.Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.Now Marion is more determined than ever to find out what happened that night at Brawders, and why. With no one she can trust, Marion may risk her own life to uncover the secrets buried with Alice in the family plot.

    In contrast the second part of the novel covers the years that follow the kidnapping through a series of snapshots of key events affecting the principle characters against the backdrop of The Troubles, interwoven with insights into the activities of British intelligence and security agencies. The third and final part of Compromised is set in 1997 where, with the promise of a real prospect for peace looming across the whole of Ireland, there will be a final reckoning.

    She is quickly identified as Katie Pine, a teenager who had disappeared months ago. At the time, Detective John Cardinal insisted that Katie was no ordinary runaway. His relentless pursuit and refusal to give up on the case, and his lack of results, got him demoted from Homicide. But now the police force wants Cardinal back on the case—with a new associate by his side, Lise Delorme. As these two untrusting partners gather evidence of a serial murder spree, a pair of sociopaths is closing in on the next victim.

    Maggie has enough skeletons to deal with, but when she learns her own past may intersect the Bonesmen’s, joining Cole in the hunt for the sub may be the only course to uncover a hidden truth.

    Built in the glory days of Asbury Park by a reclusive millionaire, the magnificent structure - which foreshadowed the beauties of art deco architecture - is now boarded up and marked for demolition.The five people are "creepers," the slang term for urban explorers: city archeologists with a passion for investigating abandoned buildings and their dying secrets. On this evening, they are joined by a reporter who wants to profile them - anonymously, as this is highly illegal activity - for a New York Times article.Frank Balenger, a sandy-haired, broad-shouldered reporter with a decided air of mystery about him, isn't looking for just a story, however. And after the group enters the rat-infested tunnel leading to the hotel, it becomes clear that he will get much more than he bargained for. Danger, terror, and death await the creepers in a place ravaged by time and redolent of evil.

    Bartering, backstabbing, browbeating, bribing...and praying for a little more weight to throw on the delicate balance of international power. This is a novel of men at the summit, their bold deals and soiled souls -- and their women, clutching at fevered moments as the time for loving, the time for living, slipped so quickly away.