The NP had done remarkably well in elections in four states. It was the party’s heroic return. It was an even larger triumph for the Dalal family, who had survived several calls for their ouster from party leadership. The fireworks started at 11:59 and four bottles of champagne were uncorked, as the ‘Nationalists’ and few staff members watched the night sky from the garden below.BOOM. Huge explosions razed most of 10, Lokpath, the entire Dalal lineage reduced to body parts and blood splatter on the grass. Though the explosion was restricted to the property, the tremors would soon be felt throughout the country.Naresh Mistri was woken up at 1:08 a.m. His national security team had reached his residence. The PM saw the news on TV. Even BP’s staunchest supporters would suspect the party. First the dreadful electoral performance and now this! It could be the biggest threat to his political career. As the world’s gaze would firmly be on Mistri, would he lose his greatest asset of all, public opinion?The IB and RAW had more often than not failed to provide intelligence on such attacks. And there was no ‘national’ police force that could investigate and solve this crime and bring the culprits to justice quickly. No, the PM had to turn to someone else. He said, “I want ISSCO to investigate this.”Realising that India needed an agency like the USA’s FBI, Russia’s FSB, and UK’s MI5, which could work with surprise, speed, and intensity, Mistri had three months ago approved ISSCO, a covert, privately run but government-funded intelligence and security organisation. He had told ISSCO they were to do everything that IB, RAW, DIA, NIA, and NSG said couldn’t be done, and do it better, faster, and quieter.

    The agency has fallen on hard times and jumps at the chance to have a Texas Ranger in its ranks. Jake soon realizes the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is staffed with a collection of undesirables dumped from other state and local agencies, but he has no choice but to help chase down leads on a fraud investigation. An investigation that turns up a freshly murdered corpse. Partnering out of necessity with one of the BCA's odd ducks, Jake doggedly pursues answers in the stabbing death of a local fraudster. His search for truth takes him into rural Minnesota where nothing he encounters is as it first seems. After navigating newly released convicts, illicit affairs and a secretive family pretending to be Native Americans, Jake gets closer to the murderer than he even realizes. After infiltrating a heist teeming with potential suspects, Jake fits the pieces of the puzzle together. But just as he identifies the killer, one last under cover role has his mental state unraveling before his eyes. Cold Land is a slow-burning mystery with a thrilling conclusion, but is also a tale of loss, identity and the will to survive. Its gripping turns and vivid characters will leave you thinking long after the tale is told.

    Making matters worse, his new love interest, Dianne Lawson, becomes the next target, forcing Bocello to go head-to-head with the most diabolical killer of his career, who has been hiding in plain sight. Unable to trust anyone around him, he tracks the killer who seems to always stay one step ahead of the investigation…until everything comes to a heart-pounding climax as Bocello races against time to reach his love before it’s too late.

    But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.It's also what happens just before you hit the ground. **THE LIST** 'Mick Herron is an incredible writer and if you haven't read him yet, you NEED to' Mark Billingham Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account - and there's only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career's worth of spy secrets.**previously published as two separate editions**

     A body entombed in a London tube station. DCI Grant Foster is called in to investigate, but within days a second corpse is discovered in the bowels of a disused underground ‘ghost’ station. With the possibility of the murders being linked, Foster enlists the help of his friend, genealogist Nigel Barnes. Between them, they try to untangle the twisted secrets of the past, buried deep beneath London’s streets – where no one can hear you scream, and the murderer is closing in on his next victim . Includes an extract from The Blood Detective, the first book in the Blood Detective series.

     A detective has the chance to solve cases that have baffled her colleagues for decades. But only if she can work out who he is, before he gets to her. Because - in a story where not everything is what it seems - not even murder is black and white. Killing Kind is a tense novella with a twist that will stay with you. From UK and US bestselling author Gregg Dunnett.

    Sort of. When Brad Williams is offered a lot of money to take on a case for sly banker Jonas Baxter, he is in no position to refuse. Jonas has been charged with the attempted murder of local prostitute Tina Jade, but it quickly becomes evident that it is not the reason why the prosecution wants Jonas behind bars. So why are they still pressing ahead with the charges? What is Jonas guilty of? This thrilling legal short story will take you for a ride through the courtroom and leave you with twists and turns that you didn’t see coming.

    Her little cottage has a leaking roof, her car broke down, and she’s managed to lose her favorite hat while walking back home. So far, this trip to England has not been so much the restful country retreat she wanted. So far, it has pretty much sucked. And unfortunately, it’s about to get worse. When she catches attractive neighbor Maddox out in a horrible rainstorm, Jade invites him in out of the cold, only to see scratches on his arms. Maddox is pleasant and polite, but even Jade can see that something is wrong. When she learns the next day that an old lady was murdered in her cottage, Jade has a sinking feeling that she knows who’s to blame. When another body crops up soon after, Jade sets out to find the truth. After all, how much worse could this vacation get? She might as well tramp over the heath and figure out what’s going on. But all this poking about is going to put her squarely in the killer’s sights. And now that they’ve murdered twice, they’re not going to stop until all of their enemies are dead.BONUS FREE story included in this book!

    

    The similarities between this scene and one from a month prior are too great to be ignored. And many questions linger. Aside from the horrific manner of death, what do these newlywed couples have in common? Were these crimes of opportunity, or were these couples targeted? As Katie and Michael dig to find answers to all their questions, they uncover ties to a long-since forgotten disappearance and a death strikingly comparable to their present-day murders. In the end, uncovering answers and capturing a killer might cost Katie more than she’s ready to sacrifice.

    A man’s body was found beside the picnic tables in a local park. He has abrasions on his knuckles and several cuts on his palms and forearms. The victim defended himself, but his opponent brought a gun to a fistfight. At first, it looks like a simple case, but as Joe quickly discovers, it’s not.The victim lives almost a thousand miles away. His wife says he’s in town to fish and camp, but he didn’t bring fishing tackle or a tent. He came for an altogether different purpose. As Joe investigates, she finds herself drawn into a dangerous world steeped in lies and deception. With every insight she gains and every clue she finds, she comes closer to solving her case. But with every second that passes, the people she’s hunting draw closer to their prey.It’s a race with innocent victims as the prize. If Joe wins, she saves the day. If she loses, many will die…including her.The Man in the Park is a gripping thriller with twists and turns galore. If you like Michael Connelly, James Patterson, or Lisa Gardener, you’re going to love Chris Culver’s Joe Court series. Check it out!

    A teenager poisons her family for the love of her tutor. A woman driven by greed ruthlessly bludgeons eight members of her family.A beautician gangs up with her lover to rob a house, killing innocent women from three generations of a family. A practising lawyer strangles her lawyer husband with the cord of a mobile charger. A friendly and jovial teacher commits at least six murders over fourteen years in a sleepy town down south.DEATH SERVED COLD is a painstakingly researched collection of true, blood-curdling accounts of gruesome murders committed by India’s most dangerous women over the last three decades.These stories explore the dark recesses of the female psyche and challenge popular stereotypes by revealing shocking excesses of sadism and aggression rarely associated with women.

    Told from the perspective of a young wife who’s become increasingly frustrated with her mild-mannered husband, “The Trespassers” begins as a quiet domestic drama and quickly escalates into a nightmare. When Evan refuses to confront men who are illegally hunting on the couple’s remote homestead, Chris takes matters into her own hands, with terrifying results. Written in 1958, when Leonard was working at a Detroit advertising agency and writing short stories on the side, “The Trespassers” shows the emerging talent of a man whose spare style and dark wit would redefine a literary genre. Filled with as much sexual menace as Sam Peckinpah’s classic thriller “Straw Dogs,” this timelessly relevant story delivers a sly surprise that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elmore Leonard wrote forty-five novels across his six-decade career, including the bestsellers “Road Dogs,” “Up in Honey’s Room,” “The Hot Kid,” “Mr. Paradise,” “Tishomingo Blues,” and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories “When the Women Come Out to Dance.” Many of his books have been made into movies, including “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” and “Jackie Brown.” “Justified,” the hit series from FX, is based on Leonard’s character Raylan Givens, who appears in “Riding the Rap,” “Pronto,” the short story “Fire in the Hole,” and the novel “Raylan.” Leonard received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA, and the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He was known to many as the “Dickens of Detroit” and had lived in the Detroit area since 1934. PRAISE FOR ELMORE LEONARD “Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.” —The New York Times Book Review “There is no greater writer of crime fiction than Elmore Leonard, and no one who has more resplendent energy.” —The Guardian (UK) “Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He’s … an authentic American icon.” —The Seattle Times “People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard, every day I wake up and—not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree—don’t see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, ‘Great! He’s probably working somewhere. He’s gonna produce another book, and I’ll have another book to read.’ Because when he’s gone, there’s nobody else.” — Stephen King “The King Daddy of crime novelists.” —The Seattle Times “As crime fiction goes, Leonard has few living equals. His characters leap from the page with a few short keystrokes, like a form of bloodstained haiku.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer “[Leonard’s] finely honed sentences can sound as flinty/poetic as Hemingway or as hard-boiled as Raymond Chandler. His ear for the way people talk—or should—is peerless.” —The Detroit News “A master of narrative … A poet of the vernacular … Leonard paints an intimate, precise, funny, frightening, and irresistible mural of the

    The Book of Spies brings us the aristocratic intrigues of The Scarlet Pimpernel, in which French émigrés duel with Robespierre’s secret service; the savage political realities of the 1930s in Eric Ambler’s classic A Coffin for Dimitrios; the ordinary (well, almost) citizens of John le Carré’s The Russia House, who are drawn into Cold War spy games; and the 1950s Vietnam of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, with its portrait of American idealism and duplicity. Drawing on acknowledged classics and rediscovered treasures, A Book of Spies delivers literate entertainment and excitement on every page.

    This collection features new stories from all the Zelmer Pulp regulars as well as stunning noir photography from Mark Krajnak and an introduction by Brit Grit Godfather Paul D. Brazill.Zelmer Pulp arrives with both guns out in this Volume 1 noir collection.