He just wanted a quiet life. Something his mother was not going to allow. There again he never for one moment imagined he would have to look into the death of a 90-year-old lady who was gambling away her family fortune. The Hayden Detective Agency has no need of clients. The very existence of the Agency allows Martin Hayden to claim his large monthly allowance from the family fortune - without lifting a finger. Martin’s biggest problem is his interfering mother, who understands her idle son too well. She takes steps to find him not just clients but also a personal assistant to keep an eye on him. Under pressure from the women in his life, Martin agrees to take on his first client. How hard can it be to follow a 90-year-old woman who spends her time losing money at roulette tables? As it turns out harder than Martin ever thought possible, especially with the old lady dying in strange circumstances. Soon the Reluctant Detective is grappling with shady estate agents, an intellectual artist, missing charity money and an irritating Indian waiter. Luckily for Martin there is help in the form of Colin, a transvestite who, apart from having very good fashion sense, is an expert at breaking into houses.

    He was a private investigator who had "decided to go from crooked to slightly bent," turning down the shady but lucrative work that New York's thugs and mobsters had long brought to his door. In "Karma," Walter Mosley tells us the story of the moment McGill decided to change his ways, when a seemingly classic femme fatale forced him to confront the reality of his life of corruption and betrayal. It was the culmination of a dark and tragic case that reached back through McGill's entire career, plumbing the full, complex history of the soul-scarred figure now hailed as "a poignantly real character . . . [and] a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe." (The Boston Globe) Originally published in Otto Penzler's anthology Dangerous Women, "Karma" was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, edited by Scott Turow.

    The peace is disrupted when a local fisherman and a mill owner are found gruesomely axed. Barnes is drawn into a twenty-year-old unsolved case near Portland, adding to an already puzzling search through murky secrets and sweeping him up in the decadent "good life" of his suspects.

    A sinister plan, of a shrewd calculating mastermind, has set the wheels of doom in motion. He is now pulling the lynchpins across the country and making it fall into disarray. He is using everyone in his path to achieve his goals. Within thirty days he intends to control the nation’s soul. As chaos grips the country, it’s a race against time for DSP Ranbir Roy of the Intelligence Bureau and Inspector Vikram Aditya Singh to stop him before anarchy dooms the country. The pieces are set, the board is laid out but what happens when your own pawns move against you? What will be the end game?

    A government minister is found dead at the foot of a Lake District mountain, adding to a sudden increase in the accident statistics. A lonely Scotsman leaves his isolated croft and travels to steamy Manila. These apparently unconnected events are the first sketches on a large canvas, soon to be smeared blood red by a brutal killer. Who is he? What is driving him? And why are his hideous crimes being ignored by the police? A small town journalist, Ben Foxley, starts to investigate. In the process, he is drawn into a world of technology and politics, love and obsession, and finally to a living nightmare - a terrifyingly personal race against time. Before beginning "The Fell Walker", allow yourself some quality reading time, for once you've picked it up, you'll not want to put it down.

    He took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before - Raymond ChandlerNot just the first of a tough school of crime-writing but the best... Hammett had seen the rotten underbelly of his country and wanted others to see it - The TimesHammett's is the America of Prohibition days and over all is the stink of corruption and cordite and hard liquor - Oxford TimesNobody else ever did it quite like this, and no one has ever done it since - The Times Literary SupplementCover illustration by Nancy Slomins

    Some want the 'paedo killer' locked up forever. Others think he's a hero. Either way, now it's DI Tom McAllister's job to catch the elusive murderer.Not your ordinary police detective, Tom's a maverick outsider who always gets his man. But with the case spiralling out of control and the killer seemingly always one step ahead, he finds himself drawn into a deadly game of deception that threatens to destroy more than just his career. But the worst is yet to come, as the horrifying truth begins to emerge about the significance of THE CAGE . . .If you're a fan of smart, fast-paced detective thrillers with a twist, the first of Scott Mariani's sensational new DI Tom McAllister series will have you on the edge of your seat and yearning for more!

    He is the enemy.Stewart hatches a plan to destroy the evidence against him, but what he finds inside those files, is evidence of a vile paedophile ring operating under McCauley’s nose.Now three people are dead and Dave Stewart is the prime suspect.

    A bloody scarf, a criminal father, and an ancient castle mark the trail, and before Callum knows it, that simple missing persons case turns into a deadly web of greed and lies.Can MacBain cut through it all in time to save the child's life? And, if so, what will be the cost?

    It is Lieutenant Clancy's job to see that he stays alive to do it. It may not sound too difficult when you have two loyal detectives like Sergeants Kaproski and Stanton to help you keep a round-the-clock watch on the hoodlum, but it proves almost beyond them.Part of the "NFT/BFI Film Classics" series, this novel was made into a film starring Steve McQueen, featuring one of the most memorable car chase scenes in film, through the streets of San Francisco.

    Throw into the mix a celebrated author, a dodgy solicitor, and a sponging relative, and Constable and Copper really have their work cut out!'MURDERER'S FETE' WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2012 UNDER THE TITLE 'FETED TO DIE'

    Victor Hatherly enters Dr. Watsons office with a missing thumb, he says the story is so unbelievable he cant go to the police. So, Watson brings Hatherly to Holmes who can solve unsolvable cases. Join Holmes and Watson on the hunt for the engineers thumb. Graphic Planet is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO Group. Grades 3-8.