Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Literature & Fiction

The BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation. If only life were that simple.

Rachel Smedling is not like the other women in her isolated Pennine village: she is taller, stronger, and weaves cloth like a man. Without her, the household would fall apart, for her mother is ailing and her vicious drunkard father seems to hate her so much, he would happily offer money to any man who would wed her. When her mother dies, Rachel is at the mercy of her increasingly violent father. Her only escape is by marrying a kindly man with whom she finds happiness, if not passion, and her life begins to seem complete.

Flora and Rose are identical twins who do not know of each other's existence. Rose has been raised by her frivolous mother with the glossy international jet set. Flora has spent her childhood in the beauty and quiet of her father's Cornish cottage. And then, by chance, they meet. The encounter seems heaven-sent to Rose, who longs to escape from a man she no longer desires. Flora can free her, and, in taking her sister's place, her uneventful life is changed forever.

Discover Dorothy L. Sayers' inimitable Golden Age detective in this complete collection of the complete Lord Peter Wimsey stories, together in one volume for the first time. Presented in chronological order, these short stories see Lord Peter Wimsey bringing his trademark wit and unique detection skills to all manner of mysteries.

When an ISIS bombmaker arrives at Heathrow Airport asking for asylum in exchange for revealing details of his paymasters, Shepherd is given the case. The bombmaker specialises in drone strikes, and homegrown jihadists that he has trained are already back in the UK, planning their attacks. But before he'll agree to talk, the terrorist insists that his wife and son are rescued from a refugee camp in Turkey. Shepherd is tasked with bringing the family back to London, but he soon discovers that dark forces are out to stop him. And if he fails, hundreds will die.

It's wedding season, and tensions are brewing. When one lavish wedding ends in disaster before it can even begin - with the maid of honour discovered dead in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony - everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash digs into the best man, the bride, the groom's famous mystery novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, the chief discovers that every wedding is a minefield - and that no couple is perfect.

Lizzie Kershaw is an independent spirit; ever since her father's death she has had to be a survivor. Home life is harsh, though, and desperate to escape it, she makes an ill-advised marriage. But she discovers that she's married a selfish and violent man. His beatings never seem to stop, and, with the help of some suffragettes, she escapes to Manchester, where she finds work in a munitions factory - she is finally the independent woman she has always longed to be. But her husband, whose cruelty knows no bounds, tracks her down and drags her back home to more beatings than ever....

Number One bestselling author Jodi Picoult returns with her compulsive new novel - about the lengths we go to for those who have left us behind; about the staying power of love; and about how three broken souls might have just the right pieces to mend each other. Jenna Metcalf was with her mother the night she disappeared in tragic and mysterious circumstances, but she remembers nothing.

The small town of Castle Rock is tuning in to the news of a young boy who has gone missing from a nearby town. Gordie Lachance and his three friends set off along the railway tracks on a quest, determined to become famous by officially finding the boy's body. But their journey becomes a rite of passage, and as they cross the railway trestle and the tracks begin to hum, the boys encounter an intimation of their own mortality.

Inspired by a box of mementos found abandoned in a skip following a house clearance, The Museum of Ordinary People is a poignant, thought-provoking but ultimately uplifting story of memory and love, grief, loss and the things we leave behind. It is another brilliant novel from an author who seems to have the absolute knack of writing topical, engaging, heartwarming stories which really connect with listeners.

Mickey and Mark Moore are ordinary decent criminals - hard men who live by their own code and leaders of a gang that has made millions at the point of a gun. But when Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is sent to infiltrate the tightly knit team of bank robbers, he discovers that he has more in common with them then he first thought. And that perhaps being a career criminal isn't the worst thing in the world.

From renowned author Lindsey Davis, creator of the much-loved character, Marcus Didius Falco and his friends and family, comes the second novel in her all-new series set in Ancient Rome. We first met Flavia Albia, Falco's feisty adopted daughter, in The Ides of April. Albia is a remarkable woman in what is very much a man's world: Young, widowed and fiercely independent, she lives alone on the Aventine Hill in Rome and makes a good living as a hired investigator.

For more than a century, one of the world's great treasures, a 600-year-old copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy, has been safely housed at Bombay's Asiatic Society. But when it vanishes, together with the man charged with its care, British scholar and war hero John Healy, the case lands on Inspector Persis Wadia's desk. Uncovering a series of complex riddles written in verse, Persis - together with English forensic scientist Archie Blackfinch - is soon on the trail. But then they discover the first body.

A spellbinding collection of 15 stories from multi-million copy internationally best-selling author Rosamunde Pilcher, published posthumously two years after her death. Each of the 15 stories is a perfect slice of romance written with warmth and passion, featuring some wonderfully memorable, smart and feisty female characters that will transport listeners to another time and place.

In her new novella, Sunday Times best-selling author Becky Chambers imagines a future in which, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the solar system instead transform themselves. Adriane is one such explorer. As an astronaut on an extrasolar research vessel, she and her fellow crewmates sleep between worlds and wake up each time with different features. Her experience is one of fluid body and stable mind and of a unique perspective on the passage of time. Back on Earth, society changes dramatically from decade to decade, as it always does.

Thirteenth in the 'series of superb novels built around the haunted private detective Charlie Parker' ( Daily Mail), A Song of Shadows sees Parker revisit the crimes of a WWII concentration camp while he struggles to regain his health after the near-fatal shooting in The Wolf in Winter. Grievously wounded private detective Charlie Parker investigates a case that has its origins in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War.

Lancashire, 1895. Lillian Hesketh has taken a new name, and a brave step towards a happier life. Suddenly widowed after an unhappy marriage, and pursued by her unscrupulous in-laws, Lillian finds a fresh start in the beautiful Ollindale valley. Thanks to the kindness of her new neighbours, Walter Crossley and his family, she finally has a home to call her own - but the threat of discovery by her husband's family still casts a shadow over her new life.

The first book in Anna Jacobs' wonderful Backshaw Moss series. 1935. At 36, Bella Porter is dependent on her abusive cousin, acting as an unpaid servant. When a kind relative leaves her a house in the village of Backshaw Moss, Thomas tries to take it from her, but she defies him and grasps this chance of a new start in Lancashire. It is not going to be easy, though.

The greatest naval trial in the Georgian period is underway at Portsmouth with the court-martial of Sir Home Popham, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd's commanding officer in the doomed occupation of Buenos Aires. Kydd has some sympathy for Popham's unauthorised action, but his support for his former commander leaves him athwart some very influential people in the admiralty. With his frigate, L'Aurore, unfit for sea, Kydd is given a commission that some hope will destroy his career.

Friendships forged in the heat of combat can be stronger than anything. So when SAS trooper Matt Standing is told that the former Navy SEAL who saved his life is in trouble, he doesn't hesitate to go to his aid - even if that means flying halfway around the world to Los Angeles. Navy SEAL-turned-bodyguard Bobby-Ray Barnes has been accused of killing the man he was supposed to be protecting. Three other bodyguards were also killed, and now Bobby-Ray is on the run. The dead client was a Russian oligarch with connections to the Kremlin.