Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Crime Fiction

Twenty-two-year-old Charlotte Ford reconnects with Danielle, her best friend from high school, a few days before Danielle is found bludgeoned to death in a motel room. In the wake of the murder, Charlotte's life unravels and she descends into the city's underbelly, where she meets the strippers, pornographers and drug dealers who surrounded Danielle in the years they were estranged. Ginsburg's Houston is part of a lesser known south, where the urban and rural collide gracelessly.

What if you knew the truth but couldn’t remember? Over a decade ago, Heidi was the victim of a brutal attack that left her hospitalised, her younger sister missing and her best friend dead. But Heidi doesn’t remember any of that. She’s lived her life since then with little memory of her friends and family and no recollection of the crime. Now, it’s all starting to come back. As Heidi begins retracing the events that lead to the assault, she is forced to confront the pain and guilt she’s long kept buried. But Heidi isn’t the only one digging up the past.

Bea's favourite customer, Julie, hasn't been seen for weeks. Her abusive husband, Dave, claims she's left him, but Bea can't shake the feeling something worse has happened. When a body is found, it seems to confirm her fears - until it comes out that the corpse is 15 years old. Where is Julie? Who is the dead girl? And what was her connection to Bea's late father? Ant and Bea are back with their most personal case yet.

A journalist is caught up in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a random killer when his father and girlfriend are killed. After investigating he uncovers a further 10 people with nothing in common - except they all appear on The Sweetman Curve, a graph invented by a corrupt university professor which can predict medical life expectancy within a three-year bracket.

Daniel had the perfect life: a beautiful girlfriend, a great job, a lovely home. But twenty years ago he witnessed something he never should have seen. And now he’s plagued by memories of that night. The frightened scream. The splash of something heavy hitting the water. His friend being murdered by his father. It returns again and again and it’s driving him slowly mad. Now he’s lost his girlfriend, his job and his flat. To get his life back on track, he needs to find out what really happened that night.

When Kit and her best friend Binfire head to a stately home in Lincolnshire to view five ultra-rare Vixens from the Void action figures–the main exhibit at the opening of a new toy museum–they come across more than just nerds and toy-collectors. The figures are stolen from their glass case and, just as Kit and Binfire begin to get their heads around this mystery, they start to reappear, broken into pieces, left for their distraught owners to discover. And that’s when the real killings start.

Chicago, 1931. While the Great Depression has tightened its grip on the world, there are still some who have the means to make their dreams a reality. One of these men is Hobart St John, who wants a mansion in the suburb of Oak Park. For young Welsh architect Merlin Richards, the opportunity to work on the house is an answer to his prayer.

Chasing his dream of a glittering architectural career, Merlin Richards has left the Welsh valleys for the Arizona desert, propelled by a handwritten note from the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. Richards arrives at the Arizona Biltmore hotel, where he meets a beautiful young designer named Rosa Lustig. Like every man in her circle, Merlin is captivated by Rosa but soon finds himself the prime suspect in her murder.

Having thwarted murderous poachers in The Elephant Conspiracy, the Veteran, Thandi, and Mkhize are back battling to save lion prides from being killed for their claws, teeth and bones. As the demand for lion parts soars, impoverished local communities are being incentivized to poach, and the fight against this illegal plunder becomes ever more vicious.

H is a boxer past his prime. Haunted by the memory of the fight that should have made him great, he is chasing his dream through the seedier side of the London boxing circuit, losing fights against his untalented opponents, his wife and, ultimately, himself. When a gunfight at an illegal gambling shebeen drags him down into a multicultural underworld of violence and extortion, H finds himself in debt to the sinister sociopath, White Alan.

The future of law enforcement has arrived, courtesy of private health contractor Janus Justice. Their ground-breaking ‘Offender Treatment Programme' has been hailed as the most effective way of tackling crime yet. As offenders move through the four-tiered system, their needs are dealt with, each tier more drastic in its methods. But Grace Gunnarsson, one of Janus' most highly regarded rehabilitation psychiatrists, has uncovered a terrible flaw in the system, one that is allowing people to get away with murder.

The Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude’s Ferry is a lonely, forgotten spot. Requisitioned decades earlier by the Ministry of Defence for military training, one of its few claims to fame is that in its entire thousand-year history, it never recorded a single crime. But when a Territorial Army exercise is held amongst the ruins, a skeleton is found hanging in a bricked-up cellar, a noose round the neck. It seems that the ghostly village may hide many secrets and local newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is soon on the case.

Stage manager Hattie Cocker is looking around the West End theatre where she's about to start her new temporary gig, when she stumbles across the dead body of the current musical's composer.

Charles Davids is a probationary firefighter working his first week out of the academy. For Charles, quietly battling his lack of confidence is a daily challenge as his new officers coach him on life as a New York City firefighter. The men love to tease and prank the new guy, but when it comes to drilling and training, they’re clear that the job is no joke. As is said in the fire service: "let no man’s ghost return to say my training let me down."

Lorraine has a big new challenge: building a team from a collection of staff picked to close down an abandoned asylum and replace it with a new high security unit in isolated Yorkshire. Lorraine has her work cut out for her when it appears that the group includes a secret saboteur. Then, a local teenager is found dead, locked in the isolation room in the derelict asylum building. With a discovery that forces her to face true isolation, trapped in the asylum's tunnels while the demolition team start work above, Lorraine becomes a fresh target for the killer.

As mid-winter temperatures grip the cathedral city of Ely, a man is found frozen to death in his high-rise flat. The police may think that Declan McIlroy killed himself, but journalist Philip Dryden is not convinced, and he begins digging for the truth. All too soon, there's another frozen corpse to consider–that of Declan's best friend. And suddenly a routine suicide gives way to a chilling trail of cruelty and betrayal stretching back thirty years, towards a mystery from Dryden's own childhood.

Alison has an excellent relationship with her eighteen-year-old daughter. Lola is a hardworking, straight-A student, bound for university. They tell each other everything. Or so she thought. Lola has a secret: she's been sneaking off to meet her much older boyfriend, Brendan. He's everything she ever dreamed of—enigmatic, cool and absolutely irresistible. That's what Alison thought too, when she first met Brendan years ago, at university. Before he ruined her life.

Still reeling from a life-threatening experience on the coast of Calais, daredevil climber Jen Shaw finds herself in Glasgow for a funeral—and in search of answers. As her dogged determination propels her closer to the criminal underworld than ever before, Jen becomes the target of some dangerous and powerful people. The fact that her estranged father is also present in the city, for reasons of his own, only adds greater confusion and risk.

Meet Tommy Bruce—he's washed-up already, marooned in a ramshackle hotel inherited from dead parents in the armpit of Perthshire, that's just too far off the main tourist trail to be viable. He's too young to be middle-aged, but too old to be what you could call young (and too lazy to care about it, really). Saddled with debt, grotty premises that are falling down around him and a crippling loneliness, Tommy is slowly but determinedly drinking himself and his business out of existence. Until one day into the lounge-bar, and out of the blue, walks Fiona McLean.