Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Thriller & Suspense

Four students discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, which reveals the existence of a sect, now living in the Arizona desert, whose members can offer immortality to those who can complete its initiation rite. To their surprise, they discover that the sect exists, and is willing to accept them as acolytes. But for each group of four who enter the rite, two must die in order for the others to succeed.

Once inseparable, years of resentment and jealousy have driven Alice and Holly apart. But, though they barely speak these days, Alice knows her sister is hiding something. When she hears that a discovery at a soon-to-be-demolished apartment building has led police to re-open an 'accidental death' case, Alice thinks nothing of it. She's distracted by a recent chance encounter with a charismatic man named Damien, and the possibility of romance when she had given up all hope. Until someone knocks at her door, with questions about Holly.

The Scarmados are the most famous family in Britain, notorious for throwing lavish parties funded by their media and shipping empire. Now, head of the family Mattia is about to retire, and he's taken his four children and his new young wife Belle on the maiden voyage of one of his luxury cruise ships. The tabloids are buzzing: is he about to announce his successor?

When Jane Bell uncovered that her next-door neighbour planned to blow up their local primary school, she tried to get the police to listen to her. When they chose to do nothing, she took matters into her own hands. Jane Bell saved the children. She is a hero. She stopped a terrorist attack. She murdered a man. Jane Bell committed a crime, and no matter what her reasons are, surely she must face the legal repercussions of her actions? Now several people follow Jane’s case, each with their own thoughts on what happened. Is Jane the hero or the villain? It’s up to you to decide.

When a young girl is discovered dead on an isolated Irish country road, it seems to be a simple hit and run. Then the cops see the tattoo on her back - a pair of beautifully wrought angel wings. Forensic investigator Reilly Steel is soon on the scene and she suspects that there is more to this case than a straightforward murder. Then the angel tattoo is traced to other children - both dead and alive - who are all similarly marked....

Forensic investigator Reilly Steel is back in Florida, hoping that a relaxing stay at the home of her old FBI mentor, Daniel Forrest, will help her. But Reilly soon finds herself drawn into a local investigation, a gruesome murder where the body of a woman has literally been torn in two. And when another disturbing killing occurs, Reilly can't help but feel that she has come across something like this before. But where?

As night falls, 17-year-old Cassie Baker leaves Winchcome and takes her usual shortcut down a moonlit country lane. She never makes it home. With no body and no evidence, she's just another teenage runaway.

Cullrothes, in the Scottish Highlands, where Innes hides a terrible secret from his girlfriend, Alice, a gorgeous, cheating, lying schoolteacher. In the same village, Donald is the aggressive distillery owner, who floods the country with narcotics alongside his single malt; when his son goes missing, he becomes haunted by an anonymous American investor intent on purchasing the Cullrothes Distillery by any means necessary. Schoolgirl Jessie is trying to get the grades to escape to the mainland, while Grandpa counts the days left in his life.

Barely half of the Bomber Command's aircrews survive a full tour, but wireless operator Billy Angell has beaten the odds and completed his 30th - and final - mission. Now, Billy is due two-weeks leave, a posting to a training squadron and a six-month exemption from active duty. Except that MI5 need an airman to drop into Nazi-occupied France. MI5 are interested in Hélène Lafosse, a Frenchwoman keeping unusual company in her small family château in the depths of the Touraine.

Ex-journalist Dan Starkey is stuck in a grimy Belfast bedsit. His life is a disaster, and his only solace is the pub round the corner. He really, really needs something to get his teeth into. Fellow ex-journalist Mark Corkery provides that something. Corkery, an Internet horseracing gossip, wants him to investigate Geordie McClean, the man behind Irish American Racing. Simple enough for a man with Dan's experience, surely? But Trouble is Dan's middle name. And trouble is what he finds.

In January 1987, Helen Honeysett goes on an evening run from her riverside cottage and disappears. Twenty-nine years later, Helen's body has never been found. Her husband has hired a detective to find out what happened all those years ago, but when the five households on that desolate stretch of towpath refuse to give up their secrets, Stella and Jack find themselves hunting a killer whose trail has long gone cold.

In San Pedro, Los Angeles, one of the world's busiest harbours, an unlikely pair of lovers is caught up in terror. When Dinko Babich, a young longshoreman, delivers Lita Medina, a young Mexican dancer, from the harbour to a Hollywood nightclub, his life is forever changed as an unexpectedly tender and moving love story develops. Comedy and tragedy are intertwined in the everyday life of the cops and residents of San Pedro Harbor.

Villanelle is the ultimate assassin. Beautiful and heartless, she's been trained to be the best. Her latest target is a firebrand Russian leader whose extreme political theories threaten to unleash global conflict. But lying in wait for Villanelle is intelligence officer Eve Polastri. A hunter by nature, fiercely clever, Eve is ready to pursue her adversary wherever the search leads her. And so starts a deadly game between two brilliant and determined female protagonists…

Former soldier and ex-boxer Joe has always invited violence. But now Hackney's most vicious gangs all want to kill him. Why? As he tries to unravel the knot of events that have made him a target, Joe is drawn back into his past, back to the memory of the only woman he ever loved, Brenda, whose unsolved murder still haunts him. Then a twelve year old runaway enters his life. Kid is traumatised, mute, and sees Joe as her saviour. Life has made Joe a machine. Can Kid - as Brenda once did - make him human again?

London, 1888: Susannah rushes into marriage to a young and wealthy surgeon. After a passionate honeymoon, she returns home with her new husband wrapped around her little finger. But then everything changes. Thomas' behaviour becomes increasingly volatile and violent. He stays out all night, returning home bloodied and full of secrets. The gentle caresses she enjoyed on her wedding night are now just a honeyed memory.

When a police detective is found murdered in the town of Wakestead, all clues point to local woman Amma Reynolds. Amma has a clear motive. She hates the police for failing to properly investigate her brother's death, which was written off as an accidental drowning. Amma has always believed her brother was murdered. Could she have killed DI Mark Stormont in revenge? Former detective and private investigator Erin Crane is hired to find out.

Will Flemyng, originally trained as a spy, is now British ambassador to Washington. Meanwhile, his older brother Mungo is recuperating from a heart attack in their beloved Scottish highland family home, and Abel, the youngest of the three, has died mysteriously in America. Abel's unexplained death sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events, beginning with an unexpected glimpse of a face at his funeral. Soon Will finds himself on a dangerous journey into his clandestine past, from conflict in Ireland to the long shadows of the Cold War.

Gethin Grey is back in the game. His wife may have left him and he's struggling with life as a single father, but now he's got his biggest case in years. The brutal murder of a young woman called Kelly Rowland has been the talk of the South Wales valleys. Even the conviction of a neighbour, a builder called Morgan Hopkins, failed to stop the gossip. There were too many other suspects still around, among them a pair of coppers: brother and sister.

January 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war? With the Red Army about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels—and who better to broker the contact than Nehmann, Goebbels' one-time confidant?

It's been a hard couple of years, but things finally seem to be looking up for Danielle. Her boyfriend Matteo has inherited a dilapidated old farmhouse in Tuscany, complete with olive groves, vineyards and a pool. It couldn't be more perfect. When she gets there, Danielle finds it's not quite as idyllic as she thought. There's a lot of work to be done, but first she turns her attention to making the concrete swamp into the infinity pool of her dreams. As she digs up the old foundations, Danielle brings to light buried secrets that will shatter the tranquillity of her Tuscan dream.