Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Thriller & Suspense

Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with 800 lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience. But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man?

Full of shocks, intensity and suspense from first minute to last, Banquet of Consequences reveals Lynley and Havers under pressure. The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind. But what was the cause of his tragedy, and how far might the consequences reach? Is there a link between the young man's leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge? Following various career-threatening misdemeanours, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself.

It is 1936, and Lord Peter Wimsey has returned from his honeymoon to set up home with his cherished new wife, the novelist Harriet Vane. As they become part of fashionable London society, they encounter the glamorous socialite Rosamund Harwell and her wealthy impresario husband, Laurence. Unlike the Wimseys they are not in love - and all too soon, one of them is dead. A murder case that only Lord Peter Wimsey can solve.

In a small New England town, in the early '60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. Then tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, the preacher curses God, mocking all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town. Jamie has demons of his own. In his mid-30s, he is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll. Addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate, he sees Jacobs again....

In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on a woman splayed in a bed of flowers - her eyes wide, her neck broken. Her death is a mystery; so is the woman herself. But as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team peer into the dark corners of the victim's past, they expose a secret that rots at the very heart of their community - a secret that will implicate someone they've trusted for years. And as Gamache knows too well, in the flickering shadows of death, the truth may be just a trick of the light.

In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching 40, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change. Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby's father was murdered 20 years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold.

End of Watch is a compelling and chilling suspense novel which sees retired detective Bill Hodges back on the trail of his nemesis, Brady Hartsfield, the criminal the press called The Mercedes Killer. Foiled in his attempt to commit a second mass murder, Hartsfield is confined to a hospital brain-injury unit in a seemingly unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: Brady is able to influence both his physician and the hospital librarian to commit crimes in the outside world.

It's spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they've arrived in the village of Three Pines.

What if you could go back in time and change the course of history?11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless.... King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 - from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill who becomes the love of Jake's life.

Former chief inspector Gamache has been hunting killers his entire career, and as the new commander of the Sûreté Academy, he is given the chance to combat the corruption and brutality that have been rife throughout the force. But when a former colleague and professor of the Sûreté Academy is found murdered, with a mysterious map of Three Pines in his possession, Gamache has an even tougher task ahead of him.

As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the strangest case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city’s oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries... a mystery Gamache must solve if he’s to catch a present-day killer.

The sparrows are flying again. The idea - unbidden, inexplicable - haunts the edge of Thad Beaumont's mind. Thad should be happy. For years now it is his secret persona, George Stark, author of superviolent pulp thrillers, who has paid the family bills. But now Thad is writing seriously again under his own name, and his menacing pseudonym has been buried forever. And yet...the sparrows are flying again, and something is terribly wrong in Thad Beaumont's world.

It's summer in Memphis. The sweat is sticking to Rudy Baylor's shirt and creditors are nipping at his heels. Once he had aspirations of breezing through law school and punching his ticket to the good life. Now he doesn't have a job or a prayer-except for one: an insurance dispute that leaves a family devastated and opens the door for a lawsuit, if Rudy can find a way to file it. By the time Rudy gets to court, a heavyweight corporate defense team is there to meet him.

A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to the number one best seller The Outsider. News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin. Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realises there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene.

Worldwide best-seller John Grisham goes rogue with his most suspenseful thriller yet.... Sometimes you have to fight dirty to get clean. Sebastian Rudd takes the cases no one else wants to take: the drug-addled punk accused of murdering two little girls; a crime lord on death row; a homeowner accused of shooting at a SWAT team. l Rudd believes that every person accused of a crime is entitled to a fair trial - even if he has to cheat to get one.

Pete Banning was Clanton's favourite son, a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbour and a faithful member of the Methodist Church. Then one cool October morning in 1946, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell. As if the murder wasn't shocking enough, it was even more baffling that Pete's only statement about it - to the sheriff, to his defense attorney, to the judge, to his family and friends and to the people of Clanton - was 'I have nothing to say'.

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone - ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk - has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty. But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist.

Antoinette Conway, the tough, abrasive detective from The Secret Place, is still on the Murder Squad, but only just. She's partnered up with Stephen Moran now, and that's going well - but the rest of her working life isn't. Antoinette doesn't play well with others, and there's a vicious running campaign in the squad to get rid of her.

Stephen King's epic fantasy series, The Dark Tower, is being made into a major movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. Due in cinemas February 17, 2017 USA. For listeners new to The Dark Tower, The Wind Through the Keyhole is a stand-alone novel, and a wonderful introduction to the series. It is a story within a story, which features both the younger and older gunslinger Roland on his quest to find the Dark Tower.

On July 15, 1994, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend Billy fell asleep together in their quiet New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. The tent was sliced open, and Billy was gone, taken. He was never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan has returned to Hemlock Circle, still desperate for answers. Who took Billy? Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening on the street under the cover of darkness. Someone is prowling the cul de sac when no one is awake to see them.