Showing results by author "Sophie Hannah" in All Categories

The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot – legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile – puts his little grey cells to work solving a baffling Christmas mystery.

Hercule Poirot is travelling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned him to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. There is one strange condition attached to this request: Poirot must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one's mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman?

Hercule Poirot’s tranquil afternoon is ruined when an angry woman accosts him outside his front door. She threatens to report the famous detective to Scotland Yard for falsely accusing her of murder. Seeking sanctuary inside, Poirot is startled to find that he has a visitor – another stranger claiming to have received a letter from Poirot accusing him of killing the same man.

Hercule Poirot and his good friend Inspector Edward Catchpool arrive on the Greek island of Lamperos for a little holiday…or is it? Catchpool suspects Poirot has a different reason for being there — one he won't reveal. As the clock ticks towards the New Year and a festive guessing game takes a sinister turn, can Poirot stop a murderer who is determined to strike before midnight?

Lady Athelinda Playford has planned a house party at her mansion in Clonakilty, County Cork, but it is no ordinary gathering. As guests arrive, Lady Playford summons her lawyer to make an urgent change to her will - one she intends to announce at dinner that night. She has decided to cut off her two children without a penny and leave her fortune to someone who has only weeks to live.... Among Lady Playford's guests are two men she has never met - the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard.

You think it will never happen to you: the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts with the words, 'I'm afraid…' Sally Lambert is also afraid, and desperate enough to consider the unthinkable. Is it really, definitely, impossible to escape from this horror? Maybe not. There’s always something you can do, right? Of course, no one would ever do this particular something–except the Lamberts, who might have to.

Commissioned by Audible and written especially for audio format this collection brings together six crime stories through the themes of discovery, destination and arrival. Top narrators bring these gripping tales to life acknowledging the Scandinavian tradition of oral storytelling.

When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn't expect that anything much will change. She doesn't expect it to help with her chronic insomnia. And she doesn't expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: 'Kind, cruel, kind of cruel'. These are words she has seen somewhere before, if only she could remember where….

She's only been gone two hours. Her husband, David, was meant to be looking after their two-week-old daughter. But when Alice Fancourt walks into the nursery, her terrifying ordeal begins, for Alice insists the baby in the cot is a stranger she's never seen before. With an increasingly hostile and menacing David swearing she must either be mad or lying, how can Alice make the police believe her before it's too late?

Carolyn, Bronnie, Elise, and Kendall are bound together by one thing - their four daughters are best friends at the highly competitive Orla Flynn Academy for the Performing Arts. Last year the foursome exploded because of brutal bullying between the girls, but they've since forgiven each other. The mothers, however, haven't been able to move on. When new threats surface and 'accidents' begin to happen - just as a mysterious new girl enters the scene - the mothers take matters into their own hands.

The ultimate guide on how to use grudges to be your happiest, most optimistic and most forgiving self! Being someone who holds grudges is seen by many as a bad thing, but what if our grudges, when managed correctly, are good for us? What if they can act as a series of stepping stones, pointing us in the right direction? What if they can ward off danger, like charms on a charm bracelet? Look no further for the ultimate guide on how we need to acknowledge, examine and sometimes embrace our grudges in order to live our best possible lives.

You're on your honeymoon at an exclusive couples-only resort. You receive a note warning you to 'beware of the couple at the table nearest to yours'. At dinner that night, five other couples are present and none of their tables is any nearer or further away than any of the others. It's as if someone has set the scene in order to make the warning note meaningless - but why would anyone do that? You have no idea. You also don't know that you're about to be murdered.

Justine thought she knew who she was until an anonymous caller seemed to know better.... After escaping London and a career that nearly destroyed her, Justine plans to spend her days doing as little as possible in her beautiful home in Devon. But soon after the move, her daughter, Ellen, starts to withdraw when her new best friend, George, is unfairly expelled from school.

It's 1.15 a.m. Connie Bowskill should be asleep. Instead, she's logging on to a property website in search of a particular house: 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge. She knows it's for sale; she saw the estate agent's board in the front garden less than six hours ago. Soon Connie is clicking on the 'Virtual Tour' button, keen to see the inside of 11 Bentley Grove and put her mind at rest once and for all. But she finds herself looking at a scene from a nightmare.

Stuck in a traffic jam, Nicki Clements sees a face she hoped never to see again. It's definitely him, the same police officer, stopping each car on Elmhirst Road. Keen to avoid him, Nicki does a U-turn and makes a panicky escape. Or so she thinks. The next day, Nicki is pulled in for questioning in connection with the murder of Damon Blundy, controversial newspaper columnist and resident of Elmhirst Road. Nicki can't answer any of the questions detectives fire at her. She has no idea why the killer used a knife in such a peculiar way, or why 'he is no less dead' was painted on Blundy's study wall.

Agatha Christie was not only the biggest selling writer of detective stories the world has ever known, she was also a mystery in herself, giving only the rarest interviews, declining absolutely to become any sort of public figure and a mystery too in the manner in which she achieved her astonishing success. HRF Keating, a crime novelist and respected reviewer of crime fiction, brought together a dozen distinguished writers from both sides of the Atlantic to throw light on this double mystery.

When her plane is delayed overnight, Gaby Struthers finds herself forced to share a hotel room with a stranger: a terrified young woman named Lauren Cookson - but why is she scared of Gaby in particular? Lauren won't explain. Instead, she blurts out something about an innocent man going to prison for a murder he didn't commit, and Gaby soon suspects that Lauren's presence on her flight can't be a coincidence. Because the murder victim is Francine Breary, the wife of the only man Gaby has ever truly loved.

All Beth has to do is drive her son to his Under-14s away match, watch him play, and bring him home. Just because she knows that her former best friend lives near the football ground, that doesn't mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that, and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn't seen Flora Braid for 12 years. But she can't resist. She parks outside Flora's house and watches from across the road as Flora and her children, Thomas and Emily, step out of the car. Except....

Fliss Benson is a TV producer struggling to deal with a personal tragedy in her own life. She receives at work an anonymous card which consists of 16 numbers arranged in four rows of four. These numbers mean absolutely nothing to her. At the same time, she is handed a particularly unwelcome assignment: she has to work on a documentary about cot death and three mothers accused (wrongly, it seems) of murder: Helen Yardley, Sarah Jaggard and Rachel Hines.