Showing results by narrator "William Hope" in All Categories

About to turn 40, there’s no doubt in her mind that suburban wife and mother-of-two Claire Taylor has settled. A wild week in Chicago may have shaken things up a bit, but as she turns the key in her Wisconsin home on the eve of Hallowe’en, she knows that this is where her life is. Except that it’s all gone. The house stripped, her husband Danny, her daughters, all gone: no message, nothing.

A heart-stopping thriller with plenty of twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat, for fans of Peter Swanson, Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay. Imagine you are having lunch at an exclusive restaurant, filled with Hollywood’s hottest stars. And a masked gunman walks in and takes everyone hostage. You must bargain for your life against a twisted individual who knows everything about you. He also has a bomb set to detonate if his heart rate changes. If he dies. You die.  

Nothing will ever be the same again.... In the heart of Philadelphia's badlands, homicide detectives Byrne and Balzano are called out to a particularly chilling crime scene. Once the pillar of the neighbourhood, an abandoned church has become a killing room. At first it looks like a random act of violence. But then a second body is found, and a third. Each crime scene more disturbing than the last, each murder more brutal.

Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic 18-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidactic philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig.  

New Orleans, Summer 2005: New FBI agent Franco Patrese is intrigued when the attractive PA to the city’s richest man requests a secret meeting. She has information regarding an unthinkable conspiracy, and will trust no-one else.

The next day she’s dead - the victim of a bizarre ritual murder - and Patrese finds himself drawn into the murkiest of underworlds, piecing together connections between the city’s seediest players and its top officials.

FBI profiler Yoko Tanaka is in Florida helping the local PD with their "Sandman" case. Three mothers and their daughters have been found murdered in their homes, the mothers brutally stabbed while the little girls have been smothered, posed to look like they're sleeping.

Defying protocol, Yoko makes a detour to entice Jefferson Winter to join the case. All Yoko knows is that he's the only person who can help her before the Sandman claims another two victims....

Ex-FBI profiler Jefferson Winter has taken a new case in sunny Louisiana, where the only thing more intense than the heat is a killer on the loose in the small town of Eagle Creek. So far there's just one body, but there are going to be more. But in a town where secrets are rife and history has a way of repeating itself, can Winter solve the case before someone else dies?

Pittsburgh homicide detective, Franco Patrese, is about to be put to the test by a series of shocking murders… The charred body of a renowned brain surgeon is found in one of the city's luxury apartment blocks. Then a Catholic bishop is set alight in his Cathedral. Patrese's investigation uncovers high-class prostitution, medical scams and religious obsession, but it will take a terrible betrayal to uncover the truth.

In 1962, when mild-mannered actuary Walter Cousins sleeps with the sharp-tongued, not-quite-legal British au pair Diane Burroughs, he can have no sense of the magnitude of his error. For the brief affair sets in motion a tragedy of epic proportions. At the centre is Ed King, an infant given up for adoption who becomes one of the richest and most powerful men. But beneath the gripping story of Ed's seemingly inexorable rise to fame and fortune is a dark and unsettling destiny.

The Eye of the Beholder is a cult classic that inspired both French and English film adaptations. Joanna Eris has a bad habit of marrying men that wind up dead. An unnamed private detective, known simply as The Eye is hired to investigate the death of her husband. The story charts the development of the detective s dangerous obsession with a femme fatale, as he pursues her across the United States.

Michael has travelled a long way from his boyhood under the endless skies of the Midwest. His retirement is peaceful, if solitary. But one day there is a visitation: a mysterious car on the seafront, and a package delivered. From its contents, Michael understands that he has been commissioned to undertake a final journey. As Michael makes his way deep into a distant desert—a strange and liminal landscape that lies between hell and redemption—he undertakes another journey, into long-suppressed memories.

For 60 years, the United States has supported European integration on a bipartisan basis - not only because this has served European interests, but because it has promoted American interests as well. As core partners in transatlantic efforts to address regional and global economic, political and security challenges, the US and the EU have collaborated critically over the years to make the world a less turbulent place. That is, until the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump. 

First published fifteen years ago, shortly after his death, inside this collection are some of the finest short stories of science fiction writing from one of the genre’s greatest writers, Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov was the Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America, the founder of robot ethics, and one of the world's most prolific authors of fiction and non-fiction. The Good Doctor's short fiction has been enjoyed by millions for more than half a century. Now the definitive Asimov collection is underway with Volume One of The Complete Stories.

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, 27 of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them.

How does the world see you? Nine characters illuminate an unknowable woman. From the school art teacher who sees a spark of talent in her, to the man whose fleeting passion with her could change his life, to the female student whose friendship turns into love. Deeply affecting and luminous, this kaleidoscopic novella explores the nature of intimacy and how each connection you make forms who you are. 

Zane Grey wrote about the West and lived it as well. Tales of Lonely Trails is a collection of true travel tales describing his explorations of uninhabited areas of the west, much of it on pack horses with a guide. Here are descriptions of his hunting, camping, and exploring trips in the wild and desolate parts of the West, including Arizona territory, Colorado, Death Valley, the Tonto Basin, the Grand Canyon, and more. These adventures gave him the firsthand experience that he later used in writing his descriptions of the landscape and characters of his Western novels.

In the 2008 US election, many Americans believed Barack Obama was a Muslim. The conspiracy theory book 9/11: The Big Lie has become a best seller. Hearsay has fuelled economic boom and bust - so much so that in many places it's now a crime to circulate false rumours about banks. Why do ordinary people accept rumours, even untrue, bizarre or damaging ones? Does it matter? And, if so, what should we do about it? As Cass Sunstein shows in his brilliant analysis of the phenomenon, there are many different ways in which rumours are dispersed.

Jonathan Craine has left his old life in Hollywood behind him, content to live out his days with his son on a rural farm in California. But when infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel is murdered, Craine is forced to face his past once again. Summoned to Las Vegas to meet mob head Meyer Lansky, Craine is given the impossible task of finding Siegel’s murderers. All he has to help him is an ageing hit man and a female crime reporter with her own agenda. And he knows that if he doesn’t succeed in five days, both he and his son will pay for it with their lives.... 

Vincent Kahn is an astronaut in training, living with his wife in the desert. He will go on to be the first man to walk on the moon. Fay Fern is 19 years old and working in a dive bar, having rejected her parents' wealth and conservatism. She will go on to become a violent activist and one of the FBI's most wanted. The pair's brief but intense love affair will have repercussions that echo through the American century, intersecting with the race to space, the rage against the Vietnam war and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic. 

America's most storied urban underdog, Brooklyn has become an internationally recognized brand in recent decades - celebrated and scorned as one of the hippest destinations in the world. In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world’s most resurgent cities.