Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in All Categories

Retired actress Guinevere 'Gwinny' Tuffel is finding life hard after inheriting her late father's run-down house and discovering she's broke. But Gwinny is delighted to be at Hayburn Stead for her best friend Tina's wedding to a handsome Italian business magnate. However, before they get the chance to declare 'till death do us part', the husband-to-be is found dead in the library and Tina is accused of his murder. Convinced of her friend's innocence, Gwinny must uncover the real killer from a pool of larger-than-life suspects.

December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills, only to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead. The driver manages to slow the train down so that the impact is minimised, but the passengers are alarmed. The first person to alight is Cyril Hubbleday, the man in charge of the excursion. He walks to the front of the locomotive—and, as he is talking to the driver, fireman and guard, he is shot dead by a sniper.

Ten years ago CSI Darby McCormick investigated a child abduction case. Today, Charlie Rizzo is back and holding his family hostage. He makes only one demand. Bring me Darby McCormick... When Darby arrives to defuse the scene, she finds him horrifically mutilated, with a mask of human skin sewn in place over his own face. Within minutes, a group of men disguised as SWAT officers bursts in and releases deadly gas, killing the Rizzo family and leaving Darby barely alive.

2002, Quebec. A former schoolteacher is accused of brutally stabbing her husband—a famous university professor—to death. Detective Maxine Grant, who has recently lost her own husband and is parenting a teenager and a new baby single-handedly, takes on the investigation. Under enormous personal pressure, Maxine makes a series of macabre discoveries that link directly to historical cases involving black magic and murder, secret societies and spiritism...and women at breaking point, who will stop at nothing to protect the ones they love.

When private eye V.I. Warshawski is called out to a derelict drug house in a rural town just south of Chicago, she discovers something she wasn't expecting: the mutilated corpse of a man, dumped in a cornfield. It is a discovery that throws V.I. into the fascinating world of physics and invention: a design that sparked the construction of the computer as we know it, the development of nuclear weapons, the wonder of Newton's prisms and a train of dramatic events that occurred in wartime Vienna.

1912: Locked in an eerily quiet dining room on the Titanic, a mysterious man tells a young girl his life story as the ship begins to sink. It all starts in Whitechapel, London in 1888.... In the small hours of the night in a darkened Whitechapel alley, young Mary Kelly stumbles upon a seriously injured man almost unconscious in the gutter. Two days later, an American gentleman wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is or how he got there.…

One of the Claridge's kitchen porters is found dead—strangled. He was a recent employee who claimed to be Romanian, but evidence suggests he may have been German. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg has to find out exactly who he was, and what he was doing at Claridge's under a false identity. Once he has established those facts, he might get an insight into why he was killed, and who by. 

AD 58. Rome is in turmoil once more. Emperor Nero has surrounded himself with sycophants, and together they rampage by night through the city. Meanwhile, Nero's extravagance has reached new heights. The Emperor's spending is becoming profligate at the same time as the demands of keeping the provinces subdued have become increasingly unaffordable. Could Nero withdraw from Britannia, and at what price for the Empire?

When Miles Hammond is invited to a meeting of the Murder Club in London, he is met instead with just two other guests and is treated to a strange tale of an impossible crime in France years before; the murder of a man on a tower with only one staircase, under watch at the time at which the murder took place. With theories of levitating vampires abounding, the story comes home to Miles when he realises that the librarian he has just hired for his home is none other than Fay Seton, a woman at the heart of this bizarre and unsolved past murder.

Iceland, midwinter: the days are fleeting, the nights endless and Sergeant Magnus Jonson has been sent to an isolated fishing village in the West Fjords to investigate the possible homicide of a road construction worker. Ringed by steep mountains, this bleak village is cut off from the rest of Iceland and from the modern world. The locals are adamant that Iceland's legendary huldufólk - hidden people - had a hand in the death. 

Why does a wealthy Scottish financier set up a drugs deal with the IRA? Jeopardise his career, endanger his family and lover by tangling with the East End underworld and a ruthless mercenary? The motive is simple: revenge for a cold-blooded act of murder. His adversary is a dangerous gangland boss whose connections stretch from the Highlands to London and beyond. More than a match for a newcomer, especially when his plans contain a fatal flaw, which will be discovered only when it is much too late…

It was Mrs Croyden who had been taken by the idea of digging up the history of the family. It seemed to be the kind of thing that everyone was doing nowadays. And once started she became more and more enchanted by the project. Even her husband, George, having seen the ancient photograph of a most attractive girl, long since dead, was taken by the project. The snag was that even Great Aunt Maud, the owner of the photograph, had no idea what had happened to the beautiful girl named Isabella. Apparently she had completely vanished and to the rest of the family had simply become “The Unknown”. Would the mystery ever be solved?

Across the US, a secret network of crisis centres permanently relocates women in serious danger from domestic abuse. But now someone is killing them before they reach their destinations. Detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus are having trouble gaining the trust of the volunteers who run the scheme. The only way in is for an undercover police officer to pose as a threatened woman, making herself a target and drawing the killer out. Reinetta Early is the ideal candidate - except for one thing.

Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a new wife, Jennifer, at 33, seizes the opportunity to lead an independent life. Quickly she secures the lease of Rose Cottage and turns her attention to her own interests. While Jennifer is desperate to experience life on her own terms within her reduced financial means, her neighbour, Alice, is pre-occupied with ensuring her position as head of her brother's household is never challenged. 

"So if you can’t find a helicopter anywhere in Sierra Leone for a lift-out, you’d better order up four body bags instead.” Spider Shepherd and his SAS mates are stranded, low on rations and ammunition, waiting for a ride to Freetown before they are overrun by rebels. Upon their return to the capital, they are pressed into service by MI6, tasked with destroying a rebel arms dump. But to do this, they must wade through infested swamps and face rebel soldiers. Many of the soldiers are boys.

DI Adams fled London to escape bridge-dwelling monsters and magical toasties - a one-time experience she's in no hurry to repeat. She's police, not some cryptid hunter. Leeds has other plans, though. Tasked with the seemingly mundane case of a missing necklace, Adams soon realises she's stumbled into something inexplicable. The trinket is dangerous, and she's the only one who recognises it for what it is - a weapon that could tear the North apart.

"Spider Shepherd squatted on his heels outside his tent, drinking his first brew of the day from a battered mug as he watch the wind stirring dust devils from the dirt floor of the compound." When an inexperienced officer sends out innocent paratroopers to be betrayed by a surrendered Taliban sniper, Spider Shepherd is the man chosen to clean up the mess. With his old friends Jock and Geordie to help, along with SAS hopeful Lex, can they take their revenge? Or are they just putting themselves in the kill zone?

Friday nights, the best night of the week, the night they all looked forward to more than they cared to admit – talking, drinking, laughing and crying together. They were six female friends, different in age and circumstances, but with one common need: the warmth and support of their Friday nights. It was a time to share secrets and fears, triumphs and tragedies and, above all, to feel safe in the company of women friends.

The Dowager Duchess has decided to sell off the less important family possessions. Blotto and Twinks are dispatched to help the valuer. He spies some Egyptian artifacts and in some excitement rushes back to London, leaving Blotto and Twinks alone in the attic, where they are drawn to a sarchophagus decorated with hieroglyphs. Twinks starts to translate: "Anyone who desecrates this shrine will be visited by the Pharoah's curse..." - just as Blotto prises the lid off.

Gervase Phinn’s colourful characters have now become firm favourites – the mostly mad staff at County Hall and the children themselves, who find ways of embarrassing the school inspectors with innocent ease. We reconvene with Christine Bentley, head teacher of Winnery Nook School and now Gervase’s wife and mother of their son; the well-named Mrs Savage and not forgetting the Queen of the Clean – Connie.