The ​Chessmen

Peter May - The ​Blackhouse
A ​brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith. A MURDER. Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past. A SECRET. Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister. A TRAP. As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.

Michael Connelly - Echo ​Park
In ​1993 Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found - dead or alive - and the case has haunted Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto. Bosch begins to crack when he realises that he and his partner missed a clue back in 1993 which could have prevented the nine murders that followed the killing of Marie Gesto...

Dan Brown - The ​Da Vinci Code
Harvard ​professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vault of history. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine code and quickly assemble the pieces of the puzzle, a stunning historical truth will be lost forever...

Dan Brown - Inferno ​(angol)
Dan ​Brown's new novel, Inferno, features renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and is set in the heart of Europe, where Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centred around one of history's most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces. As Dan Brown comments: "Although I studied Dante's Inferno as a student, it wasn't until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante's work on the modern world. With this new novel, I am excited to take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm.a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways."

Agatha Christie - Miss ​Marple's Final Cases
Despite ​the title, the stories collected here recount cases from the middle of Miss Marple's career. They are: "Sanctuary"; "Strange Jest"; "Tape-Measure Murder"; "The Case of the Caretaker"; "The Case of the Perfect Maid"; "Miss Marple Tells a Story"; "The Dressmaker's Doll"; "In a Glass Darkly"; "Greenshaw's Folly".

Anne Rice - The ​Tale of the Body Thief
It's ​been said that Vladimir Nabokov's best novels are the ones he wrote after starting a failed novel. Anne Rice wrote The Body Thief, the fourth thrilling episode of her Vampire Chronicles, right after she spent a long time poring over that most romantic of horror novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, to research a novel Rice abandoned about an artificial man. Perhaps as a result of Shelley's influence, The Body Thief is far more psychologically penetrating than its predecessors, with a laser-like focus on a single tormented soul. Oh, we meet some wild new characters, and Rice's toothsome vampire-hero Lestat zooms around the globe--as is his magical habit--from Miami to the Gobi desert, but he's in such despair that he trades his immortal body to a con man named Raglan James, who offers him in return two days of strictly mortal bliss. Lestat has always had a faulty impulse-control valve, and it gets him in truly intriguing trouble this time. On the plus side, he gets to experience romance with a nun and orange juice--"thick like blood, but full of sweetness." But Lestat is horrified by an uncommon cold, and his toilet training proves traumatic. He's also got to catch Raglan James, who has no intention of giving up his dishonestly acquired new superpowered body. Lestat enlists the help of David Talbot, a mortal in the Talamasca, a secret society of immortal watchers described in Queen of the Damned.

Agatha Christie - A ​Caribbean Mystery
An ​exotic holiday for Miss Marple is ruined when a retired major is killed! As Jane Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier's yarn about a strange coincidence. Infuriatingly, just as he was about to show her an astonishing photograph, the Major's attention wandered. He never did finished the story!

Agatha Christie - The ​Secret Adversary
A ​crime novel in which two desperate youngsters, short of money and restless for excitement, place an advertisement saying they are willing to do anything and to travel anywhere, but their first assignment for a sinister client plunges them into more danger than they could have imagined.

Agatha Christie - Hickory ​Dickory Dock
An ​outbreak of kleptomania at a student hostel is not normally the sort of crime that arouses Hercule Poirot's interest. But when he sees the bizarre list of stolen and vandalized items - including a stethoscope, some old flannel trousers, a box of chocolates, a slashed rucksack and a diamond ring found in a bowl of a soup - he congratulates the warden, Mrs Hubbard, on a 'unique and beautiful problem'. And, reasons Poirot, if this is merely a petty thief at work, why is everyone at the hostel so frightened?

Josephine Cox - The ​Loner
Young ​Davie Adams is all alone. Devastated, he flees his hometown of Blackburn to escape the memories of the worst night of his life. With little more than the shirt on his back he sets off on a lonely, friendless road, determined to find his father. Two people are stricken by his departure – Judy, his childhood friend who is desperate to reveal a secret she has kept close to her heart for so long, and Joseph, his grandfather, who is racked with guilt about that fateful night. Exhausted and afraid, Davie finds friendship and a place to stay but when fate deals him another disastrous blow, he must decide whether to keep running or return to face his demons…

Agatha Christie - The ​Moving Finger
Lymstock ​is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets - a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate-mail causes only a minor stir. But all that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs Symmington, commits suicide. Her final note says 'I can't go on' but still Miss Marple questions the coroner's verdict of suicide. Was this the work of a poison-pen? Or of a poisoner? _Reviews_ "Beyond all doubt the puzzle in The Moving Finger is fit for experts." _The Times_

David Lodge - Deaf ​Sentence
_Being ​deaf is less an affliction than a sentence..._ Retired Professor of Linguistics Desmond Bates is going deaf. Not suddenly, but gradually and - for him and everyone nearby - confusingly. It's a bother for his wife, Winifred, who has an enviably successful new career and is too busy to be endlessly repeating herself. Roles are reversed when he visits his hearing-impaired father, who won't seek help and resents his son's intrusions. And, finally, there's Alex. Alex is a student Desmond agrees to help after a typical misunderstanding. But her increasingly bizarre and disconcerting requests cannot - unfortunately - be blamed on defective hearing. So much for growing old gracefully...

David Lodge - Therapy
A ​successful sitcom writer with plenty of money, a stable marriage, a platonic mistress and a flashy car, Laurence 'Tubby' Passmore has more reason than most to be happy. Yet neither physiotherapy nor aromatherapy, cognitive-behaviour therapy or acupuncture can cure his puzzling knee pain or his equally inexplicable mid-life angst. As Tubby's life fragments under the weight of his self-obsession, he embarks - via Kierkegaard, strange beds from Rummidge to Tenerife to Beverly Hills, a fit of literary integrity and memories of his 1950s South London boyhood - on a picaresque quest for his lost contentment, in an ingenious, hilarious and poignant novel of neuroses.

David Lodge - A ​David Lodge Trilogy
Changing ​Places - Small World - Nice Work This omnibus lines up David Lodge's trio of brilliantly comic novels that revolve around the University of Rummidge and the lives of its role-swapping academics. When Philip Swallow, lecturer in English at Rummidge, changes places with flamboyant Morris Zapp of Euphoric State University, USA, trouble ensues. Then, ten years on, older but not noticeably wiser, they are let loose on the international conference circuit - a veritable academic carnival. And finally, Dr Robyn Penrose becomes part of a scheme to learn about industry instead of reading about it, with hilarious results. David Lodge exposes the dizzy pursuit of knowledge - literary, commercial, romantic and erotic - with unparalleled wit and insight.

Agatha Christie - What ​Mrs. McGillicuddy saw!
For ​an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case -- for there is no corpse, and no one is missing. Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.

Josephine Cox - A ​Time For Us
Lucy ​Nolan is the golden girl. The only daughter of local grocers, Sally and Mike Nolan, she's grown up in a home of total love and security. The one thing her heart desires is that Jack Hanson might ask her to marry him, and when he does eventually propose, Lucy is prepared to give up everything to be with him - even though it means leaving her beloved parents to live abroad where Jack has been offered an exciting business opportunity. But then, almost on the eve of the marriage itself, tragedy strikes. And for the first time in her life, Lucy is forced to realise that Fate, which has been so kind to her, can also be just as cruel.

Agatha Christie - A ​Murder is Announced
The ​villagers of Chipping Cleghorn, including Jane Marple, are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette which read: "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m." Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, a crowd begins to gather at Little Paddocks at the ppointed time when, without warning, the lights go out ...

Agatha Christie - The ​Secret of Chimneys
What ​connects Chimneys, a formidable country estate nestled in the English countryside, with the small Balkan nation of Herzoslovakia? If Anthony Cade had known the answer, perhaps the chance to earn a thousand pounds just delivering a parcel would not have seemed like such easy money! The Secret of Chimneys was written in 1925 - a mystery thriller involving jewel thieves, a murderous international conspiracy, and the combined forces of Scotland Yard and the French Sûreté.

Agatha Christie - Miss ​Marple Omnibus 2.
Another ​four of Agatha Christie’s twelve, celebrated Miss Marple novels in a single volume, bound in the stylish livery of the new series. A Caribbean Mystery As Miss Marple dozes in the West Indian sun, an old soldier talks of elephant shooting and scandals. Then he dies – shortly after offering to show her a picture of a murderer. It’s not long before the deceptively frail detective finds herself investigating a most exotic murder… A Pocket Full of Rye Rex Fortescue, ‘king’ of a financial empire, was in his counting house; his ‘queen’ was in the parlour…and that’s exactly where they were when they died. There are baffling similarities between the rhyme and the crime and it takes all Miss Marple’s ingenuity to find them… The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side Marina Gregg, the famous actress, witnesses a murder in her country home. But what gave her the expression of frozen terror that only Dolly Bantry saw? Dolly, of course, knows just who can find out: her old friend Miss Marple… They Do It With Mirrors To fulfil a promise to an old schoolfriend, Miss Marple stays in a country house – with 200 juvenile delinquents and seven heirs to an old lady’s fortune. One of them is a murderer – with, it seems, a talent for being in two places at once…

Agatha Christie - Miss ​Marple Omnibus 1.
Four ​of Agatha Christie’s twelve, celebrated Miss Marple novels in a single volume, bound in the stylish livery of the new series. The Body in the Library It’s seven in the morning, and the body of a young woman is found in the Bantry’s library. And what’s the connection with another dead girl, found in a deserted quarry? Miss Marple is invited to investigate the mystery before tongues start to wag… and another innocent victim is murdered in cold blood. The Moving Finger The quiet inhabitants of Lymstock are unsettled by a sudden outbreak of hate-mail. But when one of the recipients commits suicide, only Miss Marple questions the coroner’s verdict. Is this the work of a poison pen…or a poisoner? A Murder is Announced An advertisement in the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette announces the time and place of a forthcoming murder. Many think it’s a hoax – but the owner of the house named as the murder site is less than impressed. Especially when half the village turn up at the allotted time and then the lights go out… and the screaming starts. 4.50 from Paddington As two trains run together, side by side, Mrs McGillicuddy watches a murder. Then the other train draws away. With no other witnesses, and not even a body, who will take her story seriously. The she remembers her old friend Miss Marple…