Devices ​and Desires

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The ​Hound of the Baskervilles
"Mr. ​Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" The death, quite suddenly, of Sir Charles Baskerville in mysterious circumstances is the trigger for one of the most extraordinary cases ever to challenge the brilliant analytical mind of Sherlock Holmes. As rumours of a legendary hound said to haunt the Baskerville family circulate, Holmes and Watson are asked to ensure the protection of Sir Charles' only heir, Sir Henry - who has travelled all the way from America to reside at Baskerville Hall in Devon. And it is there, in an isolated mansion surrounded by mile after mile of wild moor, that Holmes and Watson come face to face with a terrifying evil that reaches out from centuries past...

Robert Galbraith - The ​Cuckoo's Calling
After ​losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his long-time girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Landry walks through his door with an amazing story. His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, fell, famously, to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rockstar boyfriends, desperate designers, and every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detective novels, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know the world of the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen it investigated by a detective like this one.

Robert Galbraith - The ​Silkworm
When ​novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . .

Maureen Jennings - Night's ​Child
After ​thirteen-year-old Agnes Fisher faints at school, her teacher, the young and still idealistic Amy Slade, is shocked to discover in the girl’s desk two stereoscopic photographs. One is of a dead baby in its cradle, and on the back Agnes has scrawled a terrible message. Worse, the other photograph is of Agnes in a pose captioned “What Mr. Newly Wed Really Wants.” When Agnes doesn’t show up at school the next day, her teacher takes the two photographs to the police. Murdoch, furious at the sexual exploitation of such a young girl, resolves to find the photographer – and to put him behind bars. Night’s Child is the fifth novel in Maureen Jennings’s highly praised historical mystery series. Three of Jennings’s novels have been made into TV movies under the title Murder 19C: The Murdoch Mysteries. Bravo/CHUM is currently developing a series based on the character of Detective William Murdoch for broadcast in 2007

Lawrence Block - The ​Burglar in the Rye
Bernie ​Rhodenbarr attempts to retrieve the lost letters of famed reclusive author Gulliver Fairborn, but instead discovers a dead literary agent and a beautiful woman

Dan Wells - I ​Don't Want to Kill You
Dan ​Wells introduced us to John Wayne Cleaver in the chilling novels I Am Not a Serial Killer and Mr. Monster. In I Don't Want to Kill You, Cleaver faces his toughest challenge yet. John Wayne Cleaver has called a demon---literally called it on the phone---and challenged it to a fight. He’s faced two monsters already, barely escaping with his life, and now he’s done running; he’s taking the fight to them. As he wades through the town’s darkest secrets, searching for any sign of who the demon might be, one thing becomes all too clear: in a game of cat and mouse with a supernatural killer, you are always the mouse. In I Am Not a Serial Killer we watched a budding sociopath break every rule he had to save his town from evil. In Mr. Monster we held our breath as he fought madly with himself, struggling to stay in control. Now John Wayne Cleaver has mastered his twisted talents and embraced his role as a killer of killers. I Don't Want to Kill You brings his story to a thundering climax of suspicion, mayhem, and death. It’s time to punish the guilty. And in a town full of secrets, everyone is guilty of something.

Lawrence Block - The ​Burglar Who Studied Spinoza
Bookselling ​burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't generally get philosophical about his criminal career. He's good at it, it's addictively exciting—and it pays a whole lot better than pushing old tomes. He steals therefore he is, period. He might well ponder, however, the deeper meaning of events at the luxurious Chelsea brownstone of Herb and Wanda Colcannon, which is apparently burgled three times on the night Bernie breaks in: once before his visit and once after. Fortunately he still manages to lift some fair jewelry and an extremely valuable coin. Unfortunately burglar or burglars number three leave Herb unconscious and Wanda dead . . . and the cops think Rhodenbarr dunnit. There's no time to get all existential about it—especially after the coin vanishes and the fence fencing it meets with a most severe end. But Bernie is going to have to do some deep thinking to find a way out of this homicidal conundrum.

Jeffrey Archer - A ​Prisoner of Birth
If ​Danny Cartwright had proposed to Beth Wilson on any other day, he would not have been arrested and charged with the murder of his best friend. But when the prosecution witnesses happen to be a group of four upper-crust college friends—a barrister, a popular actor, an aristocrat, and the youngest partner in an established firm’s history—who is going to believe Danny’s side of the story? Danny is sentenced to twenty-two years and sent to Belmarsh prison, the highest-security jail in the land, from where no inmate has ever escaped. But Spencer Craig, Lawrence Davenport, Gerald Payne, and Toby Mortimer all underestimate Danny’s determination to seek revenge—and the extent to which his fiancée Beth will go in pursuit of justice.

Alan Bradley - The ​Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag
A ​travelling puppet show arrives in the sleepy village of Bishop's Lacey - and a shocking murder takes place. For eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, the crime will test her precocious powers of deduction to the limit - particularly when she discovers that the murder echoes a tragedy which occured many years before.

Lawrence Block - A ​Drop of the Hard Stuff
"Right ​up there with Mr. Block's best....A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF keeps us guessing."--Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer. When Scudder's childhood friend Jack Ellery is murdered, presumably while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder reluctantly begins his own investigation, with just one lead: Ellery's Alcoholics Anonymous list of people he wronged. One of them may be a killer, but that's not necessarily Scudder's greatest danger. Immersing himself in Ellery's world may lead him right back to the bar stool. In a novel widely celebrated by critics and readers, Lawrence Block circle back to how it all began, reestablishing the Matthew Scudder series as one of the pinnacles of American detective fiction.

Lawrence Block - The ​Burglar in the Closet
Hired ​by his dentist to steal back some valuable diamonds from his ex-wife, Bernie Rhodenbarr is nearly discovered and hides in the closet, only to become the witness to the woman's murder.

Frederick Forsyth - The ​Day of the Jackal
The ​Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.

Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem ​(angol)
Under ​cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a human monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralyzed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer whose signature offers precious few clues. With an unerring eye, she calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the madman. But this investigation will test Kay like no other, because it's being sabotaged from within and someone wants her dead.

Barry Lyga - I ​Hunt Killers
The ​dark thriller, described as Dexter meets The Silence of the Lambs for teens, tells of a boy who uses his killer instinct, inherited from his serial killer father, to help solve a series of murders.

Dan Wells - Mr. ​Monster
I ​killed a demon. I don’t know if it was really, technically a demon, but I do know that he was some kind of monster, with fangs and claws and the whole bit, and he killed a lot of people. So I killed him. I think it was the right thing to do. At least the killing stopped. Well, it stopped for a while. In I Am Not a Serial Killer, John Wayne Cleaver saved his town from a murderer even more appalling than the serial killers he obsessively studies. But it turns out even demons have friends, and the disappearance of one has brought another to Clayton County. Soon there are new victims for John to work on at the mortuary and a new mystery to solve. But John has tasted death, and the dark nature he used as a weapon---the terrifying persona he calls “Mr. Monster”---might now be using him. No one in Clayton is safe unless John can vanquish two nightmarish adversaries: the unknown demon he must hunt and the inner demon he can never escape. In this sequel to his brilliant debut, Dan Wells ups the ante with a thriller that is just as gripping and even more intense. He apologizes in advance for the nightmares.

Ian Fleming - You ​Only Live Twice
Dr ​Shetterhand is probably the finest collector in the world. What does he collect? said Bond. He collects death.

Dorothy L. Sayers - Clouds ​of Witness
The ​Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair. The murder took place at the duke's shooting lodge and Lord Peter's sister was engaged to marry the dead man. But why does the duke refuse to co-operate with the investigation? Can he really be guilty, or is he covering up for someone? 'She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.' P. D. James

G. K. Chesterton - The ​Scandal of Father Brown
'It ​would not be fair to record the adventures of Father Brown without admitting that he was once involved in a grave scandal...' The story of the Mexican Scandal, however, is only the first of nine intrguing cases solved by that modest and charming priest. 'It may seem odd to class a man who has difficulty in rolling his umbrella and does not know the right end of his return ticket among the Supermen of detection, but Father Brown belongs among them' - Julian Symons

Michael Connelly - The ​Narrows
Former ​FBI agent Rachel Walling is working a dead-end stint in South Dakota when she gets the call she's been dreading for four years. The Poet is back. And he has not forgotten Rachel. He has a special present for her. Harry Bosch is adjusting to life in Las Vegas as a private investigator and as a new father. He gets a call, too, from the widow of a friend who died recently. Previously in his FBI career, the friend worked on the famous case tracking the killer known as The Poet. This fact alone makes some of the elements of his death doubly suspicious. And Harry Bosch is heading straight into the path of the most ruthless and inventive murderer he has ever encountered...

M. J. Arlidge - Eeny ​Meeny
The ​girl emerged from the woods, barely alive. Her story was beyond belief. But it was true. Every dreadful word of it. Days later, another desperate escapee is found - and a pattern is emerging. Pairs of victims are being abducted, imprisoned then faced with a terrible choice: kill or be killed. Would you rather lose your life or lose your mind? Detective Inspector Helen Grace has faced down her own demons on her rise to the top. As she leads the investigation to hunt down this unseen monster, she learns that it may be the survivors - living calling cards - who hold the key to the case. And unless she succeeds, more innocents will die...