Search Results for: Born a Crime

Stanley J. Browne is an actor, and he has been an actor all his life. Born to a Jamaican mother in a London suburb, he began rehearsing for the role of survivor from an early age. From birth he knew nothing but a home filled with love and the vibrancy of a Caribbean culture, but this changes when his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia.

In this honest and gripping memoir, Stanley reflects on a childhood and adolescence torn apart by mental disorder. Because of it, he adopts the mantle of ‘man of the house’ as he is forced to scavenge for food and miss school, with his two sisters, to care for his baby brother. His life is further fragmented as they yo-yo in and out of the care system and Stanley must face the reality of being separated from his siblings.
An intelligent and sensitive child, Stanley descends into a life of crime and drug abuse. During his time spent in various young offender’s institutions and prisons he battles with addiction and slowly begins to turn his life around.
Set against a backdrop of 1970s poverty, racism and hardship, Little Big Man is a powerful story of generational trauma and one man’s determination to heal the wounds of the past. Most of all, it is a book about the universal desire for love, belonging and the search to find an authentic voice through the redemptive power of creativity and recovery.

For most of human history, sudden and unexpected deaths of a suspicious nature, when they were investigated at all, were examined by lay persons without any formal training. People often got away with murder. That is, until Frances Glessner Lee.

Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she became the mother of modern forensics and was instrumental in elevating homicide investigation to a scientific discipline.

Frances Glessner Lee learned forensic science under the tutelage of pioneering medical examiner Magrath. A voracious reader too, Lee acquired and read books on criminology and forensic science – eventually establishing the largest library of legal medicine.

Lee went on to create The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death – a series of dollhouse-sized crime scene dioramas depicting the facts of actual cases in exquisitely detailed miniature – and perhaps the thing she is most famous for. Celebrated by artists, miniaturists and scientists, they were first used as a teaching tool in homicide seminars at Harvard Medical School in the 1930s, subsequently becoming an integral part of the longest-running and still the highest-regarded training for police detectives of its kind in America.

In Unexplained Deaths, Bruce Goldfarb weaves Lee’s remarkable story with the advances in forensics made in her lifetime to tell the tale of the birth of modern forensics.

It’s the year 1260 and the great cathedral – the most ambitious building in all of Christendom – is rising above the streets of Cologne. Far below its soaring spires and flying buttresses, an assassin of unnatural talent surveys his new hunting ground.

More shadow than man, the assassin is quick to take his first life. But there is a witness to his crime: a flame-haired thief known as Jacob the Fox. Justly terrified by the black-clad spectre, Jacob runs for his life, convinced that he’s pursued by the Angel of Death itself.

For all his street-smart cunning, the wily Fox cannot shake off the assassin – a cruel, efficient murderer who favours a pistol-grip crossbow as his weapon of choice. Fate, injury and desperation lead Jacob to seek help from a beautiful clothes dyer, her drunken rascal of a father, and her learned uncle, a man of God who loves a battle of wits almost as much as he loves a bottle of wine.

With the threat of an untimely death at the end of a crossbow bolt never far way, Jacob’s unlikely cabal find themselves faced with a conspiracy born of an unquenchable thirst for revenge, a conspiracy that threatens to tear Cologne apart and stain the city with blood.

When it comes to immigration, the population explosion, the collapse of the family, the north-south divide, devolution, or the death of the countryside, common wisdom tells us that we are in trouble; however, this is far from the truth. In his brilliant anatomy of contemporary Britain, leading geographer Daniel Dorling dissects the nation and reveals unexpected truths about the way we live today, contrary to what you might read in the news:

The human mosaic: Most children who live above the fourth floor of tower blocks in England are Black or Asian. The higher you go in a building, the darker skinned children tend to be.

Relationships: The more times a person’s heart is broken, the nearer they will tend to move to the sea. If you want to find a good man to marry head for the countryside.

North and South: People in the south move home on average every seven years and job every eight years. This is a year faster than in the north of England, but a year slower than is usual in Scotland.

Optimum population: Emmigrant nation – There are twice as many grandchildren of British-born people living over-seas as there are people living in Britain who have grandparents who were themselves born abroad. The problem now is more about getting pregnant than a population explosion and we need more immigration not less.

Immigration: Muslims are far more likely to marry non-Muslims in Britain than Christians are to marry non-Christians.

The elderly: Most people in Britain never live long enough to experience being burgled. In some areas you would have to live for over five hundred years to have an ‘evens’ chance of being a crime victim.

Town and Country – divided since the enclosures: Step children are most commonly found in the most leafy of idyllic rural villages. Nuclear family homogeneity is now an inner city phenomena. Why are there no cheap homes in the countryside any more?

Transport: The greatest threat to life in Britain of all those aged under 40 is the car. For adults aged over 24 they most likely die as a driver, over 15 as a passenger, and over age 4 as a pedestrian.

Work: There is no need for us to work until we drop – all could retire early.

Reviews for Injustice:

“A geographer maps the injustices of Selfish Capitalism with scholarly detachment.” –Oliver James.

“Dorling provides the brain-cleaning software we need to begin creating a happier society. ” –Richard Wilkinson author of The Spirit Level.

It is three days before Christmas and a bitter wind is blowing across Norfolk.

Until her daughter was born, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway didn’t do Christmas, but now that Kate is a year old, she wants it to be special.

She must get a tree, shop for food, clean the house, buy presents, including one for her new boyfriend – who she isn’t even sure is her boyfriend – and remember to get the turkey out of the freezer.

But time is rushing by and the best-laid plans don’t always work out…

*****Part of the bestselling John Shakespeare series of Tudor spy thrillers from Rory Clements, winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award*****

‘Does for Elizabeth’s reign what CJ Sansom does for Henry VIII’s’ Sunday Times

England is close to war. Within days the axe could fall on the neck of Mary Queen of Scots, and Spain is already gathering a battle fleet to avenge her.

Tensions in Elizabeth I’s government are at breaking point. At the eye of the storm is John Shakespeare, chief intelligencer in the secret service of Sir Francis Walsingham. When an intercept reveals a plot to assassinate England’s ‘sea dragon’, Francis Drake, Shakespeare is ordered to protect him. With Drake on land fitting out his ships, he is frighteningly vulnerable. If he dies, England will be open to invasion.

In a London rife with rumour, Shakespeare must decide which leads to follow, which to ignore. When a high-born young woman is found mutilated and murdered at an illicit printing house, it is political gunpowder – and he has no option but to investigate.

But why is Shakespeare shadowed at every turn by the brutal Richard Topcliffe, the blood-drenched priest-hunter who claims intimacy with Queen Elizabeth herself? What is Topcliffe’s interest in a housemaid, whose baby has been stolen? And where do two fugitive Jesuit priests fit into the puzzle, one happy to die for God, the other to kill for Him?

From the splendour and intrigue of the royal court, to the sleek warships of Her Majesty’s Navy and the teeming brothels of Southwark, Shakespeare soon learns that nothing is as it seems . . .

Seventeenth-century Tokyo is the setting for Rowland’s first book in a murder mystery series featuring Sano Ichiro the Senior Police Commander in the district of Edo. Ichiro is a samurai whose academic background puts him at odds with most of his peers.

When beautiful, wealthy Yukiko and low-born artist Noriyoshi are found drowned together in what seems to be a shinju, or ritual double suicide, everyone believes the cause was their forbidden love. Everyone, that is, but Sano Ichiro.

Despite the official verdict and being warned off by his superiors, the shogun’s Most Honourable Investigator of Events, Situations and People suspects this double death was not only a tragedy – it was murder. Risking his family’s good name and his own life, Sano will search for the killer across every level of society, determined to find answers to a mystery no one else seems to want solved . . .

The new novel from the internatinal bestselling author of Roma, is set against the background of Caesar’s stupendous quadruple triumphs in Rome in 46 BC, full of colour and spectacle.

Having obliterated the opposition, Caesar is now dictator for life. In the upcoming celebrations, Vercingetorix the Gaul is scheduled to be executed, as is Arsinoë, the sister of Cleopatra…and Cleopatra herself is in Rome on a state visit, trying to convince Caesar to acknowledge their son as his heir.

Marc Antony and Caesar are at odds; Cicero is making a fool of himself with a new teenage bride; and Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, having fallen under the spell of an Etruscan soothsayer, is convinced of a plot on her husband’s life.

Murder and intrigue again draw Gordianus into the vortex of history.

Praise for Stephen Saylor

‘Saylor is on top form with the latest in his extraordinarily vivid series of crime novels set in ancient Rome.’ Sunday Times

‘Saylor’s gifts include authentic historical and topographical backgrounds and… sombre themes set off the brilliant scenery and clever plotting.’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Saylor’s scholarship is breathtaking and his writing enthrals.’ Ruth Rendell

‘Readers will find his work wonderfully (and gracefully) researched… this is entertainment of the first order.’ Washington Post

‘Saylor has acquired the information of a historian but he enjoys the gifts of a born novelist.’ Boston Globe

52 BC, and Rome is in turmoil. Rival gangs prowl the streets as Publius Clodius, a high-born populist politician, and his arch-enemy Titus Milo fight to control the consular elections. But when Clodius is murdered on the famed Appian Way and Milo is accused of the crime, the city explodes with riots and arson.

As accusations and rumours fly, Gordianus is charged by Pompey the Great with discovering what really happened on the Appian Way that dark January night. Was it murder? And if so, should the perpetrator be condemned as a villain – or hailed as the saviour of the Roman Republic? For on the truth of that hangs the fate of Titus Milo . . .

Praise for Steven Saylor:

‘Saylor evokes the ancient world more convincingly than any other writer of his generation.’Sunday Times

‘Saylor’s scholarship is breathtaking and his writing enthrals.’Ruth Rendell

‘With the scalpel-like deftness of a Hollywood director, Saylor puts his finger on the very essence of Roman history.’Times Literary Supplement

‘A full-blooded and action-packed work of fiction, cleverly built around a solid historical framework . . . it is an enthralling page-turner.’Daily Express

Celebrity, identity and sexuality – the three poles of our fame-obsessed society, each one a magnet for secrets and lies.
Despite her youth, Russian-born Yana Ivanova is already a Hollywood legend. She lives in a beautiful house in Beverly Hills with Jimmy, a sitcom star, and Penny, her British PA. Theirs is a strange and uneasy partnership, held together by sex, secrets and the fear of scandal. Then Yana starts receiving threatening letters from an anonymous but very knowledgeable source. Suspicion turns to fear, and fear leads to murder. But who exactly is conning whom?
Stella Duffy has written crime novels and dark romantic comedies. Here she combines the two in a smart, sexy, suspenseful new novel. Poison pen letters, fake identities, misplaced affection, betrayal and murder . . . Still think a menage à trois sounds fun?

‘A haunting, gripping, deeply atmospheric novel’ – Emma Stonex

‘What a storyteller . . . masterful’ – Donal Ryan

‘Beautiful, compelling and exquisitely told. This story will haunt me’ – Ruth Hogan

‘To be savoured long after the last page’ – Leonora Nattrass

‘A master craftswoman. I am in awe at this novel’s brilliance’ – Louisa Treger

‘A stylish, evocative novel from a born storyteller’ – Sunday Independent

Bestowed with the graces.
Condemned by a secret.
Redeemed by a lie.

Dublin, 1918. Rosaleen Moore: The Rose. A seer and a healer.

Revered by popular spiritualists and sought after for her gifts of prophecy and healing by fashionable society, the mighty of Dublin Castle and mercurial political agitators alike, her last extraordinary prophecy will only see her legend grow.

On the anniversary of her death, pilgrims walk the Way of the Rose: to St. Kilian’s Abbey and its bell tower which so lured the Rose in life. Although a shrine, the bell tower has seen tragedy – a heinous crime to which the monastery’s once-beloved Abbot, now imprisoned, has confessed.

Then emerges a deathbed revelation by Rosaleen Moore which casts doubt on the Abbot’s word.

The Rose has a different tale to tell . . .

Science and faith collide against tumultuous 20th-century Ireland in this heart-wrenching historical novel, perfect for fans of Stacey Halls and Laura Purcell.

PRAISE FOR SIOHAN MACGOWAN:

‘Keeps the reader hooked to the end’ – The Times

‘Utterly absorbing and vividly realised’ – Irish Independent

‘An enthralling drama’ – Best

‘A sweeping, heart-breaking quest for justice’ – Fiona Looney

‘A tale told with such ominous beauty. Lotta will stay with me forever’ – Chas Newkey-Burden

‘Weaves historical fact with an engaging and page-turning plot’ – Sinead Moriarty

‘This is a sit-down-and-do-not-get-up-until-you’ve-finished read’ – Belfast Telegraph

‘A brilliant tale’ – Sunday Business Post

‘A gripping story of injustice, intrigue and revenge set at the turn of the 20th century’ – Irish Times

Will he ever find the life he longs for?

Born to a mother who died in childbirth and an uninterested father, Niall McAndrew grows up a solitary child, without a home to call his own. His only friend is Bridget, a young girl forced prematurely into womanhood.

Niall has brains, spirit and ambition, as well as being blessed with handsome good looks. But his loveless childhood has left its mark. Can he ever find the happiness he yearns for?

A moving and uplifting tale of a young boy with big dreams…

From the bestselling author of Far From My Father’s House and Miss Appleby’s Academy comes a rags-to-riches tale of one man’s determination to succeed. Perfect for fans of Maggie Hope and Diane Allen.

This stunning box set includes all four books in Jennifer Lynne Barnes’ bestselling The Naturals series, packaged together for the first time!

Cold cases get hot in this unputdownable mystery series from Jennifer Lynn Barnes, no.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Inheritance Games series. Perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified programme that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.

What Cassie doesn’t realise is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved murders – especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive . . .

Born smart. Born tough. Born FBI.

‘The Naturals is Criminal Minds for the YA world, and I loved every page’ – Ally Carter, New York Times bestselling author

THIS COMPLETE SERIES BOX SET INCLUDES:
· The Naturals
· The Naturals: Killer Instinct
· The Naturals: All In
· The Naturals: Bad Blood

Cold cases get hot in this unputdownable mystery from Jennifer Lynn Barnes, no.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Inheritance Games series. Perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

All of your burning questions are answered in this shocking conclusion to the Naturals series – now with a bonus Naturals novella, Twelve, in print for the first time!

When Cassie Hobbes joined the FBI’s Naturals program, she had one goal: uncover the truth about her mother’s murder. But now, everything Cassie thought she knew about what happened that night has been called into question. Her mother is alive, and the people holding her captive are more powerful – and dangerous – than anything the Naturals have faced so far. As Cassie and the team work to uncover the secrets of a group that has been killing in secret for generations, they find themselves racing a ticking clock. When the bodies begin piling up, it soon becomes apparent that this time, the Naturals aren’t just hunting serial killers.

They’re being hunted.

Born smart. Born tough. Born FBI.

‘The Naturals is Criminal Minds for the YA world, and I loved every page’ – Ally Carter, New York Times bestselling author

Cold cases get hot in this unputdownable mystery from Jennifer Lynn Barnes, no.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Inheritance Games series. Perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Three casinos. Three bodies. Three days.

After a string of brutal murders in Las Vegas, Cassie Hobbes and the Naturals are called in to investigate. But even with the team’s unique profiling talents, these murders seem baffling: unlike many serial killers, this one uses different methods every time. All of the victims were killed in public, yet the killer does not show up on any security feed. And each victim has a string of numbers tattooed on their wrist. Hidden in the numbers is a code – and the closer the Naturals come to unraveling the mystery, the more perilous the case becomes.

Meanwhile, Cassie is dealing with an equally dangerous and much more painful mystery. For the first time in years, there’s been a break in her mother’s case. As personal issues and tensions between the team mount, Cassie and the Naturals will be faced with impossible odds – and impossible choices.

Born smart. Born tough. Born FBI.

‘The Naturals is Criminal Minds for the YA world, and I loved every page’ – Ally Carter, New York Times bestselling author

Cold cases get hot in this unputdownable mystery from Jennifer Lynn Barnes, no.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Inheritance Games series. Perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Cassie Hobbes has a gift for profiling people. Her talent has landed her a spot in an elite FBI programme. After barely escaping a confrontation with an unbalanced killer obsessed with her mother’s murder, Cassie hopes she and the rest of the team can stick to solving cold cases from a distance.

But when victims of a brutal new serial killer start turning up, the Naturals are pulled into an active case that strikes too close to home: the killer is a perfect copycat of one of their incarcerated fathers – a man he’d do anything to forget. Forced deeper into a murderer’s psyche than ever before, will the Naturals be able to outsmart his brutal mind games before he twists them into his web for good?

Born smart. Born tough. Born FBI.

‘The Naturals is Criminal Minds for the YA world, and I loved every page’ – Ally Carter, New York Times bestselling author

Cold cases get hot in this unputdownable mystery from Jennifer Lynn Barnes, no.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Inheritance Games series. Perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified programme that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.

What Cassie doesn’t realise is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved murders – especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive . . .

Born smart. Born tough. Born FBI.

‘The Naturals is Criminal Minds for the YA world, and I loved every page’ – Ally Carter, New York Times bestselling author

‘My favourite series’ Val McDermid

DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to ‘go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there’. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle’s baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?

Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh – another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle – trying not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.

As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn’t save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.

A quiet Suffolk village, 1944: Fourteen-year-old Gerald Haxton is a lonely boy who regards his still-born twin brother Jack as his only friend. His mother, a famous children’s writer, guards Jack’s memory jealously, claiming him as the model for the boy detective in her series of adventure stories, and Gerald, disturbed and unpopular, has no hope of ever measuring up to him. Playing in the woods near his home, Gerald discovers the body of his elder sister buried in a shallow grave. She has been beaten to death with a wooden stake and her boyfriend, a young G.I., is hanged for the crime.

London 1995: As the country prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of VE Day, Gerald, who remains a loner, is nearing retirement. Obsessed by routine, he still talks to his dead brother Jack. Surrounded by nostalgic artefacts at the TV prop-hire company where he works, he is constantly reminded of the past, and, with it, his sister Vera’s death. Hoping to escape his lonely existence, he takes to following Mel, the twelve-year-old daughter of a colleague. A few days later, Mel, who bears a striking resemblance to Vera, disappears…

Some fairy tales are born of dreams . . . and some are born of nightmares.

‘I loved Path of Needles. Dark but satisfying like the best chocolate’ ELLY GRIFFITHS, bestselling author of The Postscript Murders

Chrissie Farrell is young, beautiful and about to be crowned Queen of the Dance. But on the evening of her triumph she is abducted and murdered, her body left for the police to find.

With no other clues, the disturbing way in which Chrissie’s body has been posed has PC Cate Corbin at a loss – until university lecturer Alice Hyland is called in. An expert on fairy tales, Alice quickly notices a connection between the murder and an obscure version of Snow White.

When a second body is found, Alice is dragged further into the investigation – and only then realises that she is becoming a suspect.


‘Psychologically complex hybrid of magical realism and police procedural’ Publishers Weekly

Now Alice must fight, not just to prove her innocence, but to protect herself: because the body count is growing and it’s looking like she might be next . . .

In this spellbinding eBook novella of otherworldly desire, a woman whose destiny was born from a blood kiss discover that second chances do come… even for immortals.


A shimmering holiday gala lights up an ancient castle in the Scottish Highlands, but beautiful widowed Breedmate Danika MacConn feels alone in the crowd. Even, among the friends and festivity of the Darkhaven celebration, she can’t forget her lost love, a fallen warrior of the Order. Her brief return to her mate’s homeland has become treacherous after rejecting the advances of a dangerous Edinburgh crime boss with a taste for blood sport. As Danika seeks to expose the vampire and his dark trade , she discovers an unexpected ally in his forbidding, enigmatic henchman, Brannoc, a man who exudes heat, danger, and dark menace…

The East-End stories that inspired the BBC TV series, CALL THE MIDWIFE, in a gorgeous gift box.

London’s East End in the 1950s was a tough place: the struggles of post-war life – bombsites, overcrowded tenements, crime, brothels – bred a culture of tight-knit family communities, larger-than-life characters and a lively social scene. It was into this world that Jennifer Worth entered as a trainee midwife. But docklands life was tough, and babies were often born in slum conditions.

In funny, disturbing and heartbreaking stories, Jennifer Worth recounts her time among nuns, prostitutes, abortionists, bigamists, gangsters and expectant mothers, portraying East Enders’ amazing resilience – and their warmth and humour in the face of hardship. Written with affection and nostalgia, her midwife stories chronicle the lives, traditions and tales of a bygone era.

MAX WALKER – BLUE-EYED BOY OR GIRL NEXT DOOR?

‘Terrific. A poignant, brave and important book. – S J WATSON

‘A gripping read. Tarttelin is a natural storyteller’ MATT HAIG

‘Tarttelin broaches the topic of intersexuality bravely, describes the crimes committed against Max intensely, and evokes his ensuing emotions poignantly. A highly praised new author’ WE LOVE THIS BOOK

To the outside world, Max Walker is a golden boy: a loving son and brother, the perfect student, captain of the football team and every girl’s dream boyfriend. But Max was born intersex – neither fully boy nor fully girl. Now something terrible has happened to him, the consequences of which have left him questioning his gender identity.

Can the people around him – his girlfriend, his classmates, his ambitious parents – accept him for who he is? Or will Max’s secret tear his world apart?

The star of JUSTIFIED returns in a stunning new novel from ‘the greatest crime writer who ever lived’ [Dennis Lehane].

US Marshal Raylan Givens, star of the series JUSTIFIED, and protagonist of RIDING THE RAP, PRONTO and the story ‘Fire in the Hole’, is back in action, this time with a federal warrant to serve on a dope dealer named Angel Arenas, a man ‘born in the U.S. but a hundred percent of him Hispanic’. The state troopers are impressed when the marshal struts into the convict’s hotel room without drawing his gun, but Raylan soon finds that Angel’s already been the victim of another crime, one that’s way bigger than a few pot plants, and clearly the work of a professional …

RAYLAN shows Elmore Leonard at the height of his powers, as we follow one of his favourite protagonists through a series of adventures with unlikely villains. As ever, the work is filled with unexpected twists and the most vibrant, crackling dialogue currently available in the English language.