Addictive Books

It is six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their orderly world seems almost unassailable. Then the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister. Hysterically she is shrieking that her husband has been murdered. Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P.D. James re-creates the world of "Pride and Prejudice".

Beautiful Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley. But her past is shrouded in mystery, and Sir Michael's nephew Robert has vague forebodings. When Robert's good friend George Talboys suddenly disappears, he is determined to find him and unearth the truth. A tangled story of lies and deception, crime and intrigue.

Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats. A nightmare of romance and terror.

The villagers of King’s Abbot are shocked when a wealthy local widow commits suicide and the very next day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death. Dr. James Sheppard, the local physician, discovers the body of his friend and narrates the ensuing hunt for the killer. - One of the most fiendish mysteries with the most dramatic twists in Christie’s extensive oeuvre.

When Stella and her younger brother, Tom, move to their new London home, they become mystified by the disappearances of Harry, their elderly neighbour’s small dog. A page-turning time travel adventure for children aged 8-11.

Its the year 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction. Oxford historian Theodore Faron spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live - and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.

Theo Faber, a psychotherapist treats Alicia Berenson, who has seemingly gone mute after “killing” her husband. As the book unravels what truly happened that day, the plot twists and turns at every corner. Certainly one of the best psychological thrillers hands down.

Almost a year has passed since Stella and Tom discovered a time tunnel and travelled to early 1900s London, where they befriended Emma, Lucy and Jack. The magical moles that made the tunnel and secret lake appear have since vanished.

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 one of the  world's most heavily guarded man. 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.

John and Naomi Klaesson are grieving the death of their four-year-old son from a rare genetic disorder. They desperately want another child, but when they find out they are both carriers of a rogue gene, they realize the odds of their next child contracting the disease are high. Then they hear about geneticist Doctor Leo Dettore. His clinic is where their nightmare begins.

Lady Verinder’s uncle gives her the Moonstone – a magnificent diamond as large as an egg – for her eighteenth birthday, but it is not quite the generous gift it first seems. For he obtained it through bloody and nefarious means in India, and legend says the diamond’s guardians will stop at nothing to get it back. When the Moonstone is stolen, an innocent man is accused of the crime.

Four people walked into the dining room that night. One would never leave. Matthew, the perfect husband; Titus, the perfect son; Charlie, the perfect illusion; Rachel, the perfect stranger. Charlie didn’t want her at the book club. And that’s how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand. A nerve-shredding domestic noir thriller.

Fiendishly intricate cases became popular during the 'golden age of murder' between the two world wars. The tradition goes back to the days of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. Impossible crime stories have also been written by such luminaries as Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham.This anthology celebrates their work.

A shy young woman meets wealthy widow, Maxim de Winter, and falls in love with him. On his grand English estate, Manderley, she is immediately haunted by the powerful presence of the former mistress of Manderley, Maxim's flamboyant late wife Rebecca. This story of emotional horror and evil is a classic masterpiece, made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock.

Sam McCready serves Britain as Chief of Deception & Disinformationfor the British Secret Intelligence Service. He's competent, dedicated, in his prime. Why then this push to get him out? The options are painful -- early retirement or an administrative backwater. Who wants him out, and why? And what happens if he refuses to go quietly? It's a wild card, confrontational, risky.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. But only when they look back as adults they realize the horrible truth of what Hailsham realy was.

Poirot is settling in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactress, the elderly Emily Ingle­thorp. When Emily is poisoned, Poirot puts his sleuthing skills to work. Suspects are plentiful, including the victim’s husband, her stepsons, her longtime hired companion, a young family friend working as a nurse, and a London specialist on poisons who just happens to be visiting the nearby village.

You’re waiting up for your eighteen-year-old son. He’s past curfew. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed. He kills the stranger. That night you fall asleep in despair. Until you wake ... and it is yesterday. And then you wake again ... and it is the day befor yesterday.

Walter Hartright, engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his "charming" friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. This upper-class Victorian love story is certainly one of the greatest romantic thrillers.

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world’s most heinous villains—a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother’s children to make his crown secure?

After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds 'Circus' head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man.

Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was just a character in a bedtime story. Until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis summons her to a reading of the woman's will. Down-on-her-luck Lori learns she's about to inherit a siazable estate - if she can discover the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity's English country cottage.

This classic mystery is set in the quiet village of St. Mary Mead. Reverend Clement's wife, Griselda, stumbles upon Colonel Protheroe's lifeless body, igniting a web of intrigue. As villagers reveal secrets, suspicion points to multiple suspects. Miss Marple steps in to decipher clues and motives, ultimately unraveling the truth behind the murder in Agatha Christie's captivating tale of deception.

Sally Jupp was a sly and sensuous young woman who used her body and her brains to make her way up the social ladder. Now she lies across her bed with dark bruises from a strangler’s fingers forever marring her lily-white throat. Someone has decided that the wages of sin should be death...and it is up to Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to find who that someone is.

This story of intrigue, power, revenge and betrayal chronicles the ups and downs in the life of a prior, his master builder as they struggle to build a Gothic cathedral in 12th century England. Follett weaves human brutality, steamy sex scenes, deep religious faith, agony and glorious success into his epic historical novel.

Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different – this one’s on the loose. Four men have been found mutilated and tortured. As fear grips the city, the police turn to clinical psychologist Tony Hill for a profile of the killer. But soon Tony becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits. McDermid explores the tormented mind of a serial killer unlike any the world of fiction has ever seen.

A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. What seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister. With its sardonic, cool, working-class hero, Len Deighton's sensational debut The IPCRESS File rewrote the spy thriller and became the defining novel of 1960's London.

The tranquil world of Colonel Bantry is shattered when a young woman's lifeless body is discovered in his library. As suspicion falls on his wife, the Colonel enlists the help of the ingenious Miss Marple to untangle the web of intrigue. With meticulous deduction and sharp insight, Miss Marple navigates through secrets and motives, piecing together the truth in this classic tale of deception, suspense, and intricate mystery.

Emma Porter is forty, fat, frumpy, and a passionate amateur gardener. When her longtime lover dumps her for a younger woman, Emma escapes setting out on a tour of England's glorious gardens. A Dimity-contrived coincidence brings her to Penford Hall, a sprawling Gothic mansion in Cornwall, where she finds a duke in search of a missing lantern.

In a psychiatric clinic late one night, the piercing scream of a dying woman shatters the calm, and Detective Super­intendent Dalgliesh is called away from his literary soiree to investigate. He soon finds the body of a clinic employee sprawled across the cold basement floor, a chisel driven mercilessly through her heart. A deadly psychological battle with an intellectual, predatory killer who feels no remorse is about to begin.

Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind. Dr Tony Hill sets his team an exercise: they are given the details of missing teenagers and asked to discover any possible links between the cases. Tony Hill must embark on a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

While on vacation with his family, Jack Ryan prevented an assassination attempt on Britain’s royal family and earned him the gratitude of an entire nation—and the scorn of an ultra-left-wing faction of the IRA. Irish terrorist Sean Miller and his followers in the Ulster Liberation Army intend to make sure Ryan pays for his interference in blood.

World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. Brilliant historical novel!

A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War - until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. Harry Palmer is sent from fogbound London to the Algarve, where he must dive through layers of deceit in a place rotten with betrayals.

Mapping the minds of murderers is what Dr. Tony Hill does better than anyone. So when a twisted killer starts targeting psychologists across Northern Europe, Hill is the obvious choice to track the executioner's mental and physical journey. Except that Tony, still bearing the scars of past cases, doesn't want to do this anymore. But the killer is about to strike uncomfortably close to home.

In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love. 

A sudden outbreak of anonymous hate mail causes only a minor stir in the small town of Lymstock. Then, one of the recipients, Mrs. Symmington, apparently commits suicide. But Miss Marple questions the coroner’s verdict. Soon secrets stop being shameful and start becoming deadly.

1963 Berlin is dark and dangerous. The anonymous hero has been sent to help arrange the defection of a leading Soviet scientist - in an elaborate mock coffin. But, as he soon discovers, this deception hides an even deadlier truth. One of the first novels written after the construction of the Berlin Wall, the novel revels in the murky, chilling atmosphere of a divided city.

Lori's life has taken on fairy-tale proportions: she's financially set for life and happily married or so she thinks. When Lori's plans for a second honeymoon to England with her workaholic husband fall through, she begrudgingly takes along her father-in-law who promptly disappears, leaving behind a mysterious note. 

Maurice Seton was a famous mystery writer - but no murder he ever invented was more grisly than his own death. When his corpse is found in a drifting dinghy with both hands chopped off at the wrists, ripples of horror spread among his bizarre circle of intellectual friends. Now it’s up to Inspector Adam Dalgliesh to uncover the shocking truth.

In a picturesque English cottage where the lovable Lori Shepherd is up to her elbows in pureed carrots and formula bottles, striving to be the perfect mother to twins! Luckily, a beautiful Italian nanny arrives just in time--so Lori can help settle the local civil war stirred up by a visiting archaeologist's excavation.  

In a small grim room, the body of a woman is discovered, panic and pain etched in her face. The scene matches in every detail a series of murders two years ago-murders that ended when irrefutable forensic evidence secured the conviction of a deeply disturbed young man named Derek Tyler. But there's no way Tyler could have killed the latest victim. He's been locked up in a mental institution. So is there a copycat?

Miss Marple is staying at a spa hotel in a small village for treatment, when a murder is announced in the local newspaper. It shall take place on Friday, 29 October, at Little Paddocks, at 6.30 pm. Miss Marple works with Inspector Craddock of the county police to solve the crime. Deft and ingenious plot fabrication!

Texan billionaire General Midwinter will stop at nothing to bring down the USSR - even if it puts the whole world at risk. Palmer is sent from his shabby Soho office to bone-freezing Helsinki in order to penetrate Midwinter's vast anti-Communist network - and stop a deadly virus from wiping out the planet.

George Smiley, former senior official in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service is living unhappily in forced retirement - following the failure of an operation codenamed Testify in Czechoslovakia which ended in the capture and torture of agent Jim Prideaux. "Control", chief of the Service, had suspected that one of the five senior intelligence officers at the SIS was a Soviet mole, and had assigned them code names - derived from the English children's rhyme "Tinker, Tailor".

With rain crashing down on her Range Rover, as it climbs up a steep embankment on the Northumberland moors, Lori Shepherd is beginning to doubt the wisdom of her decision to evaluate a rare book collection at Wyrdhurst Hall. The grim, neo-gothic hall that greets her upon arrival is full of surprises - including a charming, secretive stranger.

Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in Stoneygates, a rehabilitation center for delinquents. Her fears are confirmed when someone shoots at the administrator. Although he is not injured, a mysterious visitor is less fortunate—shot dead simultaneously in another part of the building.

The bizarre death of a financial tycoon has Miss Marple investigating a very odd case of crime by rhyme. Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his “counting house” when he suffered an agonizing and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals.

A woman is murdered on a train. When Miss Marple telephones her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow and asks her to go undercover to investigate, Lucy quickly accepts the challenge! When a second murder takes place, everyone at Rutherford Hall seems in danger, so Miss Marple sets a trap to catch the murderer.

A fatal dose of poison meant for a glamorous movie star fells her ardent admirer instead. One minute, silly Heather Babcock had been babbling on at her movie idol, the glamorous Marina Gregg. The next, Heather suffered a massive seizure, poisoned by a deadly cocktail. But Miss Marple is there to unmask a murderer.

Miss Marple is ensnared in A Caribbean Mystery when a retired military man sparks her curiosity with a photograph and a strange story of a murderer. As Miss 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.

When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she’s looking for at Bertram’s Hotel: traditional decor, impeccable service, and an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly-polished veneer. Yet, not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion.

Miss Marple receives a letter from the solicitors of the recently deceased Jason Rafiel, a millionaire whom she had met during a holiday on which she had encountered a murder, which asks her to look into an unspecified crime; if she succeeds in solving the crime, she will inherit £20,000. Rafiel has left her few clues. 

Soon after Gwenda moves into her new home, odd things start to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernize the house, she feels an irrational sense of terror every time she climbs the stairs. In fear, Gwenda turns to Miss Marple. Between them, they solve a “perfect” crime committed many years before.