Osborne, Lawrence

  • Burning angel and other stories

    £18.99

    A naïve young linguist sent to the forests of Irian Jaya is manipulated into betraying her mission by a ruthless and disturbed pastor. A deaf girl hired as a maid by a wealthy New York couple turns the tables on her obliviously abusive employers and answers blackmail with blackmail. A psychiatrist treating a girl in rural England becomes ensnared in a love affair that threatens to destroy her career, while a young couple on holiday in Oman accidentally witness a killing that leads to their being hunted as well. An entomologist at a remote hotel in the Andamans survives a tsunami and uses a dead body to further her study of ants. Collected here, Lawrence Osborne’s stories, like his novels, feel like nightmares set against calmly and meticulously observed backgrounds.

  • On Java Road

    £9.99

    After 20 indolent years as an ex-pat reporter in Hong Kong, Englishman Adrian Gyle has almost nothing to show for it. The party gave no sign of ending: nights burned away in private clubs and restaurants; days were spent on laughably easy assignments. But now the streets are choked with students demanding democratic freedoms, and the old world begins to fall apart. Watching from the skyrises overlooking the protests is Adrian’s old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of a wealthy Hong Kong family, who has begun a reckless affair with Rebecca, a leading pro-democracy protestor, full of idealism and reeking of tear gas. The couple are dancing over the abyss, playing for time, and Adrian is drawn into their clandestine romance with a mixture of complicity and envy. But when Rebecca disappears and Jimmy goes to ground, Adrian unearths the familiar old urge to investigate, and personal loyalties evaporate overnight.

  • The Glass Kingdom

    £8.99

    Sarah Talbot Jennings, a young American living in New York, has fled to Bangkok to disappear. Arriving with a suitcase containing $200,000, she rents an apartment at the Kingdom, a glittering high-end complex slowly sinking into its own twilight – and run by conveniently discreet staff. In Bangkok’s shocking heat Sarah meets the beguiling Mali, a half-Thai tenant who’s strangely determined to bring the quiet American out of her shell. An invitation to Mali’s poker nights soon follows, where – fuelled by shots of yadong, gossip of shady dealings in the city and the hit of marijuana – Sarah is drawn into the orbit of the Kingdom’s glamorous ex-pat women. But when an attempted military coup wracks the streets below and Sarah witnesses something unspeakable through one of the Kingdom’s windows, only to be followed by a series of strange disappearances, Sarah’s safe haven begins to feel like a trap.

  • Only To Sleep

    £8.99

    The year is 1988. The place, Baja California. Private Investigator Philip Marlowe – now in his 72nd year – has been living out his retirement in the terrace bar of the La Fonda hotel. Sipping margaritas, playing cards, his silver-tipped cane at the ready. When in saunter two men dressed like undertakers. With a case that has his name written all over it. At last Marlowe is back where he belongs. His mission is to investigate Donald Zinn – supposedly drowned off his yacht, leaving a much younger and now very rich wife. Marlowe’s speciality. But is Zinn actually alive? Are the pair living off the spoils? Set between the border and badlands of Mexico and California, Lawrence Osborne’s resurrection of the iconic Marlowe is an unforgettable addition to the Raymond Chandler canon.

  • Only To Sleep

    £12.99

    The year is 1988. The place, Baja California. Private Investigator Philip Marlowe – now in his 72nd year – has been living out his retirement in the terrace bar of the La Fonda hotel. Sipping margaritas, playing cards, his silver-tipped cane at the ready. When in saunter two men dressed like undertakers. With a case that has his name written all over it. At last Marlowe is back where he belongs. His mission is to investigate Donald Zinn – supposedly drowned off his yacht, leaving a much younger and now very rich wife. Marlowe’s speciality. But is Zinn actually alive? Are the pair living off the spoils? Set between the border and badlands of Mexico and California, Lawrence Osborne’s resurrection of the iconic Marlowe is an unforgettable addition to the Raymond Chandler canon.

  • Beautiful Animals

    £14.99

    During a white-hot summer on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra, two girls fall into each other’s lives to devastating effect. When Samantha, a young, impressionable American, meets Naomi, a Brit with a taste for danger, their relationship quickly takes on a special intensity. Amid the sun, sea and high society of island life, their imaginations are sparked when one day they find a young Arab man, Faoud, washed up on shore, a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean. But when their seemingly simple plan to help the stranger goes wrong, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.

  • Hunters In The Dark

    £10.99

    Robert Grieve – pushing thirty and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher – decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand to Cambodia, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events involving a bag of ‘jinxed’ money, a suave American, a corrupt policeman and a rich doctor’s daughter, in which Robert’s life is changed forever.

  • Forgiven

    £9.99

    David and Jo Henniger, a couple in search of an escape from their less-than-happy lives in London, accept the invitation of their old friends Richard and Dally to attend their annual bacchanal at their luxurious home deep in the Moroccan desert. On the road, darkness has descended and the directions are vague. Suddenly, two young men spring from the roadside, apparently attempting to interest passing drivers in the fossils they have for sale. Panicked, David swerves toward the two, leaving one dead and the other running into the hills.

Nomad Books