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Tense, atmospheric and darkly funny, The Sleepwalkers is a a sublimely creepy contemporary gothic work about a relationship unravelling that asks urgent questions about a contemporary society where our basest selves are hidden in plain sight.
A sinister hidden room. A dead space between two walls. A sealed cellar. A child’s face glimpsed at a window. Every house hides secrets. But some secrets are far darker than others. More than a million readers have discovered the terrible truth behind these strange houses. Now it’s your turn.
Quinn Alexander has committed an unthinkable crime. To avoid spending her life in prison, Quinn makes a run for it. She leaves behind her home, her job, and her family. She grabs her passport and heads for the northern border before the police can discover what she’s done. But when an unexpected snowstorm forces her off the road, Quinn must take refuge at the broken-down, isolated Baxter Motel. The handsome and kindly owner, Nick Baxter, is only too happy to offer her a cheap room for the night. Unfortunately, the Baxter Motel isn’t the quiet, safe haven it seemed to be. The motel has a dark and disturbing past. And in the dilapidated house across the way, the silhouette of Nick’s ailing wife is always at the window. Always watching. In the morning, Quinn must leave the motel. She’ll pack up her belongings and get back on the road to freedom. But first, she must survive the night.
2024, and China is massing troops on its coast across the Strait from Taiwan. This time it looks like they’re serious about invasion – an act that would result in war between the People’s Republic and the US and its allies, including the UK. But Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service has an agent in play: someone close to the top of the Chinese Communist Party and who’s ready to pass on vital secrets that could defuse the escalating situation. But as the handover takes place in a Hong Kong back street cafe, the agent’s MI6 handler is snatched before she can transmit the data back to London and disappears. There are few clues as to who might be responsible. Is it China’s infamous state security agency, the MSS? Or has another, less predictable player entered the game? MI6 field operative Luke Carlton is despatched to track down the missing agent.
When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker – a young married woman, bored and unhappy with domestic life – becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead. What begins in a peaceful neighbourhood reaches its climax on a remote, unwelcoming Scottish island as the search puts Sarah in league with a man who finds himself being hunted down by murderous official forces.
One spring morning, reclusive ex-movie star Lana Farrar invites a small group of her closest friends for a weekend away, on her small private island, just off the coast of Mykonos. Beneath the surface, old friendships conceal violent passions and resentments. And in forty-eight hours, one of them will be dead. But that was just the beginning.
Adam and Jess move into a new house with their three young children: a rambling Victorian villa right at the very top of their price range. Before long Adam discovers a door hidden behind a fitted wardrobe, concealing a secret room. Inside, Adam discovers an array of forgotten items, among them a wallet, an antique watch and an old mobile phone. Jess thinks they should simply throw them away. But Adam resists. He is fascinated by these items and how they came to be inside the hidden room. But like the house, Adam has his secrets too. And soon he will find himself setting in motion a series of events that will place his family in terrible danger.
Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. In order to try to rescue Will, Strike’s business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito amongst them. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her.
Mrs Lowell gushes and waves across the picket fence as she greets us – she’s our new neighbour. I clutch my daughter’s hand and smile back: but the second Mrs Lowell sees my husband a strange expression crosses her face. In that moment I make a promise. We finally have a family home. My past is far, far behind us. And I’ll do anything to keep it that way.
A night spent sleeping on dirt and leaves is not how Claire Matchett expected to spend her vacation. She thought this would be a break from the stresses of work and raising her young children. A chance to repair her damaged marriage. A week of hiking and hot tubs with friends. It sounded like heaven. Then Claire’s minivan breaks down on a lonely dirt road. With no cell reception, the group has no choice but to hike the rest of the way to their hotel. But it turns out the woods aren’t as easy to navigate as they thought. Hours later, they are lost. Hopelessly lost. And as they navigate deeper into the woods, the members of their party are struck down mysteriously one by one. Has a wild animal been hunting them? Or is the hunter one of them? But as more time passes, one thing becomes clear: Only one of them will return home alive.
Monochrome is a busted flush. Beginning as an investigation into the historical misdeeds of the intelligence services by a vindicative prime minister, Monochrome is now circling the drain, much like the careers of the two civil servants – Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle – charged with overseeing the inquiry. And then the OTIS file falls into their hands. What secrets does this hold that see a long-redundant spy being chased through Devon’s green lanes in the dark? What happened in a newly reunified Berlin that someone is desperate to keep under wraps? And who will win the battle for the soul of the secret service – or was that decided a long time ago?
While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement. Until the day the police arrived at their front door. Decades later, Nora’s father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows about her past, and she’ll do anything to keep it that way. Then one of her young female patients is murdered, killed in the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims. Somebody knows who Nora is. Somebody wants her to take the fall for this unthinkable crime. But she’s not like her father. The police can’t pin anything on her. As long as they don’t look in her basement.
Dawn Schiff is strange. At least, everyone thinks so at Vixed, the nutritional supplement company where Dawn works as an accountant. She never says the right thing. She has no friends. And she is always at her desk at precisely 8:45 a.m. So when Dawn doesn’t show up to the office one morning, her coworker Natalie Farrell – beautiful, popular, top sales rep five years running – is surprised. Then she receives an unsettling, anonymous phone call that changes everything. It turns out Dawn wasn’t just an awkward outsider – she was being targeted by someone close. And now Natalie is irrevocably tied to Dawn as she finds herself caught in a twisted game of cat and mouse that leaves her wondering: who’s the real victim? But one thing is incredibly clear: somebody hated Dawn Schiff. Enough to kill.
‘I’ve written three books and our deal is over’. That’s what reluctant author Anthony Horowitz tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne in an awkward meeting. The truth is that Anthony has got other things on his mind. His new play, a thriller called ‘Mindgame’, is about to open at the famous Vaudeville theatre in Shoreditch. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne declines a ticket to the opening night. The play is not enjoyed by the critics. In particular, Sunday Times critic Harriet Throsby gives it a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next day, Throsby is stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which, it turns out, belongs to Anthony, and which has his fingerprints all over it.
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‘I loved this book’ RICHARD OSMAN
‘Funny, sharp, dark and twisted’ JOJO MOYES
‘Chilling, but also laugh-out-loud funny. Another corker’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
‘We’re spies,’ said Lamb. ‘All kinds of outlandish shit goes on.’ In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process. Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil. And with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even thescore.