Search Results for: brothers

On the gold-symbol world of Beresford’s Planet, Richard Kirby lived in total luxury. As a member of “The Set” his life was a never-ending round of planetary party-hopping. The only restriction imposed on him – that he never put down on any world marked with a red or black symbol – was something that he had always accepted without question.

That is, until his brother Alec was murdered in cold blood! Alec had been an undercover agent to those forbidden planets, and in order to avenge him, Kirby had to find out for himself what was really happening there.

But with the start of his investigation, Kirby found out quickly that the authorities meant business when they said “Hands off!” The secret they were protecting was of vital importance, and it now became a matter of life and death, not only to Kirby, but to all the inhabitants of THE CHANGELING WORLDS.

It seemed like a good idea; even a noble experiment. But the outcome was sheer hell.

When the Balduin brothers escaped from the tedium of the human hive of Atlanta, Georgia, they had a mission. They were to voyage to the planet Trope, contact a tribe there known as the Ouemartsee, and transport it to Glaparca for a useful purpose.

But suddenly the Balduin brothers discovered that they were in the slave trade, and that the Ouemartsee had made one of them a God . . .

A great safari had come to Africa to make a movie. It had struggled across the veldt and through the jungle in great ten-ton trucks, equipped with all the advantages of civilization. But now it was halted, almost destroyed by the poisoned arrows of the savage Bansuto tribe. There was no way to return. And ahead lay the strange valley of diamonds, where hairy gorillas lived in their town of London on the Thames, ruled by King Henry the Eighth. Behind them came Tarzan of the Apes with the Golden Lion, seeking the man who might have been his twin brother in looks – though hardly in courage!

In the unfettered freedom of Russia’s new-found venture-capital frenzy, Max Borodin can organise anything – so long as the readies are ready. That’s why he’s Moscow’s most successful businessman.

But Max’s life has its downside: his wife, Tanya, nags him, his mistress, Sonya, exhausts him; his brother Evgeny needs him – to help extricate him from yet another shady business fiasco. Then there are always the country’s friendly mafia, keen to lend a helping hand with the profits of Max’s Universal Manufacturing Company – producer of documents, historical and otherwise, to suit every conceivable occasion.

Satire rarely comes more sulphuric than this. Let’s Put the Future Behind Us is the wittiest job of fictional surgery on New Russia since its iron curtain was amputated.

For hundreds of years the mutants walked among us, concealing their dazzling psychic abilities, living in fear. With the coming of the 1990s, the mutants took their rightful place in normal human society in a storm of political upheaval. Now, as summer ripens for the mutant clans, the long struggle for equality nears its end. But the mutants’ awesome talents – and their belief in the coming of a mutant messiah – still set them apart. The clans can join together in hope…but for how long?

Alanna, talented in her own right, but overshadowed by the brilliance of her mother, the world-renowned artist Narlydda.

Julian, he gifted graduate student, hoping to forge a link between medicine and mutant healing – and between himself and the beautiful researcher, Eva Seguy.

Rick, Julian’s mercurial twin brother, whose lack of mutant talents is his burden…and his freedom.

Strange currents are flowing, and the entire world is about to change. Unthinkable and unspeakable powers are about to be released, powers that not even the massed mutants can control.

After long years of struggle, the fight for acceptance and equality is over. The mutant clans have fit themselves and their extraordinary talents into the mainstream of human society. But when peculiar phenomena begin in the New Mexican desert – “miracle” cures, supernatural rescues – the issue of mutancy rises once more to the forefront of human affairs. At the center of the conflict are three strong and vastly different personalities, three men who will guide the tides of human destiny – and ultimately the tides of evolutionary destiny as well:

Joachim Metzger – Leader of the mutant clans, desperate to keep the hard-won peace and prosperity his people have finally achieved.

Julian Akimura – The brilliant therapist who banished his twin brother, Rick, in the hopes of saving humanity from his unsurpassed mutant talents.

Rick Akimura – The long-sought supermutant, the promise of whose power has been the building force of mutant society for centuries – and whose coming is nothing that anyone could have foretold.

Mark Hawkins is an engineer and a loner, who has always resented his adventurer-archaeologist brother, Dick. But when Dick vanishes, allegedly dead in a climbing accident, Mark starts investigating the site his brother was excavating, a Cistercian monastery, and meets three strange souls who were the last to see his brother alive.

Among them is Dr Merrion, a specialist in medieval archaeology. As Mark pokes around the woods surrounding Merrion’s home, he begins to feel that sinister forces are at play in Dick’s death.

‘Beautifully put together with an atmosphere that literally chills you’ San Francisco Chronicle

Ian MacKellar seeks out Julia. He discovers her on a farm she runs, where she maintains her younger brother and sister. But his obsessive pursuit of Julia becomes stymied by members of her dysfunctional family.

The action unfolds in a West Country English village by a dark pond in the secluded woods near Julia’s family home. And it is below the surface of that pond that tragedy awaits …

In the fourth Rosa Epton mystery, Underwood’s protagonist, whom Mystery Magazine declared ‘one of mystery fiction’s most talented attorneys’, is called upon to defend the scapegrace younger brother of an acquaintance.

Then the acquaintance himself is murdered, his skull crushed with a statuette of the Indian goddess Lakshmi, and Rosa must divide her time between manipulating a magistrate smitten with her charms and divining the culprit’s identity.

When schoolboy Jason Cutler is killed late one night in a hit-and-run, the police are puzzled by the presence of a letter in his locker, to which is attached a five-pound note. They are unable to identify its author, nor can they ascertain why the boy was out so late at night.

Solicitor Rosa Epton has followed the case with interest, but when a client she has recently defended on a drugs charge turns up dead in the grounds of the school, her involvement becomes professional. It seems unlikely that the two cases are connected, but why does Jason’s brother deny having seen him in the days leading up to his death? And who was the girl seated opposite Rosa on the train and behaving erratically on the day news of the accident came out?

When Kirstie Macfarlane’s younger brother is framed for stealing a Van Eyck portrait, she puts the case in the able hands of ex-Scotland Yard Inspector John Raven.

Seduced away from his quiet life on the Thames, Raven dives back into the seamy London underworld filled with police corruption and high-handed swindles. Kirstie and Raven soon realise they have more than one opponent and their lives are perilously on the line.

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

Matthew Damon was a loving father and a figure of moral rectitude. Why, then, has a rumour of scandal followed him, denying him the knighthood he thought he had earned? Why had he, long ago, repeatedly and alone visited the cells of condemned young women?

Behind the discreetly drawn curtains at High Chimneys something sinister lurked. Black-haired Kate and demure Celia were suspect. Brother Victor was distraught. The second Mrs Damon was indiscreet. And murder was done.


‘Faultless puzzle in detection’ New York Times Book Review

‘A really first-rate detective story’ T. S. Eliot

When twin brothers Roger and Neville Shandon are murdered by poisoned darts in Whistlefield’s famous hedge maze, Sir Clinton Driffield arrives to restore order. He finds two terrified witnesses – visitors to the estate – and clues aplenty in this brilliantly conceived and meticulously realized country-house mystery.

Philip Castleford was more than worried. Were all those years he had spent attending to Winifred’s whims, enduring her habits, to count for nothing? He hadn’t minded it too much for he thought that his daughter Hilary would have security – but now he found her shabbily treated and his own position undermined by his wife’s grasping brothers.

Such were the affairs at Carron Hill one fine morning when Winifred was discovered murdered in the deserted summer house …

Suicide – or murder? The tiniest clue holds the answer.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

When Florence Penny’s body is found hanging from a beam in the bedsit she has been renting, it looks to Inspector Field like a case of suicide. Soon, though, he realises murder is the motive, and the discovery of a single pink bead among the disordered bedclothes leads him to prime suspect Charles Hobart.

It’s now up to Scott Egerton, Hobart’s prospective brother-in-law, and an astute private inquiry agent named Gordon to establish Hobart’s innocence . . .

Four years ago Gevan Dean found his fiancée Niki Webb in his brother Ken’s arms and fled his hometown for a peaceful life in the Florida sun. But now Ken is dead – murdered by a thief, the police say – and Gevan is desperately needed to keep their company, Dean Products, from falling apart.

Everywhere Dean turns he finds only questions and confusion. But he doesn’t suspect the truth behind Ken’s murder or the real goings-on at Dean Products until the stakes get too high to ignore – and the truth explodes violently in his face …

On the surface, they seem like three very different people: Danny Bronson, a cunning ex-con struggling to go straight; his brother, Lee, a former Gridiron star turned college professor; and Johnny Keefler, a crooked parole officer who lives for revenge. But they all grew up in the same corner of town, a grim little slum known as ‘The Sink’, where life is cheap and might makes right.

And a story that’s just as dark unfolds when their paths cross as men – at the intersection of brutal violence, illicit liaisons, a ‘foolproof’ scam and the intoxicating allure of cold, hard cash.

When a yacht explodes in the Bahamas, apparently killing six people, Sam Boyleston, an attorney from Texas and the brother of one of the victims, is compelled to investigate the circumstances, as does Raoul Kelly, a newspaper reporter.

After the disaster the yacht’s burned captain was temporarily marooned on a small island, and soon it becomes apparent that one person is ruthlessly manipulating events. But for Boyleston and Kelly proving guilt appears impossible …

‘A major suspense novel’ New York Times

Lieutenant Charles O’Connor of the Glendale police bureau is warned by the Feds that Conway, a crook whose brother was shot by O’Connor during a hold-up, has escaped from jail and is probably bent on vengeance.

This news could not have come at a worse time – the Glendale P.D. is currently investigating three separate violent deaths, giving O’Connor no time for special protection. He reckons that he can take care of himself and pursue romance at the same time, and all the while Conway plans his revenge . . .

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Lieutenant Luis Mendoza works with an outstanding team at the Los Angeles Police Department. They need to be. On their hands is a case of a vanished treasure of coins; drug dealers and a clutch of law-breaking brothers.

As well as the cases, though, there’s an inside view of a police department and the varied lives of the characters who work within it.

When Nonie Johnson kidnaps her daughter from the adoptive parents, Jesse Falkenstein is brought in. Something seemed wrong from the start – Nonie just wasn’t the maternal type, and then she suddenly vanished from sight.

The search for Nonie Johnson yielded nothing but a series of wild goose chases. Fortunately, Jesse had two aces up his sleeve: a brother-in-law in the police, and a number of unorthodox psychic acquaintances who had their own way of seeking clues.

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

‘A star in our galaxy of crime writers’ FINANCIAL TIMES

Superb crime fiction from the CWA Diamond Dagger Award Winner

‘Yorke practised deception artfully and with style’ GUARDIAN

‘Mistress of the skilfully spun suspense novel’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Nesta Falconer, an attractive widow, lives with her fifteen-year-old daughter Philippa, managing brother-in-law Charles Falconer’s household after the breakdown of his marriage. Nesta’s comfortable position is threatened when her sister Claire, returning from America, comes to stay at her cottage.

Charles realises that Nesta is a menace to Philippa’s happiness, and that she has been responsible for much distress. His mother, a formidable old lady, plays a part in revealing Nesta not only to her family but to herself as a negative person who contributes little to the happiness of others.

Inside the furnace was a seething pool of molten metal, bubbling with a heat great enough to destroy a man’s body so completely it would be impossible to trace. And Gerald Norris had disappeared without a trace!

In London, Julie Crocker was hunting for her brother amongst the demi-monde of unsuccessful artists. He too had disappeared, leaving no trace except an indifferent painting in a Soho restaurant.

Against the backdrop of the power and heat of the steelworks and the overcrowded bars of Soho, private detective John Bryant sets about investigating both mysteries. Mysteries that can only be solved in the consuming flames of yet another fire.

Aylwin Hundrych is a diplomat with political aspirations, who was once involved with a French girl, Antoinette, with whom he unwittingly shared details about a royal visit to Paris – details which put the King’s life in danger. Antoinette’s brother holds the former lovers’ letters, and is threatening to use them. Hundrych makes a first payment, but the demands continue.

Hundrych enlists his old friend Sir Vane Tabbard’s son, an ex-commando called Gray Tabbard, who is not too scrupulous about what he does. Gray searches the blackmailer’s apartment, but reports back that he cannot find a particularly compromising note.

And Gray is in love with the girl Hundrych plans to marry . . .