Search Results for: beauty

Every morning, Miss Loveapple blesses her good fortune. She has property, a devoted maid and is young and beautiful. An independent woman, she has a mind never to marry. But a darker mind – one Clarence Club’s – has a plan that will leave her accused of murder.

About to go on holiday to Switzerland, Miss Loveapple has her fortune told at the village fete, and her good luck is predicted to turn sour. At the station, she stops to buy some white heather, giving her mere seconds to board her train.

Though her holiday is not quite what she wished for, she meets all kinds of people, who come between her and many an opportunity for disaster. And when she narrowly misses being killed by jewel thieves, her delayed return helps her make a very important decision.

When Charles is given just twelve months to live, his doctor sister takes him to a small Cornish village to end his days. They are joined by other friends including Tuesday, the young author of an unexpectedly sensational novel that brings her nothing but trouble.

Combining doomed love, a beautifully groomed and immaculately behaved psychopath, an escaped circus leopard and a fortune hidden in the pages of a library of books Joan Aiken once again serves up all the ingredients for an explosive finale.

‘Unusual, enthralling, full of wry fun’ Sunday Times

‘Waiting for her, he was on edge with expectation. He had never planned a murder before … Only sheer necessity was making him do it now …’

Coincidence couldn’t explain the three accidental deaths. It had to be something more – something sinister? One old lady had fallen and broken her neck; the others had died in hit-and-run accidents. And now beautiful young Caroline Conroy, who has returned to her poisonous family after a mysterious tragedy abroad, must face the enemy: a smiling stranger who is calmly and ruthlessly planning her destruction.

‘Terrifyingly enclosed spine-chiller’ Sunday Telegraph

‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford’ Elmore Leonard

Amoral, sexy and brutal, Wild Wives was written in a sleazy San Francisco hotel in the early 1950s while Willeford was on leave from the army. This tale of deception features crooked detective Jacob C. Blake and his nemesis: a beautiful, insane young woman who is the wife of a socially prominent San Francisco architect.

Blake becomes entangled in a web of deceit, intrigue and multiple murders in this exciting period tale.

‘Mr Willeford never puts a foot wrong, and this is truly an entertainment to relish’ New Yorker

‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford’ Elmore Leonard

In this riveting novel of psychological suspense, Charles Willeford charts a duel trajectory of alcoholic desire and destruction that is at once poignant, terrifying and utterly authentic.

Prowling the grimy streets of San Francisco, Helen is a beautiful, sensuous drunk – and a pathetically easy pick-up. Harry just wants to help, but before long they are both adrift in a sea of alcohol – until Harry conceives the ultimate crime.

‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford’ Elmore Leonard

In an expensive Miami neighbourhood, Sergeant Hoke Mosely, Homicide Division, is called to investigate the lethal overdose of a young junkie. But what seems like a routine OD gives Moseley cause to doubt – particularly when he meets the dead kid’s stunning stepmother.

And with his two teenage daughters dumped on him by his troublesome ex-wife, a new beat partner struggling with an unplanned pregnancy, and fifty cold cases to solve, it starts to feel like this little matter of a dead junkie and his beautiful stepmother might just be the answer to Hoke’s prayers . . .

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

A beautiful Hollywood blonde inexplicably vanishes from the restaurant she is dining in with her fiancé and is found with her neck broken and miles away from the scene of her disappearance.

Who lured her away? How? And, the most puzzling question for Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of Los Angeles’ Homicide Squad, is why?

Beautiful Nell Varney was a newcomer to Contera – and to murder.

Suddenly she found herself in a strange courtroom faced with seven pairs of hate-ridden, accusing eyes. Seven witnesses had identified her as the murderer who had caused the death of two women by performing illegal abortions.

Why would anyone in this strange town believe Nell was innocent? Could anyone help her? One man, a dedicated lawyer named Jesse Falkenstein, was determined to try . . .

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

‘A touch of Margaret Millar . . . worth watching’ Sunday Telegraph

San Francisco artist Roxanne Gautier’s startling paintings of male prostitutes has sent shock waves throughout the art world – and in her personal life. When Taylor Adams, her favourite model, commits suicide – or so it appears – her husband is frightened she may be connected with the death and asks ex-policeman Kevin Bryce to investigate.
Taylor’s fellow prostitutes, including the beautiful and dangerous Angel, and the revealing pages of Roxanne’s diary take Bryce into a psychosexual nightmare world of corruption, blackmail and moral decay.

‘This is a mystery readers’ mystery novel, and a beauty’ Anthony Boucher

Walt McLean, the proprietor of Walt’s Malt Shop, had been found dead by his niece. The attack did not appear to be motivated by robbery, but who would want to murder such a harmless and popular man? And what could the message in green really mean?

A detective story delectably tied up with one of the greatest of detective classics-Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders

The eighth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire.

Sheriff Walt Longmire’s daughter, Cady, is getting married. Walt and old friend Henry Standing Bear are the de facto wedding planners and fear Cady’s wrath when the wedding locale arrangements go up in smoke two weeks before the big event.

The pair set out to find a new site for the nuptials on the Cheyenne Reservation, but their scouting expedition ends in horror as they witness a young Crow woman plummeting from Painted Warrior’s majestic cliffs. It’s not Walt’s turf, but the newly appointed tribal police chief and Iraqi war veteran, the beautiful Lolo Long, shanghais him into helping with the investigation . . .

The fifth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire

Wade Barsad locked his wife Mary’s horses in their barn and then burned it down. In return she shot him in the head six times – or so the story goes. Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn’t believe Mary’s confession, and he’s determined to dig deeper.

Posing as an insurance claims investigator, Walt goes undercover and soon discovers that the population of an entire town might have wanted Wade dead, including a beautiful Guatemalan bartender and a rancher with a taste for liquor but not so much for honesty . . .

‘A winning mystery with characters coming off the page’ Portland Oregonian

Nadia has been here before, at this seeping-away of hope. The other times curl behind her like the petals of a rose, all the memories, all her babies – false alarms, real pregnancies lasting only until her body rejected them.

Meanwhile her boyfriend Simon is underground caving. Nadia knows he risks his life, a decadent death among the limestone, his bones withering in the rock. Her work is to create, to mould leather-hard clay into something beautiful. But she has not the heart for it today.

‘Limestone and Clay shows a maturation and deepening of her considerable talents … Lesley Glaister has produced a portrait of human relationships both disconcerting and haunting in its unflinching clarity’ Sunday Telegraph

A remote, crumbling house; four sisters; and the secrets that imprison them…

‘Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister’ Harper’s Bazaar

‘Frightening yet eerily beautiful … Lesley Glaister is adept, original and mature’ Hilary Mantel

In a remote, crumbling house in the Fens live four sisters – Agatha, Milly, and Ellen and Esther – identical twins so closely linked as to be almost one person. They have lived there all their lives, trapped still by the fear of their dead father, who governs his daughters’ lives from beyond the grave. And then there is George, another inhabitant, imprisoned in the cellar.

Little by little, macabre events come to light: events that transform an idyllic country childhood into a world of eccentric isolation.

‘Eerie and satisfying – a horror story told with tenderness’ Sunday Times

A castle, a deserted village, and murder in the Scottish Highlands

When child psychologist and US Naval Intelligence officer Lieutenant Peter Dunbar takes on a secret mission in the Scottish Highlands at the end of World War II, he finds himself drawn into the lives of a troubled boy and his beautiful young cousin.

But why does Johnny Stockton refuse to explain why he keeps running away from his comfortable home? And how might the answer be entangled with the mystery of an escaped German prisoner and a dying man’s message?

James Wing was only trying to help his friend’s widow. At least that’s what he told himself after he warned Kat Hubble that the beautiful bay that she and her neighbours had struggled to save was now going to be sold to developers. He knew he shouldn’t have told her anything. He was a reporter, trained to reveal nothing. But he was falling in love with her.

Political treachery and private greed had already softened up the town for the big sell-out. All that had to be done now was to silence a few stubborn citizens. Kat Hubble was one of them – and blackmail was their favourite weapon.

Three men and a beautiful girl on a cross-country terror spree – a coast to coast rampage of stealing, kidnapping, rape and killing.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they do it?

With chilling detail, John D. MacDonald unwraps the grotesque inner world of these four young psychopaths, and brings into terrifying focus the random, violent lusts that lie hidden between mischief and madness …

Jerry Jamison wants out: out of a sloppy marriage, a dull job and the empty suburban rat race. Once Jerry had a beautiful bride and a good salary at her old man’s successful business – that was before his wife turned into a lush. Before the business started to go to pieces. And before the lazy afternoon when Vince Biskay, an old army buddy, rings his doorbell and makes an intriguing proposition. Vince promises to bring excitement into Jerry’s life – and money – but this is a plan that leaves only death and destruction in its wake.

A hurricane of terrifying intensity is looming over Florida. Along a state highway, a handful of foolhardy souls trying to outrun the storm are forced to seek shelter in an abandoned house.

Thrown together by nothing more than chance, this disparate bunch of misfits includes an undercover agent seeking revenge for a personal tragedy, a burgeoning criminal in over his head, a beautiful young widow trying to start over, and a businessman whose life’s work is crumbling before his eyes. Their refuge from the awesome power of nature becomes a sort of grand and grisly hotel – especially once the invisible hand of flying death descends.

Contains the two novellas Border Town Girl and Linda.

Border Town Girl

Once, Lane Sanson had been a Somebody – war correspondent and a bestselling author. Now he was a Nobody, bumming around Mexico. Lost, lonely, hungry for hope, he was a pushover for a border town B-girl – the perfect fall guy for a lethal frame up . . .

Linda

She was born with the morality gene missing. As beautiful, as inviting, as treacherous as the sea around her, Linda is one of the most compelling women ever created by John D. MacDonald.

Fletcher Wyant and his wife Jane had been married for fifteen years. They had built the perfect marriage – two wonderful kids, a warm beautiful home, and their own private never-ending love affair.

Fletcher thought he knew Jane completely. No dark secrets. No hidden past. Then one hot summer week everything changed. And suddenly, brutally, Jane became a cold stranger.

Dillon Bryant, a successful engineer, is off on assignment after finishing his honeymoon. But news from home comes that his new bride, Laura, a beautiful woman whom he had met only weeks before proposing marriage, is in deep trouble.

By the time he gets to her, Laura has been murdered. Filled with grief and rage, he cannot leave it up to the police to solve the case – he wants his own kind of revenge against the killer …

In Flower City, a sleepy resort town on Florida’s Gulf Coast, wealthy Elizabeth Stegman is murdered in a jewel heist gone bad – her missing jewels insured for £750,000.

It falls to hardboiled ex-cop Cliff Bartells to find the killer, retrieve the jewels and console the decedent’s niece and only heir, beautiful and headstrong Melody Chance. But complicating Bartell’s best efforts is a local police force that proves to be less than cooperative.

Did the twelfth member of the jury know something the rest did not…?
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Circumstantial evidence was as good as proof in the trial of Viola Ross. Everything pointed to the conclusion that this beautiful woman had smothered her wisp of a husband. But the twelfth juror, Richard Arnold, would not agree. Perhaps he knew something which the others didn’t – perhaps he only guessed.

When a retrial is ordered, Arnold sets out to conduct his own investigation. But soon he is faced with three attempts on his life.