When the body of a young female nurse is found horribly murdered in the Western State Mental Hospital, Massachusetts, there is apparently no shortage of suspects
- a whole hospital of them. One inmate claims to have seen the killer who he will only describe as The Angel.

Twenty years later, Francis Petrel, once a patient at the hospital, writes his account of the events of the murder & its investigation on the walls of his tiny apartment. As he goes deeper & deeper into his story, he plunges further into the return of his own madness. He remembers how he is co-opted into the investigation by Lucy Jones, a driven young profiler who has her own reasons for pursuing this particular killer. But she, & Francis, face the same conundrum: how does one find a cold blooded killer masquerading as mad in a world populated by the deranged?

In the end it will come down to Francis for he is the only one of the investigating team capable of recognizing the essential lie that The Angel embodies: for though his acts are those of a mad man, he most emphatically is not...






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When the body of a young female trainee is found horribly murdered in the Nurses's station of the Western State Mental Hospital, Massachusetts, there is apparently no shortage of suspects
- a whole hospital of them. One inmate claims to have seen the killer who he will only describe as The Angel.

Twenty years later, Francis Petrel, once a patient at the hospital, writes his account of the events of the murder & its investigation on the walls of his tiny apartment. As he writes he is visited by hallucinations, by the increasing anxiety at his loosening grip on reality. As he goes deeper & deeper into his story about those events, he plunges further into the return of his own madness. He remembers how he is co-opted into the investigation by Lucy Jones, a driven young profiler who has her own reasons for pursuing this particular killer. But she, & Francis, face the same conundrum: how does one find a cold blooded killer masquerading as mad in a world populated by the deranged? In the end it will come down to Francis
- he is the only one of the investigating team capable of recognizing the essential lie that The Angel embodies: for though his acts are those of a mad man, he most emphatically is not...



...

Valentina has decided it's time to make some changes in her life. She cuts off her hair & takes a job as a gardener at Beech House in a timeless & alluring small town near the sea in Wales. The garden at Beech House is wild & overgrown & as Valentina works her magic to restore it to its former glory she begins to fall in love with its owner, eccentric musician Leo Spring. But Leo's attention lies elsewhere; he is enchanted by the beautiful headmistress, Melody. In the heat of the summer a garden party is planned & the stage is set for secret passions to be revealed, but as the magic of the garden casts its spell over the characters they begin to face the awful truth that their feelings can be a matter of life or death. ...

This book traces the Mafia's beginnings from an underground patriotic society which sprang up six hundred years ago in Sicily, through the group of Italian immigrants
- the Black Hand
- who savagely tore control of New York's waterfronts away from Irish racketeers, to the Mob which went on to run organised crime throughout Italy & America.

Drawing on previously unavailable information & nearly two decades of research, William Balsamo
- great-nephew of the first godfather
- & George Carpozi Jr. trace the Black Hand's coalescence into an organisation whose insidious influence reached across the Atlantic & into a presidential administration. & they go behind the headlines to reveal with chilling clarity the true extent of the Mafia's influence today.





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Tracing its beginnings as an underground society which sprang up in Sicily, to the Mob which went on to run organised crime throughout Italy & America, The Mafia: The First 100 Years tells the gripping story of the most mythical & misunderstood criminal organisation.

How did the Mob evolve from a gang of bumbling killers into the smooth-running international 'corporation' of today? Drawing on nearly two decades of research, William Balsamo
- great-nephew of the original godfather
- & George Carpozi Jr. reveal the Mafia's coalescence into an organisation whose insidious influence reached across the Atlantic & into a presidential administration.

Delving behind the headlines to uncover the true extent of the Mafia's influence, The Mafia: The First 100 Years reads like the most compelling crime fiction, yet is the terrifying, deadly truth.





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