The ' Black Queen' is what Billy calls his shadowy next-door neighbour. She always wears a black cloak & a wide-brimmed black hat. She lurks about her garden alone except for her black cat. Scarily for Billy the Black Queen befriends him & asks him to look after her cat while she's away. Billy can't resist the opportunity to peek inside her house. There are chessboards scattered everywhere. Who is the Black Queen & what sort of game is she playing? Billy thinks he knows... ...

Black Rabbit Summer" is an intense page-turner from award-winning young adult writer Kevin Brooks. A group of old friends affected by drugs alcohol & memories find themselves in the middle of a crime scene. Pete Boland was busy doing nothing that summer. Long stiflingly hot lazy days stretched ahead of him. Then she called. It was Nicole. ' Listen Pete.. .you know that funfair up at the recreation ground...I thought we could all meet up.. .you know for old times sake.' But where there are old times there are old tensions. & as secrets bitterness & jealousies resurface five old friends are plunged into the worst night of their lives..."A masterly writer & this book would put many authors of 'grown up' detective fiction to shame". (" Mail on Sunday"). "A compulsive atmospheric mystery". (" Sunday Times"). " Gripping disturbing.. .brilliant". (" Sunday Express"). Kevin Brooks is the award-winning author of nine gripping teenage novels usually with a thrilling detective twist. His novels " Being" "i Boy" " Killing God" (published as Dawn in the USA) & " Naked" are also available from Penguin. Kevin's brand new novel " The Bunker Diary" will be published in 2013. If you enjoyed " Black Rabbit Summer" & want to get inside more of your favourite books then check out website for exclusive author interviews competitions & much more." ...

Roz Harper is a woman who has lived life on her own terms. She had dearly loved her first husb&. After his death she had thrown herself into raising their boys & then into making a business out of her passion for gardening. Roz likes her life just as it is & it would take a very special man to convince her to take that leap of faith into love again. A man like Dr. Mitchell Carnegie the genealogist she's hired to research the origins of the family ghost known as the Harper Bride. Mitch & Roz are drawn together from the start. But the Harper Bride is enraged by the sight of love & though she may have brought Mitch & Roz together she will stop at nothing to tear them apart. ...

A beautiful young woman a member of the Florentine jet set is found dead
- choked to death
- in her apartment. She has been

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A strikingly beautiful young woman is found dead in her Florence apartment. She lies on her bed naked a black rose between her legs. & the murders do not stop there: shortly afterwards a woman is burned to death in a church & a man is shot on the Ponte Vecchio. Chief Superindendent Michele Ferrara is all too familiar with the dark side of Florence. But he has never seen anything of this magnitude before
- he is up against a mysterious powerful enemy who would do anything to hide his identity & manages to controls events at every turn. As more violent deaths occur Ferrara has to face the most dangerous investigation in his entire career & must confront deadly secrets from his own past.. .
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Ida a good-natured happy girl is looking forward to her tenth birthday when she gets on her brand new bike & sets off to buy sweets. She should be back within half an hour but she never returns. Her mother frantic with worry calls the shop friends & family but no one has seen her daughter. As the relatives reach breaking point & the media circus begins Inspector Sejer is calm & reassuring but inside he is worried: missing children are normally found within forty-eight hours. Ida seems to have vanished without a trace. ...

Miss Abigail Wendover's efforts to detach her spirited niece Fanny from a plausible fortune-hunter are complicated by the arrival in Bath of Miles Caverleigh. The black sheep of his family a cynical outrageous care-for-naught with a scandalous past
- that would be a connection more shocking even than Fanny's unwise liaison with his nephew! But Abby adept at managing her sweet silly sister Selina her lively niece & the host of her admirers among Bath's circumscribed society has less success in managing her own unruly heart. The Black Sheep is a sweeping spiritual novel that shows how Geogette Heyer became the most successful & popular writer of her generation & configures to be loved by a huge readership today.
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It is 1925 & the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple her husband Alec Fletcher & their recent twins move to a new large house on the outskirts of London. Set in a small circle of houses with a communal garden it seems like the idyllic setting
- that is until a murder victim turns up under the bushes of the communal garden. Now rumours of bootleggers American gangsters & an international liquor smuggling operation via black ships turn everything upside down. Alec in his role as Scotland Yard detective has been assigned to ferret out the truth behind the murder
- but it is up to Daisy to find out who the dead man is what his relationship with her new neighbours was why he was murdered
- & who it was who did him in! Praise for Carola Dunns Daisy Dalrymple Series": Cunning...appropriate historical detail & witty dialogue are the finishing touches on this engaging 1920s period piece
- Publishers Weekly. As always Dunn evokes the life & times of 1920s England while providing a plot that is a cut above the average British cosy. This will delight readers who love country-house mysteries
- " Booklist For fans of Dorothy L. Sayers novels Library Journal"."




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Frances Lincoln is proud to reintroduce Rosemary Sutcliffs Black Ships Before Troy now in an exciting new format. Here is Homers epic poem The Iliad brought to life by Rosemary Sutcliff with all the skill of a master storyteller. Alan Lees dramatic cover image hauntingly recreates the age of heroes in this spellbinding introduction to the Greek classics
- a book that should become part of every childhood.
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Detective Sigurdur Oli is in trouble. After a school reunion exposes the chasm between his life & those of his much more successful contemporaries leaving him bitter & resentful one of his old friends asks him to pay an unofficial visit to a couple of blackmailers. He readily agrees only to arrive to find one of the pair lying in a pool of blood. When the victim dies in hospital Sigurdur Oli is faced with investigating a murder without revealing his own reasons for being present at the murder scene. Moving from the villas of Reykjavik's banking elite to a sordid basement flat Black Skies is a superb story of greed pride & murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers. ...