The Blood of Crows" is the fourth instalment in Caro Ramsay's epic Anderson & Costello series. For one Scottish cop the beat is about to get dark & very bloody...DI Colin Anderson is having a bad week. His conviction of paedophile Skelpie Fairbairn is declared unsafe
- putting Fairbairn back on Glasgow's streets & leaving Anderson under investigation. Add to this a gangster torched alive a teenage boy tortured then dropped off a bridge & the suicide of a cop who worked an unsolved child kidnapping way back in 1996 & Anderson's got his hands full. Then one night a young girl is tied to the river bank & left for the tide. Anderson gets there but she dies in his arms. Working round the clock his team discover these strange crimes are linked to an elusive criminal mastermind known as The Puppeteer. But unable to find him unable to stop the murders Anderson is forced to follow the only lead he has
- Skelpie Fairbairn... But which is worse
- The devil you don't know or the one you do...? Caro Ramsay's Anderson & Costello thrillers have been widely recognised as one of the most significant new series in the genre in recent years & Ramsay's utterly unique investigators are ready to become the nation's favourite Scottish cop duo. " Absolution" is the amazing opening to this stunning series. Subsequent titles include " Dark Water" & " Singing to the Dead". Fans of Ian Rankin & Val Mc Dermid will love this series. Praise for Caro Ramsay: " Brilliant in twisting the tension tauter with each page". (" Guardian"). " Ramsay handles her characters with aplomb the dialogue crackles & the search for the killer has surprising twists & turns". (" Observer"). " Many shivers in store for readers followed by a shattering climax". (" The Times"). Caro Ramsay was born in Glasgow & now lives in a village on the west coast of Scotl&. " Absolution" is her first novel which was shortlisted for the CWA's New Blood Dagger for best debut of the year. This success was followed by two further DI Anderson & DS Costello novels " Singing to the Dead" & " Dark Water". The fourth book in the same series " The Blood of Crows" is also released this summer."


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For more than a hundred years humans dwarves gnomes & elves lived together in relative peace. But times have changed the uneasy peace is over & now the races once again fight each other
- & themselves: dwarves are killing their kinsmen & elves are murdering humans & elves at least those elves who are friendly to humans.. . Into this tumultuous time is born a child for whom the witchers of the world have been waiting. Ciri the granddaughter of Queen Calanthe the Lioness of Cintra has strange powers & a stranger destiny for prophecy names her the Flame one with the power to change the world
- for good or for evil.. . Geralt the witcher of Rivia has taken Ciri to the relative safety of the Witchers Settlement but it soon becomes clear that Ciri isnt like the other witchers. As the political situation grows ever dimmer & the threat of war hangs almost palpably over the land Geralt searches for someone to train Ciris unique powers. But someone else has an eye on the young girl someone who understand exactly what the prophecy means
- & exactly what Ciris power can do. This time Geralt may have met his match.


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Set in seventeenth-century Iran THE BLOOD OF FLOWERS is the powerful & haunting story of a young girls journey from innocence to adulthood. A village girls dreams of marriage end on the death of her father. Cast on the mercy of relatives in fabled Isfahan she & her mother are reduced to servitude until she reveals a talent for designing carpets
- an invaluable skill. Hope is short-lived for a disastrous headstrong act results in the girls disgrace. Caught between forces she can barely comprehend she faces a life lived at the whim of others
- unless she is prepared to risk everything & choose a future based on her own strength & will. THE BLOOD OF FLOWERS tells an unforgettable story: a tale of sensuality of the treachery of friendship of the power of love & of the fragile possibility of finding happiness against all odds.

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It's Crete May 1941. In the face of a German invasion Sergeant Jack Tanner is embroiled in a deadly game of survival that will test his resolve more than ever before. Not only has he fallen out with his commander but he has mortally offended Alopex a powerful local chieftain. As if that wasn't enough Tanner & the rest of his battalion are caught in vicious close-quarter fighting against crack German paratroopers. Before long they find themselves in bitter retreat to the mountainous interior where only one man can help them
- Alopex. Although whether he will come to their rescue or not remains to be seen
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Bryan Sykes the worlds first genetic archaeologist takes us on a journey around the family tree of Britain & Ireland to reveal how our tribal history still colours the country today. In 54BC Julius Caesar launched the first Roman invasion of Britain. His was the first detailed account of the Celtic tribes that inhabited the Isles. But where had they come from & how long had they been there? When the Romans eventually left five hundred years later they were succeeded by invasions of Anglo-Saxons Vikings & Normans. Did these successive invasions obliterate the genetic legacy of the Celts or have very little effect? After two decades tracing the genetic origins of peoples from all over the world Bryan Sykes has now turned the spotlight on his own back yard. In a major research programme the first of its kind he set out to test the DNA of over 10 000 volunteers from across Britain & Ireland with the specific aim of answering this very question: what is our modern genetic make-up & what does it tell us of our tribal past? Are the modern people of the Isles a delicious genetic cocktail? Or did the invaders keep mostly to themselves forming separate genetic layers within the Isles? As his findings came in Bryan Sykes discovered that the genetic evidence revealed often very different stories to the conventional accounts coming from history & archaeology. Blood of the Isles" reveals the nature of our genetic make-up as never before & what this says about our attitudes to ourselves each other & to our past. It is a gripping story that will fascinate & surprise with its conclusions." ...

Fighting Fantasy co-creator Ian Livingstone OBE brings the world's original gamebook series
- 30 years old in August 2012
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November 1940. I.A. Serebin a writer from Odessa & former decorated Hero of the Soviet Union is on his way to Istanbul following a cryptic letter from a former lover. Ostensibly there on official business for the International Russian Union an emigre organisation based in Paris he is drawn into a clandestine world of international spies & political players. With war in Europe drawing nearer Serebin is recruited by the British secret services
- his mission to stop the export of Romanian oil to Germany. In a race against time Serebins journey will take him from the glittering salons of Paris to the back alleys of Bucharest & the Black Sea ports in a covert operation to staunch the flow of oil the precious blood of victory.
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One Sunday morning in 1993 a 16-year-old girl named Eliza Claps goes missing from a church in the centre of Potenza Italy. Shortly before her disappearance Elisa had met Danilo Restivo a strange local boy with a fetish for cutting womens hair on the back of buses. Elisas family are convinced that Resitvo is responsible for their daughters disappearance but he is protected by local big-wigs: by his Sicilian father by a doctor with links to organised crime by a priest who had vices of his own. Years went by & Elisas family could find only false leads. 2002 & Restivo is now living in Bournemouth. In November that year his neighbour is found murdered with strands of her own hair in her hands. Once again the police are at a loss to pin anything on him. Its not until 2010 when Elisas decomposed body is found in the church where she went missing that the two cases are linked & Restivo is finally dealt with. Blood on the Altar" combines a gripping true crime case with Jones deep understanding of Italian culture
- the impunity it offers to the powerful
- he so expertly demonstrated in his bestseller: " The Dark Heart of Italy"."

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1857. On the LNWR train to London a criminal is being escorted to his appointment with the hangman. But the wily Jeremy Oxley conman thief & murderer has one last ace up his sleeve
- a beautiful & ruthless accomplice willing to do anything to save her lover including cold-blooded murder. When the Railway Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck learns that Oxley his arch nemesis has escaped black memories of their shared past leave him no choice but to do his duty whatever the cost. With the faithful Victor Leeming at his side Colbeck must use all of his skills to track his elusive enemy. But could he have finally met his match?
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Rebellion is in the air of London in the spring of 1663. Thomas Chaloner spy for the King's intelligence service has just returned from thwarting a planned revolt in Dublin but soon realises that England's capital is no haven of peace. He is ordered to investigate the shooting of a beggar during a royal procession. He soon learns the man is no vagrant but someone with links to the powerful Company of Barber-Surgeons. He master the Earl of Clarendon is locked in a deadly feud with the Earl of Bristol & an innocent man is about to be hanged in Newgate. Chaloner is embroiled in a desperate race against time to protect Clarendon to discover the true identity of the beggar's murderer & to save a blameless man from the executioner's noose. ...