Orion Books

Once he was Sierra Lane, hero to countless youngsters in a series of B-movie westerns. Now, after two years in prison, John Ray Horn lives on the margins of post-World War II Los Angeles. His wife has left him, and, blacklisted by the studios, he makes ends meet by collecting debts for his old Indian co-star, Joseph Mad Crow. Then an old friend, Scotty, contacts Horn. He has come across some obscene photos, including one, several years old, of Horn's stepdaughter, Clea. Within days, Scotty is dead, and Clea has run away. Horn's search takes him from neon-lit ocean-front piers to wooded canyons, from rich homes in the Hollywood Hills to Central Avenue, the Harlem of LA, a street rich in jazz and corruption. But will the on-screen tough-guy hero be able to sustain his role off-screen?

Greece, 1930s. A young British diplomat and his wife have been posted to Athens. But while Hugh Timberlake thrives on the endless parties and socialising, his spirited and unconventional wife Evadne finds her life as an embassy wife stifling. When they go to Crete on holiday to stay in a run-down house owned by Hugh's family, Evadne falls in love with the place, deciding to stay on when Hugh returns to his duties. As she tries to rebuild the ramshackle home, Evadne makes firm friends with Anthi, a woman from the village, and Christos, the handsome and charismatic man employed to work on the house. But the dark clouds of war are gathering, and the little island will become a crucible of violence and bloodshed in the days to come. For Evadne, her friends and family, it will be the greatest test they have ever known.

Seventeen-year-old Haley is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. So when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home, and three months quickly pass without any word, the community assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate and nationally televised sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined. Soon Wendy realises she can't trust her own instincts about this case — or the motives of the people around her...

Samuel 'Sailor' Doyle has transferred from Vice to Homicide in the Virginia State Police. He has a mistress, an alcohol problem, a prescription drug dependency, and a burgeoning self-loathing that alienates his wife and family. On Friday 3 July, the rookie investigator is assigned to a double homicide on a rural farm some 15 miles outside Richmond. One of the victims has been interred in a makeshift tomb, while the other is stuck half-in, half-out of a hope chest overflowing with cat litter. And the farm is covered with dead bodies: dozens of cats, sheep, goats, cows, and one dead horse. The mentally handicapped daughter of the victims, Carl and Claire Bruckner, is missing. Doyle soon discovers that Bruckner was a Marine captain who lost his leg in Vietnam thanks to the incompetence of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lake — now retired General Robert Lake, and Republican Party presidential hopeful, who will be speaking in Richmond on July fourth — the following evening. What Doyle fails to realise as he follows the various clues is that wherever he goes, he is spreading disease — and not just any disease, but Yersinia pestis. The plague. Is the dead Marine planning revenge, even from beyond the grave?

England, 1911. The Reverend Albert Canning, a vicar with a passion for spiritualism, leads a happy existence with his naive wife Hester in a sleepy Berkshire village. As summer dawns, their quiet lives are changed for ever by two new arrivals. First comes Cat, the new maid: a free-spirited and disaffected young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the law. Cat quickly finds a place for herself in the secret underbelly of local society as she plots her escape. Then comes Robin Durrant, a leading expert in the occult, enticed by tales of elemental beings in the water meadows nearby. A young man of magnetic charm and beauty, Robin soon becomes an object of fascination and desire. During a long spell of oppressive summer heat, the rectory at Cold Ash Holt becomes charged with ambition, love and jealousy; a mixture of emotions so powerful that it leads, ultimately, to murder.

Amber Scott loves her city life — a terrific job working on a glossy magazine, and a fiance, Ed, she's known since Uni. Even if Ed doesn't take her job seriously (as a solicitor, he doesn't have much time for women's magazines!), it is Amber's dream job. So Ed's news that he has taken a job in the West Country turns Amber's world upside down. The new life in Cornwall does not get off to the best start. The huge house Ed was so keen on is, well, huge — what is Amber going to do with four acres? And do M&S make Aga-ready meals? And when a handsome, if surly, man leads the local hunt over her land, it's more than Amber can stand. So how is it that, before long Amber is friends with the local eccentric Lady of the Manor, making love potions at her mother's recommendation — and answering the door naked to strangers...?

After caring for his mother in her last days, Alex has gone off round the world — with no plan other than to travel and maybe recapture some of his lost youth. Beginning his travels in Indonesia, the idea of finding himself sounds appealing... but soon, he finds himself in real trouble. It starts with a bus crash on a terrifying mountain road. Lucky to escape with his life, Alex loses everything else — even his identity. But then he meets Domino, a beautiful girl who takes Alex under her wing. At first it's an intoxicating adventure, but Alex starts to realise that danger seems to follow her around. As they approach the magnificent Lake Toba, and head to the remote community of free spirits that Domino calls home, it seems there's trouble in paradise. The ideals of the camp seem honourable — a simple life, shared by friends in a beautiful place hidden from the world. But Domino has no answers for the questions that are forming in Alex's mind: Why do the local villagers hate them so much? Why are people leaving the camp in the dead of night? And what are the strange shapes lurking just beyond the clearing? A taut, atmospheric and emotive thriller, DARK HORIZONS transports you to the lush landscapes of Sumatra, and the twisted ideals and deadly secrets lying in wait there...

Malcolm Fox returns in the stunning second novel in Ian Rankin's new series... Malcolm Fox and his team are back, investigating whether fellow cops covered up for Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct, but what should be a simple job is soon complicated by a brutal murder and a weapon that should not even exist. A trail of revelations leads Fox back to 1985, a year of desperate unrest when letter-bombs and poisonous spores were sent to government offices, and kidnappings and murders were plotted. But while the body count rises the clock starts ticking, and a dramatic turn of events sees Fox in mortal danger.

5 August 2005. While conducting a secret mission thirty miles off the remote cost of Kamchatka, the Russian Navy submarine AS-28 became snared in the thick cables anchored to 60-tonne concrete blocks. Without power the stricken boat sunk to the seafloor. Trapped 600 feet down — too deep to escape — her crew of seven now had just seventy two hours before the air onboard ran out. Twenty-four hours later — still haunted by the loss of the Kursk — the Russian Navy requested assistance. And on their side of the world, Commander Ian Riches, Boss of the Royal Navy's Submarine rescue team got the call: there was a sub down. With their expertise and specialist equipment, he knew his team had a chance to save the men, but Kamchatka was at the very limit of their range. And the clock was ticking. As Riches and his men prepared to deploy to Russia's Pacific coast aboard a giant Royal Air Force C-17 airlifter, rescue teams from the United States and Japan were also scrambled to the area. After the failure of the Russian Navy's own attempts to resucue them, the crew of the AS-28 shut down all of their boat's non-essential systems, climbed into thick thermal suits to keep the freezing cold at bay and waited, desperate to eke out the stale, thin air inside the pressure hull of their submarine. But as the first of them began to drift in and out of consciousness, they knew their time was running out... 72 Hours tells the story of an extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat real-life drama. It's the gripping, inside story of one of the most dramatic rescue attempts of recent years. And there were no guarantees of success.

Lily Bard has started over in the quiet town of Shakespeare, Arkansas, where she works as a cleaning lady. But she's about to go back to where she came from, and where Lily goes, danger follows... Determined to move beyond her violent past, Lily heads to Bartley, her hometown, for her sister's Christmas Eve wedding. But there's something in the air besides festive cheer: the town's doctor and nurses have been bludgeoned to death, and Lily's detective boyfriend has followed an eight-year-old kidnapping case straight to Bartley. It just might have something to do with the murders... and with her sister's fiance. With only three days to the wedding, Lily must work fast to clean up the messy case before her sister promises to love, honour and obey a killer.

Over the years, Myron Bolitar has walked a tight rope between sports agent, friend, problem solver and private eye. When former tennis star Suzze T and her rock star husband, Lex, encounter an anonymous Facebook post questioning the paternity of their unborn child, Lex runs off, and Suzze — at eight months pregnant — asks Myron to save her marriage, and perhaps her husband's life. But when he finds Lex, he also finds two people he wasn't looking for: his sister-in-law, Kitty, wife of Myron's estranged brother, and her teenage son, Mickey, who is achingly familiar. But this boy that he has never met blames Myron for everything that has happened to his parents... As Myron races to locate his missing brother while their father clings to life after a savage heart-attack, he must face the lies that led to the estrangement long ago — including the ones told by Myron himself. He must also answer the questions that Mickey's arrival has thrown up. Who is Myron Bolitar really? And can he heal the damage of the past?

This is the story of Dr Alfred Jones, a fisheries scientist — for whom diary-notable events include the acquisition of a new electric toothbrush and getting his article on caddis fly larvae published in 'Trout and Salmon' — who finds himself reluctantly involved in a project to bring salmon fishing to the Highlands of the Yemen — a project that will change his life, and the course of British political history forever. With a wickedly wonderful cast of characters — including a visionary Sheikh, a weasely spin doctor, Fred's devilish wife and a few thousand transplanted salmon — SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN is a novel about hypocrisy and bureaucracy, dreams and deniability, and the transforming power of faith and love.

The Straits of Gibraltar, 1940. In the heart of a storm at sea, Captain Gonzalez rescues a group of German castaways. When the storm subsides, their leader gratefully offers the captain a strange-looking emblem made of gold and diamonds, in exchange for safe passage to the coast of Portugal.

An Autumn evening in 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attache from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, with war coming to Europe, and French and German operatives locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attache, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn in to a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amidst an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters — Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence, last seen in Furst's The Polish Officer; the mysterious and sophisticated Doctor Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed. The Spies of Warsaw is Alan Furst's finest novel to date — the history is precise, the writing evocative and powerful, more a novel about spies than a spy novel — exciting, atmospheric, erotic and impossible to put down.

Jack Isidore is a 'crap artist', a collector of crackpot ideas and worthless objects. His beliefs make him a man apparently unsuited for real life and so his sister, an edgy and aggressive woman, and his brother-in-law, a crass and foul-mouthed businessman, feel compelled to rescue him from it. But, observed through Jack's murderously innocent gaze, Fay and Charley Hume are seen to be just as obsessed as Jack. Their obsessions may be a little more acceptable than Jack's but they are uglier. And, in the end and thanks to Jack's intervention, theirs lead to tragedy...

Laura McNaughton's life is almost perfect. She's young, pretty and she has a fabulous job on a glossy magazine, which involves interviewing celebrities (and air-brushing their personalities). But when she is offered a job presenting a trendy Friday night television show she can't resist the opportunity to experience fame first hand. Putting her puritanical Scottish upbringing, her intellectual boyfriend and her hippy best friend behind her, she soon hooks up with world-famous actress Lucy Lloyd and gorgeous, infamous rock god Ricky Jones, who introduce her to a hedonistic world of partying where appearance is everything and nothing really matters but sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But as the stories about her private life become front page news, Laura begins to doubt those closest to her, and her life starts to spiral dangerously out of control. Packed with passion, glamour and danger, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS is a unmissable glimpse into the fame game — and the price you have to pay to play it.

Clair lives in the leafy suburbs and has worked hard to create the perfect life for her husband and two children. She knows it's a big bad world out there and her beautifully painted garden fences keep that world out. While her children are young, Clair is determined to do everything she can to keep them safe. But then a new family moves in next door. The first time she sees Chelsea, Clair has her pegged as a spoilt only child who is used to getting her own way from her doting parents, beautiful yet spiteful. As Chelsea befriends Clair's children over the fence, Clair's unease increases. The girl is not a good influence, and she has Clair's son in her sights. Soon the children are running in and out of each other's gardens. But then events take a tragic turn. A terrible event shatters the cosy suburban community, proving Clair was right to remain vigilant. To protect her family, Clair tightens her grip on her children. The more she reins them in, the more they rebel. And the less control she has. Teetering on the edge of madness, Clair will do anything to save her family, and in doing so risks destroying all their lives. Powerful, compelling and utterly unflinching, Camilla Noli again explores the darker sides of a mother's love.

It is 2010. In two years' time it will be the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic. Two of the world's most powerful corporations race to raise the vessel but there are other powers at work, and chaos theory comes into play as plans progress — and six preserved bodies are found. This novel incorporates two of Arthur C.Clarke's passions — deep sea exploration and future technology — in a fast-moving tale of mysetry and adventure. As operations proceed, the perfectly preserved body of a beautiful girl is found. She was not on the ship's passenger lists. The quest to uncover the secrets of the wreck and reclaim her becomes an obsession... and for some, a fatal one.

A seemingly sleepy Devonshire village, Burracombe is in fact full of intrigue and drama. Family secrets, budding romance, cruel twists of fate and amazing friendships all play out against the backdrop of the beautiful countryside. It's autumn 1953. The village is delighted when Joe Tozer — who left Burracombe as a young man in 1919 — returns to visit his family. His life since emigrating to the States has been a world away from rural Devon — but coming home, he falls in love with the place (and one particular person) all over again. With him is his eldest son, Russell. He sets hearts fluttering in the village — but will there be anyone on his arm when he catches the boat back to America?

Onetime underground journalist Sandy Blair has traveled far from his radical roots in the 60s-until the bizarre and brutal murder of a millionaire rock promoter draws him back. As Sandy sets out to investigate the crime, he finds himself on a magical mystery tour of the pent-up passions of his generation. For a new messiah has resurrected the once legendary rock band Nazgul-but with an apocalyptic new beat that is a requiem of demonism, mind control, and death only Sandy may be able to change in time...

This is not a story about a girl who disappears. This is the story of a little girl who comes back. As if from nowhere, she appears one day on a seaside promenade, with a black flower and a horrifying story about where she's been. But telling that story will start a chain reaction of dangerous lies and deadly illusions that will claim many more victims in the years to come. Neil Dawson has grown up wanting to be like his father — a writer. When his father commits suicide, he is devastated. But through his grief, Neil knows something isn't right. Looking through his father's papers, he finds a copy of an old novel, The Black Flower. Opening it will take Neil into an investigation full of danger, pain and subterfuge. Hannah Price is also mourning her father. She followed his footsteps into the police force, and knows she has a big reputation to live up to. When she gets assigned to Neil's father's case, it will lead her on a journey into her own past and to the heart of a shattering secret.

When Alice Forster receives an email from her dead sister she assumes it must be a sick practical joke. Then an invitation arrives to the virtual world of Soul Beach, an idyllic online paradise of sun, sea and sand where Alice can finally talk to her sister again — and discover a new world of friendships, secrets and maybe even love... But why is Soul Beach only inhabited by the young, the beautiful and the dead? Who really murdered Megan Forster? And could Alice be next? The first book in an intriguing and compelling trilogy centred around the mystery of Megan Forster's death.

Thousands of years ago the land is one dark forest. Its people are hunter-gatherers. They know every tree and herb and they know how to survive in a time of enchantment and powerful magic. Until an ambitious and malevolent force conjures a demon: a demon so evil that it can be contained only in the body of a ferocious bear that will slay everything it sees, a demon determined to destroy the world. Only one boy can stop it — 12 year old Torak, who has seen his father murdered by the bear. With his dying breath, Torak's father tells his son of the burden that is his. He must lead the bear to the mountain of the World Spirit and beg that spirit's help to overcome it. Torak is an unwilling hero. He is scared and trusts no one. His only companion is a wolf cub only three moons old, whom he seems to understand better than any human. Theirs is a terrifying quest in a world of wolves, tree spirits and Hidden People, a world in which trusting a friend means risking your life.

When wealthy Sarah Erroll dies a violent death at her home in a posh part of Glasgow, the local community is stunned by what appears to be a truly gratuitous act. Heavily pregnant with desperately wanted twins, DS Alex Morrow is called in to investigate and soon discovers that there is more to Sarah's murder than it first seems. On the other side of town, Thomas Anderson is called into the headmaster's office at his boarding school to be told that his tyrannical father — a banker responsible for the loss of many livelihoods in the recession — has committed suicide by hanging himself from the old oak tree on the lawn of their home. Thomas returns to the family home to find his mother and sister in a state of numb shock. The head of the household is dead, yet their initial reaction is not that of grief, but relief. As Alex Morrow slowly unravels the connections between the two cases, she faces her greatest challenge yet as her work and home lives collide with potentially disastrous consequences.