Orion Books

Federal Agent Pete Riordan has two problems, and both of them could end with murder. Convicted killer Mikey-mike Magro has never made a secret of the fact that if he ever gets out of jail, he's going to go after the man he thinks put him there, Jerry 'Digger' Doherty. And now it seems some very influential people are trying to get Magro pardoned and out on the street. Riordan figures Bishop Paul Doherty, an old friend who also happens to be the Digger's brother, might put him on the right track — and he might just be able to help him with his second problem too: word is that a man is over from the old country intending to buy arms for the IRA. No one knows his name, or even what he looks like, but Riordan needs to find him fast — or his two problems could come together like a lighted fuse and a stick of gelignite.

Beautiful Alyshia D'Cruz has grown up in London and Mumbai wanting for nothing. But one night she takes the wrong cab home. Charles Boxer, expert in high-stakes kidnap resolution, teams up with his ex-partner, investigative cop Mercy Danquah, who's battling with their rebellious teenage daughter. Alyshia's father hires Boxer, who knows all about the tycoon's colourful career, which has made him plenty of enemies. But despite the vast D'Cruz fortune, the kidnappers don't want cash, instead favouring a cruel and lethal game... To save Alyshia, Boxer must dodge religious fanatics, Indian mobsters and London's homegrown crimelords. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT is a journey to the dark side of people and places that lie just out of view, waiting for the moment to tear a life apart.

The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of the prophecy were filled at last... The murderer of Dr Grimauld walked through a locked door, shot his victim and vanished. He killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at each end, yet nobody saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow. And so it is up to the irrepressible, larger-than-life Dr Gideon Fell to solve this most famous and taxing of locked-room mysteries.

In 1946, an alien virus that rewrites human DNA was accidentally unleashed in the skies over New York City. It killed ninety percent of those it infected. Nine percent of those who survived mutated into tragically deformed creatures. And one percent gained superpowers. The Wild Cards shared-universe series, created and edited since 1987 by NEW YORK TIMES No.1 bestseller George R.R. Martin along with Melinda Snodgrass, is the tale of the history of the world since then — and of the heroes among that one percent. Now it is time for a new generation of heroes — and writers — to pick up the baton. Twenty-eight extraordinary people — Aces, people who have contracted the deadly Wild Cards virus and lived — sign onto a reality TV show. These young heroes have never really been heroic, but each has a superhuman skill. Initially divided up into four suits while competing in staged contests as only LA-LA land could dream up, the losers are voted off the show until, at last, the greatest American Hero will be left standing. As the weeks go by, those remaining in the competition are stunned by sickening events in the Middle East. Their inane challenges look silly when compared to those unpowered people risking their lives. Will this group of over-privileged and under-informed 'celebrities' be able to make a real difference to the world? And how many of them really care?

LAPD cop Scott James is not doing so well. Eight months ago, a shocking late-night assault by unidentified men killed his partner Stephanie, nearly killed him, and left him enraged, ashamed, and ready to explode. He is unfit for duty — until he meets his new partner. Maggie is not doing so well, either. A German shepherd who survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing out explosives before losing her handler to an IED. They are each other's last chance. Shunned and shunted to the side, they set out to investigate the one case that no one wants them to touch: the identity of the men who murdered Stephanie. What they begin to find is nothing like what Scott has been told, and the journey will take them both through the darkest moments of their own personal hells. Whether they will make it out again, no one can say.

After World War III, the Servants of Wrath cult deified the mysterious Carlton Lufteufel, creator of the doomsday weapon that wiped out much of humanity. But to worship the man, they need an image of him as a god, and no one has ever seen him. So the high priests send a limbless master painter named Tibor McMasters into the wilderness on a mission to find Lufteufel and capture his likeness. Unfortunately for Tibor, the nation's remaining Christians do not want him to succeed and are willing to kill to ensure that the so-called Deus Irae remains hidden. This hallucinatory tale through a nuclear wasteland asks what price the artist must pay for art and tries to figure out just what makes a god.

What would you sacrifice for someone you've loved forever — told in seven parts and spanning ten centuries, this is a cleverly constructed, beautifully crafted love story with elements of thriller and the supernatural. Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar even when you've never been there before, or felt that you've known someone even though you are meeting them for the first time? In a novel comprising seven short stories each of them influenced by a moon — flower moon, harvest moon, hunter's moon, blood moon — and travelling from 2073 back in time to the dark of the moon and the days of Viking saga, this is the story of Eric and Merle who have loved and lost one another and who have been searching for each other ever since. In the different stories the two appear as lovers, mother and son, brother and sister, artist and child as they come close to finding each other before facing the ultimate sacrifice. Beautifully imagined, intricately and cleverly structured this is a heart-wrenching and breathtaking paranormal romance, but it also has the hallmark Sedgwick gothic touch with plenty of blood-spilling, a vampire and sacrifice.

Bath, 1821. Rachel Crofton leaves behind the binds of her unhappy employment as a governess and starts a new life as the wife of a charming self-made merchant. As she promises to love, honour and obey him, she plans to create for herself the family and home she has so long been without. Through her new husband's connections Rachel is invited to become the companion of the reclusive Jonathan Alleyn, a man tortured by memories of what he witnessed in the Peninsula War, and tormented by the disappearance of his childhood sweetheart, Alice, twelve years ago. Rachel's arrival into the grand house on Lansdown Crescent has a mysterious effect on those who live there, and suddenly it seems the secrets and dark deeds of the past can no longer be swept away. A family servant is convinced that Alice was stolen away and is determined to uncover the truth. Did she run away? Was there someone else? Or did something altogether darker occur?

First published in 1934, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE caused a scandal with its explosive mix of violence and sex, and immediately became a bestseller. The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and vital prose style and a bleak vision of America. THE AUTHOR James M. Cain was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1892. Having served in the US Army in World War 1, he became a journalist in Baltimore and New York in the 1920s. He later worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Cain died in 1977.

Just round the corner from St Jarlath's Crescent (featured in MINDING FRANKIE) is Chestnut Street. Here, the lives of the residents are revealed in Maeve Binchy's wonderfully compelling tales: Bucket Maguire, the window cleaner, who must do more than he bargained for to protect his son. Nessa Byrne, whose aunt comes to visit from America for six weeks every summer and turns the house — and Nessa's world — upside down. Lilian, the generous girl with a big heart, and the fiance not everyone approves of. And Melly, whose gossip about the neighbours leads to trouble in the form of the fortune teller, 'Madame Magic'... No one rivals Maeve Binchy for stories of warmth, kindness, love, loss — and life not always turning out as expected.

Sherlock Holmes is dead. Days after Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty fall to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls, Pinkerton agent Frederick Chase arrives in Europe from New York. The death of Moriarty has created a poisonous vacuum which has been swiftly filled by a fiendish new criminal mastermind who has risen to take his place. Ably assisted by Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard, a devoted student of Holmes's methods of investigation and deduction, Frederick Chase must forge a path through the darkest corners of the capital to shine light on this shadowy figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, a man determined to engulf London in a tide of murder and menace. Author of the global bestseller The House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz once more breathes life into the world created by Arthur Conan Doyle. With pitch-perfect characterisation and breath-taking pace, Horowitz weaves a relentlessly thrilling tale which teases and delights by the turn of each page. The game is afoot...

A storm is brew ing in the confines of a London dinner party. Small talk quickly descends into a verbal and intellectual battle betw een science and belief, as comedian Tim goes head to head with the mysterious fifth guest at the table — a hippy named Storm.With stunning original artw ork, Tim's sublime ranty beat-poem weaves through the world we live in, where alternative medicine is given credence and public funding, psychics have primetime TV exposure and people are happy w ith mystery rather than answers.While Storm herself may not be converted, audiences from London to Sydney have been won over by Tim's lyrical wonders and the timely message of the piece in a society where science is attacked as the enemy of belief. STORM is the illustrated book born from the acclaimed internet sensation — the animation that has become an anthem for critical thinking worldwide, attracting over three million views. Now fully reimagined, STORM is a masterpiece that sparkles with beauty, wit, reason and rationality.

Mid-century Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as the white spot of America, a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of 'pleasure girls' and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men — one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief — each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city. The Mob had to contend with downtown business (the Chandlers, of LA Times fame), City Hall, and above all the LAPD — and the story is gripping. In these pages you will find the kind of gangsters, cops, pols, and madams familiar from The Big Sleep, Chinatown, and LA Confidential — only this time it's non-fiction, a serious portrait of how the 20th century's most dangerously unaccountable, intrusive model of pre-emptive policing got started. It's a story with great resonance today.

The Discworld: a world bursting with magic, a land of contrasts and extremes that floats through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. In the bustling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, the oldest city on the Disc, you can find every luxury and perversion known to man or dwarf- and a fair few yet to be properly invented; in the ancient empire of Klatch there are fifteen words for assassination. The kingdom of Lancre may be small, but in this case size definitely isn't everything; in the dark country of Uberwald, things do go bump in the night. The inhabitants of Discworld are even more unforgettable than the places. There are witches and wizards — Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick (now a Queen, of course), and those in training (willingly or otherwise): Agnes Nitt, Tiffany Aching; Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Librarian, Rincewind, the Bursar: all play their part. There are great heroes, like Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot and the men of the City Watch... and there are the ordinary folk like Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Foul Ole Ron, the Igors. And there's Death, and his increasingly extended family. The Discworld might have started out in the imagination of its Creator, Terry Pratchett, but over the past 30 or more books, it has taken on a life of its own. Here, artist Paul Kidby, steered by the author's words, takes his own voyage through the Disc, revealing, in glorious colour and intricate black and white, the cornucopia of characters that have won the hearts of millions of adoring readers the world over.

One of the most fascinating rock bands ever, Pink Floyd was formed in 1965. After a year in the London 'underground' experimenting with revolutionary techniques like lights which matched their music, they released their first single in 1966. Their breakthrough album, THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, was released in 1973 and stayed in the charts until 1982, the longest a record has ever been continuously in the charts, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 1975 they released WISH YOU WERE HERE which reached iconic status, then in 1979 THE WALL went to number 1 in almost every country in the world. The movie version of THE WALL starring Bob Geldof was released in 1982, becoming a cult favorite. In the 1980s a rift developed between the band members which culminated in law suits. Only recently have there been reconciliations which have allowed founder member Nick Mason to write his personal take on the band's history.

The Russo-Turkish war is at a critical juncture, and Erast Fandorin, broken-hearted and disillusioned, has gone to the front in an attempt to forget his sorrows. But Fandorin's efforts to steer clear of trouble are thwarted when he comes to the aid of Varvara Suvorova — a 'progressive' Russian woman trying to make her way to the Russian headquarters to join her fiance. Within days, Varvara's fiance has been accused of treason, a Turkish victory looms on the horizon, and there are rumours of a Turkish spy hiding within their own camp. Our reluctant gentleman sleuth will need to resurrect all of his dormant powers of detection if he is to unmask the traitor, help the Russians to victory and smooth the path of young love.

Barry Trotter is pretty disreputable and unpleasant. Imagine what he was like as a teenager. Here's the beginning of the whole sorry tale. Did Barry and Ermine do it? How exactly did Lon end up with a hole in his head that whistles when the wind blows? Was Lord Valumart always that crass? And where did that ridiculous German accent come from? As funny and twisted as the first two books, Barry Trotter And The Dead Horse is also as affectionate towards JK Rowling's originals. This has lead to the books gaining a devoted following amongst fans of Harry Potter as well as being a welcome antidote for the over-egging of the boy wizard. A process that we're not a part of at all. Oh no. Not even a tiny bit.

Dexter Morgan isn't exactly the kind of man you'd bring home to your mum. At heart, he's the perfect gentleman: he has a shy girlfriend, and seems to lead a quiet, normal life bordering on the mundane. Despite the fact that he can't stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But Dexter also has a secret hobby: he is an accomplished serial killer. So far, he's killed 36 people and has never been caught because he knows exactly how to hide the evidence. And while that may lead some people to assume he's not such a nice guy, he tempers his insatiable hunger for brutality by only killing the bad guys. However, Dexter's well-organised life is suddenly disrupted when a second, much more visible serial killer appears in Miami. Intrigued that the other killer favours a style similar to his own, Dexter soon realises that the mysterious new arrival is not simply invading his turf but offering him a direct invitation to “come out and play”...

Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic. When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684. Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others' bodies when his latest becomes too hairy.

British-born Teresa Simons returns to England after the death of her husband, an FBI agent, who was killed by an out-of-control gunman while on assignment in Texas. A shocking coincidence has drawn her to the run-down south coast town of Bulverton, where a gunman's massacre has haunting similarities to the murders in Texas. Desperate to unravel the mystery, Teresa turns to the virtual reality world of Extreme Experience, ExEx, now commercially available since she trained on it in the US. The best and worst of human experience can be found in ExEx, and in the extremes of violence Teresa finds that past and present combine...

Having risen to the challenge of seas, poles, dhows and deserts, the highest mountains in the world were a natural target for Michael Palin. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna and Everest, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. Facing altitudes as high as 17,500 feet as well as some of the world's deepest gorges, Palin also passed through political flashpoints like Pakistan's remote north-west frontier, terrorist-torn Kashmir and the mountains of Nagaland, only recently open to visitors.

One positive if belated aspect of 'Cool Britannia' is that British-originated cars have become (again?) among the coolest on the planet. Range Rover, Mini, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin — especially the Aston Martin — these are names not only of historic significance but have a new resonance in the contemporary world too. But what of the not so cool cars, the cars you shouldn't opt to buy — and those you shouldn't even be seen in or alongside? No, not the Skoda or station wagon, which have a heroic anti-car coolness of their own, but the Golf or Astra or professional footballer's Ferrari. This is a book that jumps from an enormous height on personalised number plates, but celebrates Jarvis Cocker's decision to drive a station wagon and Roger Moore a Renault 5. It questions what happens to the status of your car after you have seen Bernard Manning or Jade Goodie posing next to a model of it in the newspaper. So there is a 'Showroom Questionnaire' for car manufacturers to check out their customers before they deign to sell them a car that might become irrevocably uncool as a result. As funny as it is cool and aspirational, “What Not To Drive” will entertain all who love the information, banter and humour of BBC TV's Top Gear.

Bruce Stevens is a young buyer for a big discount house when he meets the recently divorced Susan Faine. She suggests that he might like to manage her ailing typewriter store and he leaps at the suggestion. Then he realizes that Susan was his teacher when he was in fifth grade. In spite of that, they are married within days. And then the odd compulsions and instabilities start to interfere with their plans. Milton Lumky, the paper salesman in whose area they live, is uneasy about their future...

Mary Anne Reynolds is a young and vulnerable woman, determined to make her own way in the world. But Pacific Park, California, in the 1950s is not really the place for Mary. Her relationship with a black singer offends against the small town's views on sexual mores and exposes its bigoted views on race. This is a powerful portrayal of the claustrophobia of small-town California, and Mary Anne Reynolds is one of the most memorable characters Dick ever created.