Bantam books Ten-Second Staircase Fowler Christopher

The year is 1969 and ten guests are about to enjoy a country house weekend at Tavistock Hall. But one amongst them is harbouring thoughts of murder • The guests also include the young detectives Arthur Bryant and John May – undercover, in disguise and tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones, a whistle-blower turning Queen’s evidence in a massive bribery trial. Luckily, they’ve got a decent chap on the inside who can help them – the one-armed Brigadier, Nigel ‘Fruity’ Metcalf • The scene is set for what could be the perfect country house murder mystery, except that this particular get-together is nothing like a Golden Age classic. For the good times are, it seems, coming to an end. The house’s owner – a penniless, dope-smoking aristocrat – is intent on selling the estate (complete with its own hippy encampment) to a secretive millionaire but the weekend has only just started when the millionaire goes missing and murder is on the cards

One night, Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunk middle-aged lady coming out of a pub in a London backstreet. The next morning, she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbing, the pub has vanished. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they were over a century before, but the elderly detective has already lost the funeral urn of an old friend. Could he be losing his mind as well? • Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs. It seems a silent, secret killer is at work, striking in full view...and yet nobody has a clue how, or why - or where he'll attack next. The likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient with a reason for killing. But knowing who the killer is and catching him are two very different propositions

Long regarded an anachronism and a thorn in the side of its superiors, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is to be disbanded. For octogenarian detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, it seems retirement is now the only option. But then a headless body is found in a freezer, and on the perimeter of a massive construction site near King's Cross, a gigantic figure has been spotted - dressed in deerskin and sporting antlers made of knives and suddenly, with limited resources and very little time, the PCU are back in business

It’s a fresh start for the Met's oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit • Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt • Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate. Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London. All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city. And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls… • Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard

They've been given just one week to find a killer they'd caught once before • Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the trail of an enigma: a young man called Mr Fox. But his identity is false, his links to society are invisible and his home yields no clues. All they know is that somehow he escaped from a locked room and murdered one of their best and brightest • Now the detectives are being lured down into the darkest recesses of the London Underground where their quarry, expertly disguised, has struck again. Their search takes them into the vast labyrinth of tunnels, a subterranean world full of legends and ghost stations, which tie the city together. Edging closer to what lies hidden beneath the city - and to the madness that is driving a man to murder - Bryant and May are about to uncover a mystery as bizarre as anything they have ever encountered

Originally built to house the workers of Victorian London, Balaklava Street is now an oasis in the heart of Kentish Town and ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at Number 5. Her death would appear to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water. It falls to the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London's longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, to search for something resembling a logical solution • Their initial investigations draw a blank and Bryant's attention is diverted into strange and arcane new territory, while May finds himself in hot water when he attempts to save the reputation of an academic whose knowledge of the city's forgotten underground rivers looks set to ruin his career

'The newspapers referred to it as the case of the seventy-seven clocks. There was quite a fuss at the time. We got into terrible trouble. Dear fellow, it was one of our most truly peculiar cases. I remember as if it was yesterday.' • In fact, Arthur Bryant remembers very little about yesterday, but he does remember the oddest investigation of his career • It was late in 1973. As strikes and blackouts ravaged the country during Edward Heath's 'Winter of Discontent', sundry members of a wealthy, aristocratic family were being disposed of in a variety of grotesque ways - by reptile, by bomb, by haircut. As the hours of daylight diminish towards Christmas, Bryant & May, the irascible detectives of London's controversial Peculiar Crimes Unit, know that time is the key - and time is running out for both the family and the police

Некроманты Бошелейн и Корбал Броуч - бичи цивилизации, воскрешающие мертвых, пожиратели душ живых, пожиратели надежды, предатели веры, убийцы невинных и скромных олицетворений зла - должны за многое ответить, и они ответят, но сначала они должны солгать, убить и обманом пробираются еще через три авантюры в некоторых из наиболее неблагополучных окраин и обнищавших сообществ Малазанской империи. К большому стыду их многострадального главного помощника, Эмансипора Риза • Итак, вот - для удовольствия и развлечения читателей - эти эскапады, а именно новелла "Тропа Крэка", "Вурмы из Блэрмута" и "Изверги Кошмарии" • Книга на английском языке • The necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach - scourges of civilization, raisers of the dead, reapers of the souls of the living, devourers of hope, betrayers of faith, slayers of the innocent and modest personifications of evil - have a lot to answer for and answer they will, but first they must lie, murder and cheat their way through three more escapades in some of the more deprived fringes and impoverished communities of the Malazan Empire

AD 57: much of Britannia has been under Roman occupation for over ten years, where the tribes pay costly tithes to the Emperor in return for the right to continue living on their own lands • On the sacred isle of Mona, the Boudica or Bringer of Victory as Breaca has long been hailed, now knows for certain that her lover, Caradoc - betrayed, captured and kept hostage in Rome - will never return to her • She decides to leave Mona and to take the fight to the Eceni heartland where it is needed most. But the once proud Eceni are a downtrodden and defeated people who are forbidden to worship their old gods, and now scrape a living from the once fertile land • Across the sea in Hibernia, Breaca's half-brother Ban, struggles to make peace with his fractured past

The second novel from the award-winning author of Mistress of the Art of Death • Twelfth-century anatomist, Adelia Aguilar must once again examine the dead as gruesome events are beginning to unfold • Henry II's favourite mistress, Rosamund Clifford, has been poisoned - and, rumour says, by his jealous wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. If Henry believes the stories, England will be torn apart as King battles Queen • In a race against time to prove Eleanor's innocence, and with a dangerous assassin on the loose, Adelia has never faced greater danger. The armies that might cause civil war lie behind her. The icy winds of a dreadful winter blow around her. And ahead she must brave the thorns of the impenetrable labyrinth that surrounds Fair Rosamund's tower, and decipher the mystery of the dead woman who lies frozen within

Bridging the gap between 'Game of Thrones' and Bernard Cornwell comes the second chapter in James Wilde's epic adventure of betrayal, battle and bloodshed • It is AD 367, and Roman Britain has fallen to the vast barbarian horde which has invaded from the north. Towns burn, the land is ravaged and the few survivors flee. The army of Rome - once the most effective fighting force in the world - has been broken, its spirit lost and its remaining troops shattered • Yet for all the darkness, there is hope. And it rests with one man. His name is Lucanus who they call the Wolf. He is a warrior, and he wears the ancient crown of the great war leader, Pendragon, and he wields a sword bestowed upon him by the druids. With a small band of trusted followers, Lucanus ventures south to Londinium where he hopes to bring together an army and make a defiant stand against the invader

This is the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume • Jack 'No Middle Name' Reacher, lone wolf, knight errant, ex military cop, lover of women, scourge of the wicked and righter of wrongs, is the most iconic hero for our age • Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher's past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world • The twelve stories include a brand new novella, Too Much Time • The other stories in the collection are • Second Son • James Penney's New Identity • Guy Walks Into a Bar • Deep Down, High Heat • Not a Drill • Small Wars • All of which have previously been published as ebook shorts