MacLehose Press Rosy & John Леметр Пьер

У нее нет времени ждать • Кто-то похитил Алекс Прево, избил ее и привязал к потолку деревянной клетки на заброшенном складе. Она не в том положении, чтобы диктовать условия. Особенно когда все, чего хочет ее похититель – наблюдать за тем, как она умирает • Он хочет лишь одного • У комиссара полиции Камиля Верховена нет ничего, кроме неубедительного полицейского рапорта – ни подозреваемых, ни зацепок. Чтобы найти Алекс, ему придется забраться в ее голову • Побег – это только начало • Алекс непростая, находчивая, красивая и всегда оказывается на два шага впереди. До самого конца она будет заставлять Верховена сомневаться в каждом своем шаге. И спасение ее жизни станет меньшей из его проблем • «Алекс» – это роман французского писателя Пьера Леметра, входящий в трилогию произведений о Камиле Верховене

The Novelist Kills by the Book • For Commandant Camille Verhoeven life is beautiful. He is happily married and soon to become a father • He's Always One Chapter Ahead • But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of unprecedented savagery. When his team discovers that the killer has form - and each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel - the Parisian press are quick to coin a nickname . . . The Novelist • He Hates Happy Endings • With the public eye fixed on both hunter and hunted, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner. The one who has the least to lose

World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes • At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots - for their own good • But as the war goes on he is forced to throw greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humour and black camaraderie no defence against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head

In 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Pericourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleine's seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Pericourt mansion on the day of his grandfather's funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months • Using all her reserves of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a burning desire for retribution, Madeleine sets about rebuilding her life. She will be helped by an ex-Communist fixer, a Polish nurse who doesn't speak a word of French, a brainless petty criminal with a talent for sabotage, an exiled German Jewish chemist, a very expensive forger, an opera singer with a handy flair for theatrics, and her own son with ideas for a creative new business to take Paris by storm

Antoine is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother in Beauval, a small, backwater town surrounded by forests, where everyone knows everyone's business, and nothing much ever happens. But in the last days of 1999, a series of events unfolds, culminating in the shocking vanishing without trace of a young child. The adults of the town are at a loss to explain the disappearance, but for Antoine, it all begins with the violent death of his neighbour's dog. From that one brutal act, his fate and the fate of his neighbour's six year old son are bound forever • In the years following Remi's disappearance, Antoine wrestles with the role his actions played. As a seemingly inescapable net begins to tighten, breaking free from the suffocating environs of Beauval becomes a gnawing obsession

With Nothing Else to Lose • Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she blunders into a raid on a jeweller's on the Champs-Elysees. Bludgeoned beyond recognition, she is lucky to survive. But her ordeal has only just begun • He Can Break All the Rules • Lying helpless in her hospital bed, with her assailant still at large, Anne is in mortal danger. Only one thing gives her hope: Commandant Camille Verhoeven • To Protect the Woman He Loves • For Verhoeven it's a case of history repeating itself. He cannot lose Anne as he lost his wife. This time he faces an adversary whose greatest strength appears to be Verhoeven's matchless powers of intuition

The Dog Islands are a small, isolated cluster of islands in the Mediterranean - so called because together, when viewed from above, they form the shape of a dog, twisting and baring its teeth against a brilliant blue sea. One of the only inhabited islands (the one that takes the place of one of the dog's teeth) is dominated by a gently smoking volcano, fringed by black volcanic beaches and under the iron rule of the heads of community who are loath to let any outside influence disrupt the quiet way of life on the island • Then one morning, an old woman comes across three bodies that have washed up with the tide: three young black men, who have apparently drowned in their attempt to cross the sea. The initial reaction of the island community is that this tragedy must be covered up, lest any association with the drownings damages the island's tourism industry

On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop • One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated • How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death? • The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell • It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle • It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter • And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of the President's gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror

Salander is plotting her revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and against the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life. But it is not going to be a straightforward campaign • After taking a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in Intensive Care, and is set to face trial for three murders and one attempted murder on her eventual release • With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander must not only prove her innocence, but identify and denounce the corrupt politicians that have allowed the vulnerable to become victims of abuse and violence. Once a victim herself, Salander is now ready to fight back

Norway, 1880. Winter is hard in Butangen, a village secluded at the end of a valley. The lake has frozen, and for months the ground is too hard to bury the dead. Astrid Hekne dreams of a life beyond all this, beyond marriage, children, and working the land to the end of her days. Then Pastor Kai Schweigaard takes over the small parish, with its 700-year-old stave church carved with pagan deities. The two bells in the tower were forged by Astrid's forefather in the sixteenth century, in memory of conjoined twins Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne. They are said to hold supernatural powers • The villagers are wary of the pastor and his resolve to do away with their centuries-old traditions, though Astrid also finds herself drawn to him. And then a stranger arrives from Dresden, with grand plans for the church itself

It would take something huge to put Paterson, New Jersey on the map • But Nina Gill is determined to do just that. She is the daughter of the ageing owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the well-kept secret to their success. Shocked when her brother inherits the team, leaving her with the Paterson Pork, New Jersey's only Indoor Football League franchise, she vows to take on the N.F.L. and make her new team the pigskin kings of America • Meanwhile, Nuno DeAngeles - a brilliant criminal mastermind - contrives to be thrown into Rikers Island prison to commit one of the most audacious crimes of all time. Now he's on the inside, he has two good reasons to get out. But how does a person of culture go about breaking out of the penal system when the whole of the land of the free is addicted to keeping him in it? • Without knowing it, or ever having met, Nina and Nuno have already had a profound effect on each other's lives

Brussels. A hive of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. No wonder the European Commission is keen to improve its image • The fiftieth anniversary of the European Commission approaches, and the Directorate-General for Culture is tasked with organising an appropriate celebration. When Fenia Xenopoulou's assistant comes up with a plan to put Auschwitz at the very centre of the jubilee, she is delighted. But she has neglected to take the other E.U. institutions into account • Meanwhile the city is on the lookout for a runaway pig. And what about the farmers who take to the streets to protest against restrictions blocking the export of pigs to China?