Pan Books Brutal Heller Mandasue

Dark and gritty, Witness is a heart-pounding thriller set in Manchester by bestselling author Mandasue Heller • Holly Evans and her over-protective mother, Josie, are living a hand-to-mouth existence, moving constantly from one squalid dump to the next. When they move into an illegally sub-let council flat in Manchester, Holly feels settled for the first time in her life - even if she is forbidden to go out, or even open the front door to callers when her mum's at work. What exactly are they hiding from? • Then Holly has a falling out with her best friend, and suddenly finds herself becoming increasingly isolated and alone in the world. But she is about to make a new friend in Suzie - the glamorous woman who lives directly across the road, who Holly witnesses being beaten up by her violent boyfriend

Run by Mandasue Heller is a gritty story of Manchester's criminal underworld • After being cheated on by her ex, Leanne Riley is trying her hardest to get her life back on track, which isn't easy without a job and living in a bedsit surrounded by a junkie and a mad woman • On a night out with her best friend she meets Jake, a face from her past who has changed beyond all recognition. Jake is charming, handsome and loaded, a far cry from the gawky teenager he used to be. Weary of men, Leanne isn't easy to please, but Jake tries his best to break through the wall she's built around herself • But good looks and money can hide a multitude of sins. Is that good-looking face just a mask? And what's more, what will it take to make it slip, and who will die in the process . . . ?

Save Me, is a gritty crime novel by the bestselling author Mandasue Heller • When Ellie Fisher misses her train home one night, she has no idea that being in the right place at the wrong time will change her life forever • That night she comes across Gareth, a young man about to take his own life, because as far as he's concerned there is nothing left to live for. Putting her own life in danger Ellie convinces Gareth that there is always something left. Her own life is no bed of roses, she explains, but she always pushes on • However, good deeds aren't always repaid the way we want. Has Ellie unwittingly put her life in danger, or is the real danger a lot closer to home?

Set in urban Manchester, Running Scared is a nerve-shredding thriller by bestselling author Mandasue Heller • When teenage Alexis ‘Lexi’ James falls out with her best mate Nicole over ‘bad boy’ Ryan King, it’s just the beginning of a chain of events that go from bad to worse to deadly • Returning home one night to her high-rise flat, she is faced by a terrifying scene that changes her life forever – and matters are made worse when she is put into care in another town • Years later, Lexi has left school and is back in Manchester. A chance meeting with Nicole and her so-called ‘other half’ Ryan ends in disaster, and she vows never to see them again. Then one night she is saved from a vicious attack by a charming stranger. He takes her home and their acquaintance blossoms into something much deeper

The Murder Wall is Mari Hannah's first gripping crime novel featuring DCI Kate Daniels • Eleven months after discovering a brutal double murder in a sleepy Northumbrian town, Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels is still haunted by her failure to solve the case. Then the brutal killing of a man on Newcastle’s Quayside gives Daniels another chance to get it right, and her first case as Senior Investigating Officer • When Daniels recognizes the corpse, but fails to disclose the fact, her personal life swerves dangerously into her professional life. But much worse, she is now being watched • As Daniels steps closer to finding a killer, a killer is only a breath away from claiming his next victim

The Spartan legend has inspired and captivated subsequent generations with evidence of its legacy found in both the Roman and British Empires. The Spartans are our ancestors, every bit as much as the Athenians. But while Athens promoted democracy, individualism, culture and society, their great rivals Sparta embodied militarism, totalitarianism, segregation and brutal repression. As ruthless as they were self-sacrificing, their devastatingly successful war rituals made the Spartans the ultimate fighting force, epitomized by Thermopylae. While slave masters to the Helots for over three centuries, Spartan women, such as Helen of Troy, were free to indulge in education, dance and sport. Interspersed with the personal biographies of leading figures, and based on thirty years' research, Paul Cartledge's The Spartans tracks the people from 480 to 360 BC charting Sparta's progression from the Great Power of the Aegean Greek world to its ultimate demise

It is 1946: the war is over and three young women face a new kind of life. But peacetime brings its own pressures • Katie O'Neill's childhood has been dominated by her temperamental mother and by frightening secrets that she barely understands. Innocent, yet hungry for love, she is easily taken in by male charm and is left outcast and alone with her young son • Emma Brown has spent the war at home in Birmingham, longing for her husband Norm to return and meet the son he has never seen. But she soon finds that the joy of homecoming only brings a whole new set of problems • And Molly Fox, after a sad and brutal childhood, found a place to belong during the war, in the women's army, the ATS. Now, the women are no longer wanted and Molly finds peacetime a bleak, difficult challenge

Being a stable lass is probably one of the hardest jobs in the country, and yet for Gemma Hogg it is the most rewarding. She works in the beautiful Yorkshire market town of Middleham and if her colleagues are occasionally challenging, then the horses are downright astonishing. Now, in Stable Lass, she takes us into the closed world of a top racing yard, from the elation of having several winners in one day to the almost indescribable grief of losing a horse • Like most stable lads and lasses, Gemma arrived in her yard as a teenager fresh out of racing college and had to cope with living away from home for the first time, as well as adapting to the brutal long hours, backbreaking work and often treacherous weather. She describes falling in love with Polo Venture, the first racehorse in her care, the pure exhilaration of riding him on Middleham Gallops for the first time and what happens when a horse takes against you, from the growling gelding Valiant Warrior to the potentially lethal Broadway Boy

In Helmand province in July 2006, Major Adam Jowett was given command of Easy Company, a hastily assembled and under-strength unit of Paras and Royal Irish rangers. Their mission was to hold the District Centre of Musa Qala at any cost. Easy Company found themselves in a ramshackle compound, cut off and heavily outnumbered by the Taliban in the town • In No Way Out, Adam evokes the heat and chaos of battle as the Taliban hit Easy Company with wave after wave of brutal attack. He describes what it was like to have responsibility for the lives of his men as they fought back heroically over twenty-one days and nights of relentless, nerve-shredding combat. Finally, as they came down to their last rounds and death stared Easy Company in the face, the siege took an extraordinary turn

Forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod investigate a brutal series of killings on Scotland's Isle of Skye, in Time for the Dead, a gripping crime novel by Lin Anderson • When forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod returns to her roots on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, a chance encounter in the woods behind a nearby activities centre leads her to what seems to be a crime scene, but without a victim. Could this be linked to a group of army medics, who visited the centre while on leave from Afghanistan and can no longer be located on the island? • Enlisting the help of local tracker dog Blaze, Rhona starts searching for a connection • Two days later a body is found at the base of the famous cliff known as Kilt Rock, face and identity obliterated by the fall, which leads Rhona to suspect the missing medics may be on the island for reasons other than relaxation

From the bestselling author of The Axeman's Jazz, Ray Celestin's The Mobster's Lament is a gripping tale of crime and jazz music, and the third entry in his City Blues Quartet. A gangster is on his last chance to escape the clutches of New York's mafia families but, as a blizzard descends on NYC, a ruthless serial killer is tracking his every move • New York, 1947 • Mob fixer Gabriel Leveson’s plans to flee the city are put on hold when he is tasked with tracking down stolen mob money by ‘the boss of all bosses’, Frank Costello. But while he's busy looking, he doesn't notice who is watching him • Meanwhile, Private Investigator Ida Young and her old partner, Michael Talbot, must prove the innocence of Talbot’s son Tom, who has been accused of the brutal murders of four people in a Harlem flophouse

Killing for Keeps is Maria Hannah's fifth gripping crime novel featuring DCI Kate Daniels • It's in the blood • Two brothers from the same criminal family die within hours of each other, five miles apart, one on the edge of a Newcastle industrial estate, the other in a busy A&E department of a local hospital, unseen by the triage team. Both victims have suffered horrific injuries. Who wanted them dead? Will they kill again? Investigating these brutal and bloody killings leads DCI Kate Daniels to break some rules, putting her career as well as her life on the line • As the body count rises in the worst torture case Northumbria Police has ever seen, the focus of the enquiry switches, first to Glasgow and then to Europe ending in a confrontation with a dangerous offender hell-bent on revenge