Maria Sirena tells stories. She does it for money – she was a favourite in the cigar factory where she worked as a lectora – and for love, spinning gossamer tales out of her own past for the benefit...

Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce – except in...

Historical fiction meets crime fiction in The Djinn’s Apple, an award-winning YA murder mystery set in the Abbasid period―the golden age of Baghdad. A ruthless murder. A magical herb. A mysterious manuscript. When Nardeen’s home is stormed by angry...

A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach, a local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard – trouble has come at a bad time to Morfi, just as the backwater village is making headlines with a visit from...

Ray Midge is waiting for his credit card bill to arrive. His wife, Norma, has run off with her ex-husband, taking Ray’s cards, shotgun and car. But from the receipts, Ray can track where they’ve gone. He takes off...

One starless night Janie’s childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from Phnom Penh, Janie and her family were forced to live out in the open: cold, hungry and under constant surveillance. Caught up...

Sweden, winter, 1991. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team receive an anonymous tip-off. A few days later a life raft is washed up on a beach. In it are two men, dressed in expensive suits, shot dead. The dead...

Rome. A city where rules are compromised. And compromise rules. It’s one of the hottest days of the year. Chief Inspector Blume is enjoying a rare solitary lunch in a tranquil corner of Trastevere when an unwelcome phone call...

Imoved to Manchester in 1998, two years after The Doll Princess is set. While I recognise the areas – and accents – in Tom Benn’s debut novel, the immediate aftermath of the 1996 IRA bomb is something I never...

The second novel featuring Spero Lucas, a young Iraq vet working as a PI in Washington DC but with a sideline in finding lost items – the kind of items the owners can’t go to the police about. This...