Harlen Coben

Myron Bolitar has always dreamed about a gorgeous femme fatale walking into his office and asking for help. The woman standing in his doorway has killer curves all right: she’s eight months pregnant…Former tennis star Suzze T and her rock star husband, Lex, are both clients - but now Lex has disappeared and a very pregnant Suzze is in tears, fearing the online rumours questioning the baby’s paternity has driven away the man she swears is the child’s father. For Myron, questions of fatherhood couldn’t hit closer to home, as his father clings precariously to life, and the brother who abandoned the family years ago resurfaces - with danger following close behind. Myron is soon forced to confront deep secrets in Suzze’s past, his family’s mortality - and his own.

Released in paperback 5 Jan 2012

Simon Stephenson

LET NOT THE WAVES OF THE SEA is Simon Stephenson’s account of his journey following the loss of his brother in the Indian Ocean tsunami. If it is a story of grief, it is also a story of hope and of the unexpected places where healing can be found. Simon’s journey takes him from Edinburgh in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, to Downing Street in London, to Thailand and the island where his brother died, to the scene of an ancient tsunami on the north-west coast of the United States, and to the town where he and his brother’s favourite childhood film was made. Along the way there is heartbreak, dengue fever, Greek mythology, and hard physical labour in the tropical heat, but there is also memory, redemption and humour as well

Released 5 Jan 2012

Stephen Leather

Kidnapping is one of the cruellest crimes - lives are put at risk for cold, hard cash. But when Somali pirates seize the crew of a yacht off the coast of Africa, they bite off more than they can chew. One of the hostages has friends in high places and Spider Shepherd is put on the case. He goes deep undercover in an audacious plan to bring an end to the pirate gang’s reign of terror. But as Shepherd closes in on his quarry he realises that there’s much more at stake than the lives of the hostages and that the pirates are involved in a terrorist plot that will strike at the heart of London.

Tess Gerritsen

Top Ten bestselling author Tess Gerritsen delivers a thoroughly menacing new thriller. A brilliantly compulsive page-turner from the author of The Surgeon. Dr Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living organisms in space. Jack McCallum, Emma’s estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded him. Now he must watch from the sidelines! The mission aboard the space station turns into a nightmare when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control — and infects the crew with agonising and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the deadly virus, while back home Jack and NASA work against the clock to bring her home. But there will be no rescue, as the astronauts are left stranded in orbit where they are dying one by one!

Released 5 Jan

Barry Eisler

John Rain is back. And the most charismatic assassin since James Bond. (San Francisco Chronicle) is up against his most formidable enemy yet: the nexus of political, military, media, and corporate factions known only as the Oligarchy. When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott Hort Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain cant resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the natural causes demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.

Judy Marks

Howard Marks’s story has passed into hippie folklore. Thanks to the technical brilliance of his networking skills, it was estimated that he was trafficking as much as a tenth of all the marijuana smoked in the world. But this is only half the story. Intimately involved throughout was Marks’s wife Judy. Here, she tells her own side of the tale.

David Baldacci

After alleged serial killer Edgar Roy is apprehended and locked away in a mental facility private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are called in by Roy’s lawyer - an old friend of Sean King - to look into the case. But their investigation is derailed before it begins: while en route to their first meeting with the lawyer, King and Maxwell discover his dead body. A rash of terrifying events begins to unfold and it is up to King and Maxwell to uncover the truth: is Roy a killer or not? But the more they dig into his past, the more they are bombarded with obstacles, half-truths, and dead ends that make filtering the facts nearly impossible. As each new theory brings a new revelation, King and Maxwell will be pushed to the limit. Could this deadly case be the one that leaves the duo permanently parted?

Released 4 November

Michael Connelly

When Mickey Haller is invited by the Los Angeles County District Attorney to prosecute a case for him, he knows something strange is going on. Mickey’s a defence lawyer, one of the best in the business, and to switch sides like this would be akin to asking a fox to guard the hen-house. But the high-profile case of Jason Jessup, a convicted child-killer who spent almost 25 years on death row before DNA evidence freed him, is an intriguing one…Eager for the publicity and drawn to the challenge, Mickey takes the case, with Detective Harry Bosch on board as his lead investigator. But as a new trial date is set, it starts to look like he’s been set up. Mickey and Harry are going to have to dig deep into the past and find the truth about what really happened to the victim all those years ago.

Released 4 November 2011

With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that no one before him had ever done. Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane. And what a life. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records as a child in post-war Kent. Learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones’ first fame and success as a bad-boy band. The notorious Redlands drug bust and subsequent series of confrontations with a nervous establishment that led to his enduring image as outlaw and folk hero. Creating immortal riffs such as the ones in ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and ‘Street Fighting Man’ and ‘Honky Tonk Women’. Falling in love with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the US, ‘Exile on Main Street’ and ‘Some Girls’. Ever increasing fame, isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Mick Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Solo albums and performances with his band the Xpensive Winos. Marriage, family and the road that goes on for ever. In a voice that is uniquely and intimately his own, with the disarming honesty that has always been his trademark, Keith Richards brings us the essential life story of our times.

Price: 12:00€

Paul and Rachel Chandler

A YEAR AT GUNPOINT WITH SOMALI GANGSTERS

On 23 October 2009, British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler were kidnapped from their sailing boat in the archipelago of the Seychelles.

Their yacht, Lynn Rival, was recovered six days later by naval forces, abandoned off the central Somali coast.

After the attack, Paul and Rachel were taken first onto a previously hijacked merchant ship and then to Somalia, where they were held for over a year, enduring threats and intimidation while their captors tried to extort millions of dollars from their family.

In this remarkable book, the Chandlers recount their terrifying ordeal, revealing the inspiring and poignant story behind the dramatic headlines. At the heart of their survival was their unshakeable belief in each other and their determination to survive, making Hostage an unlikely love story; for Paul and Rachel, death, at times, seemed preferable to being separated.