“Absolutely riveting . . . A masterpiece. I defy anyone to foresee the outcome.”—Ruth Rendell The year is 1921. A passionate affair between voracious romance reader Alma Webster and her dentist, Walter Baranov, has led to his wife’s murder. The lovers take flight aboard the Mauretania and the dentist takes the name of Inspector Dew, the detective who arrested the notorious wifekiller Dr. Crippen. But, in a disquieting twist, a murder occurs aboard ship and the captain invites “Inspector Dew” to investigate.

The standalone novel from the critically-acclaimed Peter Lovesey. Rough Cider was nominated for an Edgar Award. It is World War II and American soldiers stationed in rural England have made friends, especially with the local girls. After a dance to celebrate the pressing of the apples into cider, the resentment of the local men leads to violence and a murder. Later, a baby girl is born. Years later, Theo, a university lecturer, is approached by an American girl called Alice. She wants to be told about her father, a GI hanged for murder in Somerset during World War II. As a boy, Theo had been a principal witness for the prosecution. Alice persuades him to revisit the farm where Theo was evacuated, staunchly determined to discover the facts. The horrors of the past take on a frightening immediacy when long-forgotten jealousies come to the surface and another murder is committed.

“If you've never read any of [Lovesey’s] 20-plus books, this wickedly clever, beautifully written story of a murderous clergyman who earns our sympathy while dramatically whittling down his flock should make you an instant convert.”—Chicago Tribune After years spent saving souls, Otis Joy, the rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Foxford, Wiltshire, has found a new calling: ending lives. His young French wife? Anaphylactic shock, what a shame. The bishop? Fell into a quarry. Tragic. It’s not Joy’s fault, really—not that he’s concerned about repentance or absolution these days. He just doesn’t want his other little secret—embezzling church funds to finance a fancy yacht—to be discovered. But when the husband of the new church secretary, Rachel Jansen, turns up dead, it isn’t long before the village starts to gossip and the local constable gets involved. As it turns out, God isn’t the only one who’s always watching.

Otto Penzler and the Mystery Writers of America Present A Time of Predators by Joe Gores, winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel The gang was restless, just looking for idle fun. They roughed up a man they thought was a homosexual--but their game got out of hand and their victim was blinded. It was Paula Halstead's bad luck to witness the attack and catch a glimpse of one of the boys. After they got through with her, she killed herself. The police have no leads and can't find the culprits. Paula's husband hires a private investigator to do what the police haven't been able to-with no success. Curt Halstead refuses to give up; he will have his vengeance on the men who raped and tortured his wife, even if it means entering into their world of sex, violence, and murder.

Peter Diamond's tenth case is a perfect piece of superbly entertaining crime fiction from a master of the genre. Battle and burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to the folly known as Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has investigated, involving golf, horseracing, Civil War re-enactment and the Cyrillic alphabet. Inevitably, Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member. She resolves to sideline Diamond by sending him to Bristol and handing the skeleton investigation to his deputy, Keith Halliwell. Fortunately matters don't pan out as Georgina plans...

New York Times bestselling author Peter Robinson brings back Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his colleague DI Annie Cabbot in a case riddled with corruption. A decorated policeman is murdered on the tranquil grounds of the St. Peter's Police Treatment Centre, shot through the heart with a crossbow arrow, and compromising photographs are discovered in his room. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is well aware that he must handle the highly sensitive and dangerously explosive investigation with the utmost discretion. And as he digs deeper, he discovers that the murder may be linked to an unsolved missing persons case from six years earlier—and the current crime may involve some very bad, crooked cops. A pulsating, electrifying novel of suspense Watching the Dark is one of Peter Robinson’s finest novels. “Ambitious…Robinson shows a keen awareness of the global reach of crime.”—New York Times Book Review

The third detective story in the award-winning Peter Diamond series, from Peter Lovesey. The summons comes at night. Two policemen collect Peter Diamond from his West London flat and drive him to Bath. Once head of the murder squad there, he is now out of touch in his retirement, unaware of an audacious escape from Albany Prison. Four years previously, Diamond headed the investigation of the bizarre murder of a Swedish woman journalist, her mouth stuffed with red roses. Now the convicted murderer is at large and has already kidnapped the daughter of the Assistant Chief Constable. He is demanding that the case be re-examined and he will deal only with Diamond. Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger and shortlisted for the Edgar Award.

The explosive twelfth Peter Diamond case. In the small hours of a Sunday morning in the city of Bath a policeman on beat duty is shot dead by an unseen gunman - the third killing of an officer in Somerset in a matter of weeks. The emergency services are summoned. Ambitious to arrest the Somerset Sniper, the duty inspector, Ken Lockton, seals the crime scene, which is confined by the river on one side and a massive retaining wall on the other. He discovers the murder weapon in a garden - and is himself attacked and left for dead. Enter Peter Diamond, Bath's burly CID chief. Middle-aged and not built for action, he pits himself and his team against the killer in a hunt that will test his physical powers to the limit...

The very first Peter Diamond mystery, and Anthony Award winning novel, from the superb Peter Lovesey. A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath, by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No-one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door-stopping and deduction: he is the last detective. Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit. Eventually, despite disastrous personal consequences, and amongst Bath's rambling buildings and formidable history, the last detective exposes the uncomfortable truth . . .

Discover the new Penguin Crime and Espionage series A First World War battlefield hides a deadly secret - one that some are willing to kill for Paul Mitchell is a young military historian whose life is changed forever when two men, Dr Audley and Colonel Butler of the MOD, visit him with a fragment of a German trench map - and a lot of questions. Then somebody tries to kill him. Paul, his life now in danger, agrees to go underground on a mission to solve a dangerous mystery: what really happened during the battle of the Somme in 1916? And why does somebody want to keep it secret?