Showing results by narrator "James Lailey" in All Categories

One sunny August afternoon, the residents of Cedar Close throw their annual summer barbecue. Children play in the cherry-tree lined street, tables are laden with food, and the wine is flowing. For Laurie Mills, it’s her first time meeting the neighbours. And it’s the first time she discovers her husband, Robert, is having an affair. Cedar Close has always been a nice place to live - a quiet suburban street where everyone looks out for one another and bad things don’t happen. Until late one evening, when Robert Mills is found dead in his bedroom.

When Nigel Baxter, a middle-aged married banker with an unremarkable past, is found dead in the bath of a plush hotel suite, his wrists slit, it looks as if he's taken his own life. At first. But when Detective Inspector Daniel Riley is assigned to the case, he soon realises all isn't as it first appears to be. When a postmortem shows Baxter was poisoned, Riley suspects foul play. And then there's the odd addition of a teddy bear left at the crime scene....

Investigator Sofia Kovic has uncovered a connection between several deaths in Oslo over the last year and a half. She tries to call her superior, Alexander Blix, but before Blix has time to return her call, Kovic is shot and killed in her own home. In the apartment below, Blix’s daughter Iselin narrowly escapes becoming the killer’s next victim. Four days later, Blix and online crime journalist Emma Ramm are locked inside an interrogation room, facing the National Criminal Investigation Service.

On a warm spring evening, guests gather in a perfectly manicured garden to celebrate Maggie and Len’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Maggie leans against the apple tree, watching her fun-loving husband and darling children as her heart swells with pride. As the joyful party atmosphere disappears into the night, close by, the lifeless body of a young woman is pulled from a river. Slipping upstairs to find the special gift for her adoring husband, Maggie stumbles across something else hidden amongst the dusty boxes of family keepsakes.

Beth and Cath are leaving their husbands. This is a story about two very different women. One is wealthy and having an affair with a man who gives her the kind of love that her cold, detached husband does not. One is living hand to mouth, suffering at the hands of a violent partner who would rather see her dead than leave him. You may think you know these women already and how their lives will unfold. Beth will live happily ever after with her little girl and her soulmate. Cath will go back to her abusive husband. And these two women will never cross paths. But you will be wrong.

Ever since I met my handsome husband Dr Gabe Bonneville, I started playing the role of the perfect housewife. He works hard as a surgeon, so I look after our home, and throw elaborate dinner parties with champagne cocktails for his best friends Hugh and Anita. He’s my safe place and my chance to have the family I’ve always wanted. I’ve managed to hide the mornings when I wake up and see a face in the shadows. I haven’t told Gabe the truth about the woman who raised me, or told him about the therapy I’ve been getting so my secrets stay hidden in the dark.

Daisey Garrett wakes up in a hospital bed. She remembers her boyfriend has left her for another woman, but she doesn’t remember what happened to her the night she was attacked in her own home. Daisey shouldn’t be alive but against all odds, she’s survived an ordeal most would never recover from. But Daisey’s mind is broken. She’s on edge, drinking too much and, despite the painful breakup, finds herself in bed with her ex, Luke. And while she desperately tries to keep herself together, she can’t shake the feeling that she is being watched.

In a beautiful house surrounded by woodland, the Drayton family and their dearest friends are enjoying dinner together. The wine is flowing, the meal has been lovingly prepared, and it’s going to be an evening none of them will ever forget.

In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and the Duke of Westminster pays less tax than you do. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous authorxshows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind.

Sir Waldo Hawkridge - wealthy, handsome, eligible, illustrious and known as 'The Nonesuch' for his athletic prowess - believes he is past the age of falling in love. But when he comes North to inspect his unusual inheritance at Broom Hall in the West Riding, his arrival leads to the most entertaining of ramifications.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

Bernard has known that he is not getting the full picture from London Central ever since discovering that his wife, Fiona, was a double agent. Werner Volkmann has been cast out by London Central as untrustworthy. Yet Werner still seems able to pick up information that Bernard should have been told.

Bernard is trying hard to readjust his life in the face of questions about his wife, Fiona, and her defection to the East. Is she the brilliant high-flyer that her Department seems to think she is? Or is she a spent force, a wife and mother unwilling or unable to face her domestic responsibilities? Bernard doesn't know but is determined to find out. Bernard's boss, Dicky Cruyer, is certainly not anxious to reveal what he knows, as he jostles for power with Fiona herself in London Central, and takes to the road with Bernard on a mysterious mission to Poland.

Peter and Paul, the two sons of German businessman Harald Winter, are bonded together by a childhood trauma. But as they grow up, the brothers also grow apart. When the shadow of the Third Reich falls, they become divided by war and their differing ideals - only to meet again years later at the Nuremberg trials. An epic prelude to the Bernard Samson Game, Set and Match trilogy, Winter is a rich, tragic portrait of the fortunes of a family, and a nation, over half a century.

The River Thames always gives up its dead.... There’s a killer picking off victims from the wild swimming spots on the upper reaches of the Thames. The case takes Detective Inspector Leo George into the path of Jess Bridges, a private investigator who lives life close to the edge. Their enquiries lead them to author, Jago Jackson, whose book on secret wild swimming spots has turned him into a social media celebrity. Is Jago’s book the blueprint that the murderer is following?

Of all the mysteries Bernard Samson has encountered, the greatest is his wife, Fiona. Dedicated agent of the Service and a woman of secrets, she will risk everything to play the long game. As the truth about the decision that shattered their marriage is gradually revealed, the web of deception that has snared Bernard for 10 years begins to unravel.

Long-suffering spy Bernard Samson has, against all the odds, enticed a Soviet agent to defect to London - but this proves to be the start of something even bigger. For he learns that there is treachery within his own Service, and no one is free from suspicion. To discover who really controls the game of spies, he must attempt a desperate gamble. As the Game, Set and Match trilogy reaches its shattering finale, who will make the winning move?

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number one has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation 19 years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl.

Alexander Blix is a broken man. Convicted for avenging his daughter's death, he is being held in one of Norway's high-security prisons. Inside, the other prisoners take every opportunity to humiliate the former police investigator. Outside, Blix's former colleagues are hunting for a terrifying killer. Walter Kroos has escaped from prison in Germany and is heading north. The only lead established by the police is that Kroos has a friend in Blix's prison ward. And now they need Blix's help.

Texan billionaire General Midwinter will stop at nothing to bring down the USSR - even if it puts the whole world at risk. The fourth and final novel featuring the cynical, insolent narrator of The IPCRESS File sees him sent from his shabby Soho office to bone-freezing Helsinki in order to penetrate Midwinter's vast anti-Communist network - and stop a deadly virus from wiping out the planet.