Roderick Alleyn No. 27. A Christmas pageant turns unholy... Holed up at Hilary Bill-Tasman's manor estate for Christmas, Troy Alleyn is to paint the man's portrait and, while she's there, view the Druid Christmas pageant. Along with a pack of eccentric guests, Troy enjoys the festivities - until one of the pageant's players mysteriously disappears into the snowy night. Did the hired help-- each a paroled murderer from the nearby prison - have a deadly hand in this Christmas conundrum? Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to join his wife in finding the lost man - and unraveling the glaring truth from the glittering tinsel.
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In Italy, the Cardinal Vicar of Rome is assassinated during a celebration for the Pope's birthday. In Los Angeles, Harry Addison, a highly successful entertainment industry lawyer, receives a desperate message on his answering machine from his long-estranged brother, Father Daniel, a priest in the Vatican. Hours later, a tourist bus on which Father Daniel is travelling explodes on the road to Assisi. Arriving in Italy to claim his brother's body, Harry learns that Daniel is the prime suspect in the Cardinal Vicar assassination case. He doesn't believe it and soon suspects that his brother may have survived the explosion. Before he can follow the trail, Harry is framed for the murder of an Italian policeman, Now he's on the run and searching for his brother - and finds that someone else wants Father Daniel: the infamous terrorist and maniacal killer, Thomas Kind.
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When a lone gunman goes on a shooting spree aboard a packed ferry, Lt. Lindsay Boxer finds the killer gone, three people dead and her best friend fighting for life. Then comes the news a child has been abducted, and Boxer finds that there's more than one child missing - with no ransom demands made of the families. It's a race against time to put these pieces together. -
Julian Reef, stock market gambler, nephew to and partner of Lord Frensham, is accused by the man known as 'the Twister' of abusing Frensham's trust with the investment of his uncle's life savings in Lulunga Oils. Lord Frensham, however, suspects the Twister to be the one manipulating the Lulunga share price and thus really the one who is responsible for his financial ruin. When Lord Frensham is found dead in his office, the conclusion is "suicide in a state of unsound mind." Then Lulunga Oil shares rise sharply in value... -
The rambling Priory of Framley with its ruined Gothic chapel and lack of electricity and telephone enchanted the Malcolm family. But why had the previous tenants left so suddenly? Surely they weren't frightening by a few noises, or the cowled monk who prowled the garden after dark? Ignorant superstition, said the Vicar. But the innkeeper thought otherwise...
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When a priest dies in a mysterious fall from atop a statue of Tutankhamun, many consider the death a fateful one for the fourteen year old Pharaoh. Indeed, the Hittites are at Eygpt's borders and the late Akhenaton's enemies have transferred their hatred to the new young Pharaoh. Under the luxury of the court at Thebes lurk viciousness, evil and murder. Until the enemies of the living god are destroyed, he is not safe...
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In the summer of 1323 in the village of Cardinham, a pennliess young woman - Athelina - is found hanged beside the dead bodies of her children. Is is the final act of a desperate woman? It looks suspicious - and Sir Baldwin and Bailiff Simon Puttock are asked to investigate. But rivalry and feuds seem to have the whole village in conflict - including the castle's men-at-arms and the recently arrived squire. It seems that Athelina's death is not an isolated incident after all. -
Mrs Nicoletis, grasping and sly, runs a students' hostel. An outbreak of kleptomania at the hostel was not normally the sort of crime that aroused Hercule Poirot’s interest. But when he saw the list of stolen and vandalized items – including a stethoscope, some old flannel trousers, a box of chocolates, a slashed rucksack and a diamond ring found in a bowl of soup – he congratulated the warden, Mrs Hubbard, on a ‘unique and beautiful problem’. The list made absolutely no sense at all. But, reasoned Poirot, if this was merely a petty thief at work, why was everyone at the hostel so frightened? Miss Lemon, his secretary, functions like a formidable machine - never ill, never tired, never inaccurate. So when Poirot finds three mistakes in one of her letters, he knows something is amiss. Then comes murder number one... -
Alex Cross, Book IV. Psychopath Gary Soneji is back - filled with hatred and obsessed with revenge on Detective Alex Cross. Soneji is determined to go down in a blaze of glory and he wants Alex to be there. Will this be the final showdown?
