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The Furthest Station: A PC Grant Novella (PC Grant)
by Ben AaronovitchThere's something going bump on the Metropolitan line and Sergeant Jaget Kumar knows exactly who to call.It's PC Peter Grant's speciality . . .Only it's more than going 'bump'. Traumatised travellers have been reporting strange encounters on their morning commute, with strangely dressed people trying to deliver an urgent message. Stranger still, despite calling the police themselves, within a few minutes the commuters have already forgotten the encounter - making the follow up interviews rather difficult. So with a little help from Abigail and Toby the ghost hunting dog, Peter and Jaget are heading out on a ghost hunting expedition.Because finding the ghost and deciphering their urgent message might just be a matter of life and death.
The Hanging Tree: The Sixth Rivers of London novel (A Rivers of London novel #6)
by Ben AaronovitchSuspicious deaths are not usually the concern of PC Peter Grant or the Folly, even when they happen at an exclusive party in one of the most expensive apartment blocks in London. But Lady Ty's daughter was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favour.Plunged into the alien world of the super-rich, where the basements are bigger than the house and dangerous, arcane items are bought and sold on the open market, a sensible young copper would keep his head down and his nose clean. But this is Peter Grant we're talking about.He's been given an unparalleled opportunity to alienate old friends and create new enemies at the point where the world of magic and that of privilege intersect. Assuming he survives the week . . .
Introducing Rivers of London: Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho and Whispers Under Ground
by Ben AaronovitchMy name is Peter Grant, and until January I was just an ordinary policeman in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else). Then my life took a turn for the strange, and now I'm a Detective Constable and trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years. My world has become somewhat more complicated, and it's safe to say the problems London's streets throw at me are now much more difficult to respond to.But there's someone out there causing trouble, using all manner of magic to do it, and they're putting ordinary Londoners at risk. It's fallen to me to bring order out of the chaos - or die trying.Like I said, life is stranger now. But I'm a police officer at heart, London is my city, and I've got a job to do.This eBook boxset contains the first three novels in the bestselling Rivers of London series. Full of warmth, humour, and mysteries that will keep you guessing, this is your perfect introduction to a whole new side of England's capital.
Lies Sleeping: The New Bestselling Rivers of London novel (A Rivers of London novel #8)
by Ben AaronovitchA deadly history.A dangerous mystery.And a dark plan coming to light.IN LONDON, THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD.IT ONLY...LIES SLEEPING* * * * *Martin Chorley - aka the Faceless Man - wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud and crimes against humanity, has been unmasked and is on the run. Peter Grant, Detective Constable and apprentice wizard, now plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring Chorley to justice.But even as the unwieldy might of the Metropolitan Police bears down on its foe, Peter uncovers clues that Chorley, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long term plan. A plan that has its roots in London's two thousand bloody years of history, and could literally bring the city to its knees.To save his beloved city Peter's going to need help from his former best friend and colleague - Lesley May - who brutally betrayed him and everything he thought she believed in. And, far worse, he might even have to come to terms with the malevolent supernatural killer and agent of chaos known as Mr Punch...* * * * *THE 'RIVERS OF LONDON' NOVELS HAVE SOLD OVER TWO MILLION COPIES.DISCOVER WHY THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST-LOVED BOOK SERIES BEING WRITTEN TODAY.'Charming, witty and exciting'Independent'Great fun'Simon Mayo, Radio 2'As brilliant and funny as ever'Sun'An incredibly fast-moving magical joyride for grown-ups'The Times'The Rivers of London series is an ever-evolving delight'Crime Review'A darkly comic read with characters you can't help but like.'Sunday Express
Moon Over Soho: The Second Rivers of London novel (A Rivers of London novel #2)
by Ben AaronovitchI was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around drinking tea, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in a Soho jazz club. He wasn't the first. No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens' portrait, but I needed her help: there were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune. What they take is beauty. What they leave behind is sickness, failure and broken lives.And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant - my father - who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.
The October Man: A Rivers of London Novella (Rivers Of London Ser. #1)
by Ben AaronovitchTrier is famous for wine, Romans and for being Germany's oldest city. So when a man is found dead with, his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. Fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything.Enter Investigator Tobias Winter, whose aim is to get in, deal with the problem, and get out with the minimum of fuss, personal danger and paperwork. With the help of frighteningly enthusiastic local cop, Vanessa Sommer, he's quick to link the first victim to a group of ordinary middle aged men - and to realise they may have accidentally reawakened a bloody conflict from a previous century. But the rot is still spreading, literally and with the suspect list extending to people born before Frederick the Great solving the case may mean unearthing the city's secret magical history. . . . so long as that history doesn't kill them first. 'The Rivers of London series is an ever-evolving delight' CRIME REVIEW 'Ben Aaronovitch is a master of metropolitan magical mayhem' STARBURST'Aaronovitch deftly balances urban fantasy with the police procedural' CRIME SCENE 'Once you start, you'll find a London that's just dying to be explored' DEN OF GEEK
Rivers of London: Book 1 in the #1 bestselling Rivers of London series (A Rivers of London novel #1)
by Ben AaronovitchBook 1 in the Rivers of London series, from Sunday Times Number One bestselling author Ben Aaronovitch.My name is Peter Grant, and I used to be a probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service, and to everyone else as the Filth. My story really begins when I tried to take a witness statement from a man who was already dead...Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London's Metropolitan Police. After taking a statement from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost, Peter comes to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny.Suddenly, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.Praise for the Rivers of London novels:'Ben Aaronovitch has created a wonderful world full of mystery, magic and fantastic characters. I love being there more than the real London'NICK FROST'As brilliant and funny as ever'THE SUN'Charming, witty, exciting'THE INDEPENDENT'An incredibly fast-moving magical joyride for grown-ups'THE TIMESDiscover why this incredible series has sold over two million copies around the world. If you're a fan of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams - don't panic - you will love Ben Aaronovitch's imaginative, irreverent and all-round irresistible novels.
What Abigail Did That Summer: A Rivers Of London Novella
by Ben AaronovitchThe brand new novella in the much-loved and #1 bestselling Rivers of London series!Ghost hunter, fox whisperer, troublemaker.It is the summer of 2013 and Abigail Kamara has been left to her own devices. This might, by those who know her, be considered a mistake. While her cousin, police constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant, is off in the sticks chasing unicorns, Abigail is chasing her own mystery. Teenagers around Hampstead Heath have been going missing but before the police can get fully engaged, the teens return home - unharmed but vague about where they've been.Aided only by her new friend Simon, her knowledge that magic is real, and a posse of talking foxes that think they're spies, Abigail must venture into the wilds of Hampstead to discover who is luring the teenagers and more importantly - why?* * * * *PRAISE FOR THE BESTSELLING RIVERS OF LONDON SERIES'Highly entertaining' Sunday Express'Funny and wildly inventive' Mail on Sunday'Masterfully crafted ... gives the late, great Terry Pratchett a run for his money' The Sun'Ben Aaronovitch has created a wonderful world full of mystery, magic and fantastic characters. I love being there even more than the real London.' Nick Frost'Charming, witty, exciting' Independent'An incredibly fast-moving magical joyride for grown-ups' The Times
Whispers Under Ground: The Third Rivers of London novel (A Rivers of London novel #3)
by Ben AaronovitchDoctor Who Screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch's superbly entertaining supernatural crime series has, with its witty one-liners and wonderfully erudite take on London, won a legion of fans in double quick time.Peter Grant is learning magic fast. And it's just as well - he's already had run-ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the Police Force is less easy. Especially when you work in a department of two. A department that doesn't even officially exist. A department that if you did describe it to most people would get you laughed at. And then there's his love life. The last person he fell for ended up seriously dead. It wasn't his fault, but still.Now something horrible is happening in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up the tube system that honeycombs the ancient foundations of London. And delays on the Northern line is the very least of it. Time to call in the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Unit 9, aka 'The Folly'. Time to call in PC Peter Grant, Britain's Last Wizard.
Winter's Gifts: The Brand New Rivers Of London Novella
by Ben AaronovitchThe brand new novella in the Sunday Times #1 bestselling Rivers of London series.THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY ACROSS THE POND...When retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an 'X-Ray Sierra India' incident, the operator doesn't understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does.That person is FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Leaving Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town - and there's no sign of Henderson.Things soon go from weird to worse, as neighbours report unsettling sightings, key evidence goes missing, and the snow keeps rising - cutting off the town, with no way in or out...Something terrible is awakening. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases - a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness - Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today...PRAISE FOR BEN AARONOVITCH & THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING RIVERS OF LONDON SERIES:'Highly entertaining' SUNDAY EXPRESS'Charming, witty, exciting' THE INDEPENDENT'Ben Aaronovitch has created a wonderful world full of mystery, magic and fantastic characters' NICK FROST'Funny and wildly inventive' MAIL ON SUNDAY
All These Beautiful Strangers
by N A Elizabeth KlehfothBeneath the glittering heights of the rich and powerful, lie secrets that can destroy them all... The perfect summer beach read, for fans of Cruel Intentions, The Secret History and One of Us is Lying. ----------Charlie Calloway has a life most people would kill for. A tight knit family. A loyal set of friends. A fast-track to whichever college she chooses. But Charlie isn't interested in what most people want. She's a Calloway. She's special. And she's been taught to want more. So when she's invited to join an exclusive secret society, her determination to get in is matched only by her conviction that she belongs there. But behind their mysterious facade is a history of lies which unravels everything Charlie thought she knew... including the story behind her mother's disappearance ten years ago. ----------Praise for All These Beautiful Strangers: 'A gripping thriller where secrets of the past and present stir in the shadows. I was drawn in from the start and couldn't wait to discover the truth. A real page-turner!' - Kate Ormand, author of The Wanderers'What you would get if you combined The Secret History with Cruel Intentions with Luckiest Girl Alive...this is going to be big' - Entertainment Weekly
Clean Kill (Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson series #3)
by Donald A. Davis Jack CoughlinAt a 15th Century castle outside of Edinburgh, Sir Geoffrey Cornwell, overseer of Task Force Trident and a former colonel, is in the process of brokering an unprecedented agreement. Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Israeli Foreign Minister are scheduled to sign an historic peace treaty - that is, until their meeting is violently interrupted by a missile strike that leaves the Foreign Minister of Israel dead and the Prince injured.Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson is immediately called to the UK, where he thwarts another attempt on the prince of Saudi Arabia's life. The attackers are Middle Eastern, but they aren't working for Al Qaeda - they're employed by foreign operatives opposed to the peace agreement and determined to claim Saudi oil reserves for themselves. Meanwhile, Juba comes out of hiding. One of the best snipers in the world and Kyle's nemesis, Juba remains determined to exact revenge on the man who nearly took his life.With scenes of tremendous suspense that span the globe, Clean Kill pits our hero against a group whose greed and vengeance know no limits . . .
The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie (Bloomsbury Handbooks)
The first specifically academic companion to contemporary scholarship on the work of Agatha Christie, this book includes chapters by an international group of scholars writing on topics and fields of study as various as ecocriticism and the anthropocene, popular modernism, middlebrow fiction, queer theory, feminism, crime and the state, and more. It addresses a broad selection of Christie's crime novels, as well as her short stories, literary novels written pseudonymously, and her own and others' dramatic adaptations for television, film, and the stage,Featuring unprecedented access to images and content held in Christie's personal archive, as well as a Foreword from renowned crime fiction writer Val McDermid, this is essential reading for anyone interested in Christie's work and legacy.
Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction: Essays on the Moral Imagination
Mystery fiction as a genre renders moral judgments not only about detectives and criminals but also concerning the cultural structures within which these mysteries unfold.In contrast to other volumes which examine morality in crime fiction through the lenses of personal guilt and personal justice, Certainty and Ambiguity in Global Mystery Fiction analyzes the effect of moral imagination on the moral structures implicit in the genre. In recent years, public awareness has attended to the relationship between social structures and justice, and this collection centers on how personal ethics and social ethics are bound together amidst the shifting moral landscapes of mystery fiction.Contributors discuss the interplay between personal guilt and social guilt – considering morality and justice on an individual level and at a societal level – using frameworks of certainty and ambiguity. They show how individual characters in works by Agatha Christie, Gabriel García Márquez, Natsuo Kirino, F.H. Batacan, and Stephen King, among others, may view their moral standing with certainty but clash with the established mores of their culture. Featuring essays on Japanese, Filipino, Indian, and Colombian mystery fiction, as well as American and British fiction, this volume analyzes social guilt and justice across cultures, showing how individuals grapple with the certainty, and, at times, the moral ambiguity, of their respective cultures.
Criminal Moves: Modes of Mobility in Crime Fiction (Liverpool English Texts and Studies #78)
Criminal Moves: Modes of Mobility in Crime Fiction offers a major intervention into contemporary theoretical debates about crime fiction. It seeks to overturn the following preconceptions: that the genre does not warrant critical analysis, that genre norms and conventions matter more than textual individuality, and that comparative perspectives are secondary to the study of the British-American canon. Criminal Moves challenges the distinction between literary and popular fiction and proposes that crime fiction be seen as constantly violating its own boundaries. Centred on three axes of mobility, the essays ask how can we imagine a mobile reading practice that realizes the genre’s full textual complexity, without being limited by the authoritative self-interpretations provided by crime narratives; how we can overcome restrictive notions of ‘genre’, ‘formula’ or ‘popular’; and how we can establish transnational perspectives that challenge the centrality of the British-American tradition and recognize that the global history of crime fiction is characterized, not by the existence of parallel national traditions, but rather by processes of appropriation and transculturation. Criminal Moves presents a comprehensive reinterpretation of the history of the genre that also has profound ramifications for how we read individual crime fiction texts.
Hardboiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories
What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? "Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing and sex," said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philop Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett's style: "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it....He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes." Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolutiuon of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the Golden Age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett's 1925 tour de force "The Scorched Face," in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett's never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman's 1992 "The Long Silence After," a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include "Brush Fire" by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler's "I'll Be Waiting," where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald's most famous creation, the cryptic Lew Archer, and "The Screen Test of Mike Hammer" by the one and only Micky Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard's "3:10 to Yuma" and John D. MacDonald's "Nor Iron Bars." Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and oursleves.
Noir in the North: Genre, Politics and Place
What is often termed 'Nordic Noir' has dominated detective fiction, film and television internationally for over two decades. But what are the parameters of this genre, both historically and geographically? What is noirish and what is northern about Nordic noir? The foreword and coda in this volume, by two internationally-bestselling writers of crime fiction in the north, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Gunnar Staalesen, speak to the social contract undertaken by writers of noir, while the interview with the renowned crime writer Val McDermid adds nuance to our understanding of what it is to write noir in the North.Divided into four sections – Gender and Sexuality, Space and Place, Politics and Crime, and Genre and Genealogy – Noir in the North challenges the traditional critical histories of noir by investigating how it functions transnationally beyond the geographical borders of Scandinavia. The essays in this book deepen our critical understanding of noir more generally by demonstrating, for example, Nordic noir's connection to fin-de-siècle literatures and to mid-century interior design, and by investigating the function of the state in crime fiction.
Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage: Spying Undercover(s)
An exploration of how espionage narratives give access to cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality before and following the Second World War, this book moves away from masculinist assumptions of the genre to offer an integrative survey of the sexualities on display from important characters across spy fiction. Topics covered include how authors mocked the traditional spy genre; James Bond as a symbol of pervasive British Superiority still anxious about masculinity; how older female spies act as queer figures that disturb the masculine mythology of the secret agent; and how the clandestine lives of agents described ways to encode queer communities under threat from fascism. Covering texts such as the Bond novels, John Le Carré's oeuvre (and their notable adaptations) and works by Helen MacInnes, Christopher Isherwood and Mick Herron, Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage takes stock of spy fiction written by women, female protagonists written by men, and probes the representations of masculinity generated by male authors. Offering a counterpoint to a genre traditionally viewed as male-centric, Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage proposes a revision of masculinity, femininity, queer identities and gendered concepts such as domesticity, and relates them to notions of nationality and the defence work conducted at crucial moments in history.