Manfred Baumann is a loner who spends his evenings surreptitiously observing Adele Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at his local bistro. But one day, she simply vanishes. When Detective Georges Gorski begins investigating the case, Manfred's repressed world is shaken to its core and he is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past.

Brand new stand alone novel from best-selling Alexander McCall Smith, based on an immensely popular short story

Mega rich restaurant owner Jack Barnes and his second wife Zee are very much in love. However, their plans for Valentine's Day are about to be torn apart by the most violent murder. Who is the strange figure plotting this sick crime? Who hates Jack that much? There are plenty of suspects living in Jack's fancy block of flats.

Murder most festive: a selection of puzzling Christmas mysteries from the creme de la creme of crime writers.

When Mrs Spenlow is murdered in St Mary Mead, the village gossips all agree that her husband must have killed her - until Miss Marple is called as an alibi... Miss Marple investigates the problem of a lady's maid who has been mysteriously sacked - while also helping her crime writer nephew Raymond West to cure his writer's block.

Our darkest fears lurk in the shadows in these two stunning J. D. Robb short stories.

The worst nightmares are the ones you can't wake up from ...

The fourth Chief Inspector Gamache title, reissued by Sphere

2 stars

A young woman is found dead in her flat, the day after Guy Fawkes night. Did she die by her own hand, or someone else's?

A New York real estate tycoon plunges to his death on a Manhattan sidewalk. A trophy wife with a past survives a narrow escape from a brazen attack. Mobsters and moguls with no shortage of reasons to kill trot out their alibis.

Charlie Mortdecai - minor aristocrat and art-dealer banished from London for crimes against, well, art - has decamped to the tiny island of Jersey with his wife Johanna and manservant Jock. There, amidst tax dodgers and inbred natives, he had hoped to lie low, and sink lower.

Charlie Mortdecai (and his intrepid moustache) is invited to Oxford to investigate the cruel and most definitely unusual death of a don who collided with an omnibus. Though her death appears accidental, one or two things don't add up - such as two pairs of thugs who'd been following her just before her death.

Laos, 1979: Dr. Siri Paiboun, the twice retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a handwoven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn in northern Laos. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining? Siri is convinced someone is trying to send him a...

THE SEVENTH DI HELEN GRACE THRILLER BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR M. J. ARLIDGEShe Loves Me A woman's body lies in the road. At first it looks like a tragic accident. But when Helen Grace arrives on the scene it's clear she's looking at a coldblooded killing. But why would anyone target a much-loved wife and mother?She Loves Me NotAcross town, a shopkeeper is killed while his customers are left unharmed....

The investigation into taxi-driver Jens Hummel's disappearance has been fruitless, but a crucial discovery directs suspicion at Dan Roger 'Danny' Brodin. The problem is, however, that Danny is already in prison, convicted of another murder.

In the seeming tranquility of Regency Square in Cheltenham live the diverse inhabitants of its ten houses. One summer's evening, the square's rivalries and allegiances are disrupted by a sudden and unusual death - an arrow to the head, shot through an open window at no. 6.

From the author of the bestselling novels Only the Innocent and The Back Road How far would you go to hold on to the people you love? When Olivia Brookes calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. She has reason to fear the worst; this isn't the first tragedy that Olivia has experienced. Now, two years later, Detective Chief...

Small-town guy meets big-time evil... A spine-tingling Odd Thomas novella.

The final part of Guy Fraser-Sampson's trilogy of sequels to E.F. Benson's hugely popular Mapp and Lucia series, Au Reservoir finds the residents of Tilling on fine form.

The eponymous nosy parker Miss Ethel Tither, who has made herself deeply unpopular by going out of her way to snoop on people, is found floating in a cesspool, having been bludgeoned prior to drowning in the drainage water. A case of murder and intrigue.