Head of Zeus

When Liam Everett's reverend father passes away in the prime of his life, Liam knows something foul is afoot. Everyone insists that the reverend's slip down the basement staircase of the church was simply an accident, a misstep. But the reverend knew those steps better than the back of his hand and Liam is sure he would never have been so careless and clumsy. But with everyone happy to accept Revered Everett's death as a mishap, his son is left to find solace with the legacy his father left behind: sixty antique bibles. But it seems the reverend was more in life – and death – than everyone thought. Soon Liam is surrounded by more priceless books than he could ever have imagined, and the more he reads, the more shady characters keep showing up at his door…

Once visited by the likes of Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and George Eliot, the London Library is a maze of books – a jumble of first editions and forgotten texts. For Tony, it is a refuge from the failure his life has become – and it is about to be invaded by a destructive old friend. Adam is a world-renowned novelist who spends so much time writing articles and appearing in documentaries that it seems impossible he actually has time to write books. He visits the library to research a nearly-forgotten English poet, Francis Youlgreave, who just happens to be Tony's obsession. Tony has staked his career on the long-dead clergyman, and will do whatever it takes to keep Adam from stealing his research. In this ghostly library, scholarly conflict is anything but academic.

You do not know me, but I know you. I have decided to call you: Red One. Red Two. Red Three. I know each of you is lost in the woods. And just like the little girl in the fairy tale, you have been selected to die…'
Karen, Sarah and Jordan have nothing in common aside from their hair colour. Red. To the man who has been watching their every move for months, this is enough. Their lives are now in his hands, their stories will only end when he chooses to reveal himself, unless they can find him first…

For recent college graduate Ronald Hastie, a job at the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop offers the perfect occupation during a summer abroad in Paris. Working part-time in exchange for room and board leaves plenty of freedom to explore the city once visited by his literary hero, Robert Louis Stevenson, and things only get better when he meets a collector who claims to have the original manuscripts of both the first draft of Jekyll and Hyde and the never-published The Travelling Companion (both thought to have been destroyed).
Then Ron meets the man's mysterious assistant, and a reckless obsession stirs inside him. As the life he knew back home in Scotland fades from memory, he desperately seeks the secret lying within Stevenson's long-lost pages…

'Timothy 'Moth' Turner is a postgrad student and recovering alcoholic. Estranged from his family, Moth's only lifeline is his uncle Ed, a recovered alcoholic and Moth's AA sponsor.
When Ed doesn't turn up for a meeting, Moth gets worried. And he has every right to be. Ed is found shot dead in his apartment in an apparent suicide.
Moth can't believe his uncle would take his own life. And soon, after a little bit of digging, Ed is on the trail of a psychopathic killer known only as Student #5. But why would he want to kill Ed? And who is next on his list…

When A. Davenport Lomax's young daughter asks him whether spirits and faeries are real, the Edwardian librarian just pats the little darling on the head. But when a desperate man emerges from the winding passages of the library muttering about demonology, he gets Lomax's attention. Theodore Grange is a member of the Brotherhood of Solomon, a secret society dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of black magic, and he believes he has found a book written by the Queen of Sheba herself. Said to hold the answers to one thousand demonic mysteries, the tome will poison any man who dares read it.

The next time Lomax sees him, Grange is at death's door. To uncover the truth about The Gospel of Sheba, Lomax agrees to accompany Grange to a meeting of the brotherhood, where he will encounter darkness that threatens his life, his family, and his soul. A DEATH SENTENCE STORY: original shorts about deadly books from the world's best crime writers.

SHADOW WARRIOR. The ancient Japanese art of death is practiced by a select few. Of those young men who are chosen to train in the way of the shadow warrior, most will fail. Those who pass these trials, the Ninja, become the silent assassins, lonely guardians, and unseen watchers of legend. But rarer still are those masters of the shadow craft, the Shiro – those whose fearsome abilities are matched only by their rigid code of honour. Men like Nicholas Linnear…
THE MIKO. In ancient Japan they called them the Miko – the maidens of the shrine – women revered for their almost mystical powers who were rumoured to be the servants of the gods themselves.
Traditionally the Miko were a force for good, but the woman stalking the shadow warrior Nicholas Linnear seems bent on murder and revenge…

Alexandra Ludd has been a widow for less than seventy hours, her husband, Ned, former theatre critic and stay-at-home father to their young son, Sascha, having died of an apparent heart attack. Alexandra, beautiful, adored darling of the London stage, is too overcome with grief to realize she's been lied to: Ned didn't keel over in the dining room, as her good friends told her. He died in their marital bed – and he wasn't alone…
Now in her ninth decade, Fay Weldon is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children's books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.

A famous writer is dead. Suicide? Punishment? Or Justice?
Julian Wells was a writer of dark non-fiction works that detailed some of the worst crimes of the 20th Century. Was it this exploration of man's inhumanity to man that caused him to take his own life?
When his body is found in a boat drifting in a pond in Montauk, New York, his best friend, the literary critic Philip Anders, begins to reread his work in order to prepare a eulogy. This rereading, along with other clues, convinces the critic that his friend has committed a terrible crime, and that it was as punishment for this crime that Wells took his own life.
Anders' investigation sparks an obsession with unravelling the mystery of the man he thought he knew. His journey towards understanding leads him from Paris to Budapest, spans four decades, and takes him deeper and deeper in to the heart of darkness that was Julian Wells…

Beijing, 1322.
Sixteen-year-old Wu Johanna is the granddaughter of the legendary trader Marco Polo. In the wake of her father's death, however, Johanna finds that lineage counts for little amid the disintegrating court of the Khan. Dynastic loyalties are shifting, petty jealousies lead to cold-blooded murders, and the long knives are coming out. Johanna's destiny – if she has one – lies with her grandfather, in Venice, at the very edge of the known world.
So, with a small band of companions, she takes to the Road – the Silk Road – that storied collection of routes that link the silks of Cathay, the spices of the Indies and the jewels of the Indus to the markets of the west. But first she must cross the roof the world, survive treachery, betrayal, and a Road beset by thieves, fanatics and warlords emboldened by the deterioration of the once all-powerful Mongol Empire.

Ronin never believed there could be life on the surface of the earth. He was a Bladesman of the Freehold, a subterranean city built centuries ago to shelter civilization from the ecological catastrophe that coated the world with ice. But when the rulers of the Freehold turned on him, Ronin fled the only way he could: up, to the frozen surface.
Accompanied by Borros, the Magic Man, Ronin strikes out across the ice shelf, seeking shelter beside the frozen sea. What the pair finds is the exotic port city of Sha'angh'sei, home to the beautiful Kiri, where Ronin finds that everything is his for the taking. But even in this land of pleasure, they are not free from danger. Only Ronin can deliver the darkening planet from the horror of annihilation – the apocalyptic coming of the terrifying Dolman.

Original Swedish crime stories from the masters of Nordic noir including a never before published story by Stieg Larsson.
Ever since Stieg Larsson shone a light on the brilliance of Swedish crime writing with his bestselling Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, readers have devoured this dark and compelling genre.
Now the nation's best crimewriters have been brought together to form the first ever anthology of Swedish crime.
Contributors include:
— Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
— Henning Mankell, creator of Wallander.
— Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, creators of Martin Beck.
— Eva Gabrielsson, writer and thirty-year partner to Stieg Larsson.

When Natalie's husband, Harry, kisses her and their two children goodbye, departs for the office, and never returns, Natalie immediately blames herself. If she hadn't been cheating on her husband every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, he never would have left her for his secretary, a local beauty queen…
Now in her ninth decade, Fay Weldon is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children's books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.

They first met as children in 1940s London. Thirty years later, Marjorie, Chloe, and Grace make their way through an almost unrecognizable post-war society, coping with husbands, children, parents, and the messy business of life.
Now in her ninth decade, Fay Weldon is one of the foremost chroniclers of our time, a novelist who spoke to an entire generation of women by daring to say the things that no one else would. Her work ranges over novels, short stories, children's books, nonfiction, journalism, television, radio, and the stage. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.

THE BLACK RUSSIAN is the most individual of biographies and a meticulously researched tour of the changing political and cultural landscape of the early twentieth century.
After the brutal death of his father when he was a teenager, Frederick Thomas fled the stifling racism of the American South and headed for New York City, where he worked as a valet and trained as a singer. Through charisma and cunning, Thomas emigrated to Europe, where his acquired skills as a multilingual maitre d'hôtel allowed him to travel from London to Monte Carlo before settling in Moscow in the glorious days before the 1917 Revolution. There Thomas became a rich and respected nightclub impresario, opening a lavish nightclub called Maxim.
With evocative backdrops in Moscow and later in Odessa and Constantinople, where Thomas rebuilt his life after the revolution, THE BLACK RUSSIAN is an inspiring story of personal reinvention set in one of history's richest periods.

A heart-stopping psychological thriller, perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins and J.P. Delaney.
Two strangers with one overwhelming link: fear. For him, it's fear of losing his mind. For her, it's the fear is of losing her life…
Retired professor Adrian Thomas knows all about fear from a lifetime studying human psychology. Now he's been diagnosed with degenerative dementia, all his thoughts are of ending his own life while he still can.
But before he can put the gun to his head he witnesses a kidnapping: a beautiful teenage girl, snatched off the street and bundled into a white van. Jennifer Riggins was picked up by a twisted couple who run the elite subscription-only website, What Comes Next. Viewers can watch what torture befalls their victims and Jennifer is to become the latest star, Victim Number Four.
When the police dismiss Adrian as a confused old man, he knows he might be this young girl's only hope and he begins the race to save her. But, with Adrian's grip on reality fading with each day, it's not only Jennifer whose life hangs in the balance…
What readers are saying about What Comes Next…
'An experience akin to riding the scariest roller coaster ride'
'I raced through this book'

No case is too strange or too baffling for the policeman George Felse and his son, Dominic. Over 13 instalments and two decades, the Felse Investigations will take them from their home on the Welsh Borders to the southernmost tip of India. World-famous opera singer Maggie Tressider wakes up in a hospital after a car crash, haunted by the certainty that she has committed a murder some time in the past. Her doctor suggests that, with the help of a psychiatrist, she may be able to lay the nameless spectre to rest. But Maggie chooses a very different expert to help her unearth the secrets of her past. Her commission launches private investigator Francis Killian on a hunt across Europe in search of a grave. But the trail also leads him to one Bunty Felse, former colleague of Maggie's, and wife of Inspector Felse. The successful end of Killian's search is only the beginning of a long pilgrimage – a journey that leads not only back into the past, but that takes Killian, Bunty and George to a remote corner of the Austrian alps where death awaits.

No case is too strange or too baffling for the policeman George Felse and his son, Dominic. Over 13 instalments and two decades, the Felse Investigations will take them from their home on the Welsh Borders to the southernmost tip of India.
No sooner than a late-Gothic, oak door is returned to its rightful place at Mottisham village church, there is a body to go with it: a news photographer is found dead at the threshold, his hand extended to its great cast iron knocker. Surely it is not a coincidence when a second victim is discovered in eerily similar circumstances?
Legend holds that sinners who seize the knocker have their hands burned by the cold iron, but Gerry Bracewell didn't die of burns, and neither did the second victim. Had they knocked on death's door, or is a more down-to-earth killer at large? Detective Chief Inspector George Felse had watched the ceremony to re-dedicate the door. Little did he know that soon he would be called back to Mottisham to investigate murder…

Raised beneath the surface of the earth, Ronin escaped the subterranean city of Freehold to make his mark upon the world. After wandering the icy wastelands and coming to the port city of Sha'angh'sei, he has taken to the sea to seek a distant island whose secrets could save mankind. Backed by a disfigured first mate, an adventure-hungry navigator, and a mysterious telepath, Ronin rides the storm-tossed waters, on his quest to save civilization from the chaos it has become.
But a treacherous journey awaits. Four bloodthirsty monsters known as the Makkon are convening to raise an army of death and call their sinister master back from beyond the grave. To turn this bloody tide, Ronin must forge the legend of the Sunset Warrior. The Bladesman of Freehold has vanquished many enemies, and now he must battle the apocalypse itself.

The remarkable behind-the-scenes story of one of the most iconic clashes in sports and world history.
In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers goose-stepping, an African-American athlete won a staggering four Olympic gold medals. Jesse Owens, the son of sharecroppers, had single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.
This is the incredible true story of one of the moment a black athlete beat Hitler at his own games.