Books published by Hodder & Stoughton

During a routine stake-out of a major client's former home, V.I. stumbles upon something she didn't expect to find: a body. The police immediately dismiss the victim as a drunken intruder, but V.I. sees things differently. Hired by the dead man's family to investigate, V.I. is lead back to the blacklists of the McCarthy era as well as into the murky operations of modern American government. Stopping at nothing in her quest for justice, V.I. soon discovers the perilous cost of bringing dark secrets to light . . .

When V.I.'s close friend Lotty Herschel is approached by a man claiming to be a fellow Holocaust survivor, she's forced to recall a painful past she's tried desperately to forget. Coming to Lotty's aid, V.I. decides to investigate the mysterious stranger. But her findings lead to the exposure of something much darker involving an international conspiracy reaching all the way back to Nazi Europe - as well as a shocking truth which could potentially devastate her friend . . .

While driving home after celebrating friend Murray Ryerson's big break into TV hosting, V.I. almost collides with a fatally wounded woman lying in the street. The deceased is Nicola Aguinaldo, former employee of security giant B.B. Baladine and recent prison runaway. Taking on the case, V.I. finds herself plunged into a sinister network of corruption that pits her against the police, the prison and the entertainment industry - with potentially lethal results.

The eighth novel in the V.I. Warhawski crime series, set in Chicago, from prize-winning author Sara Paretsky. The discovery of a destitute family in her office basement leads V.I. Warshawski to homeless charity Home Free. But the organisation's frosty reception gives V.I. cause for concern, especially when one of its board members is then found murdered, sprawled across her desk . . . Taking on the case, V.I. uncovers a framework of domestic abuse and fraud which spreads across the whole of Chicago, as well as into the abandoned tunnels beneath the city streets - where more dark secrets have been buried . . .

'Grace Notes' sees V.I. delve into her family history after discovering a newfound Italian cousin, Vico. But what does Vico want after all this time? And what danger will it lead to? In 'The Pietro Andromache', V.I.'s friend Lotty Herschel finds herself in hot water when her rival is robbed and killed. Lotty ticks all the right boxes, but who's the real culprit? And in 'Strung Out', V.I. investigates the daughter of an old friend, suspected of murdering her father with a racket string . . .

The seventh novel in the V.I. Warhawski crime series, set in Chicago, from prize-winning author Sara Paretsky. V.I. Warshawski's Chicago neighbourhood is prospering. As it's out with the old and in with the new, long-term residents like elderly Hattie Frizell find themselves viciously under threat . . . But that's not all that's troubling V.I. When the body of her neighbour's friend is found washed up in the Sanitary Canal, her investigations lead her to uncover a world of corporate conspiracy and political corruption involving some of Chicago's most prestigious industrial players. And after several attempts on her life, it seems that this time, V.I. may have dug too deep . . .

The sixth novel in the V.I. Warhawski crime series, set in Chicago, from prize-winning author Sara Paretsky. V.I. Warshawski receives an unwelcome shock when her aunt Elena arrives on her doorstep in the middle of the night, having fled from her burning hotel. But things go from bad to worse when Elena mysteriously vanishes and the corpse of her aunt's friend is discovered at a construction site. As V.I.'s investigation plunges her deep into the workings of the construction industry and county politics, she finds herself part of a dangerous game of corruption where her life is the prize. Someone's out to silence her, and they won't stop until they do . . .

The fifth novel in the V.I. Warhawski crime series, set in Chicago, from prize-winning author Sara Paretsky. When V.I. Warshawski is asked to search for the father of a childhood friend, she assumes it'll be a straightforward case. But the return to her old Chicago neighbourhood reignites dark memories from her past - memories she'd sooner forget. As the body of another old friend suddenly turns up, V.I. finds herself embroiled in a dangerous quest for justice which pits her against the bosses of big business and industrial corruption. It's one of her toughest and most personal cases yet, one from which she may not emerge entirely unscathed . . .

This is the story of how, on 29 May, 1953, two men, both endowed with outstanding stamina and skill, reached the top of Everest and came back unscathed to rejoin their comrades. 'Yet this will not be the whole story, for the ascent of Everest was not the work of one day, nor even of those few anxious, unforgettable weeks in which we prepared and climbed this summer. It is, in fact, a tale of sustained and tenacious endeavour by many, over a long period of time... We of the 1953 Everest Expedition are proud to share the glory with our predecessors.'Sir John Hunt

A new murder mystery featuring Lord Peter Wimsey - now a Duke - and his wife Harriet Vane, set in an Oxford college in the 1950s. Peter Wimsey is pleased to discover that along with a Dukedom he has inherited the duties of 'visitor' at an Oxford college.When the fellows appeal to him to resolve a dispute, he and Harriet set off happily to spend some time in Oxford. But the dispute turns out to be embittered. The voting is evenly balanced between two passionate parties - evenly balanced, that is, until several of the fellows unexpectedly die.The Warden has a casting vote, but the Warden has disappeared. And the causes of death of the deceased fellows bear an uncanny resemblance to the murder methods in Peter's past cases - methods that Harriet has used in her published novels .

Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family - bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna - have arrived for their inheritance.But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself - in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb.The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide - with cataclysmic results.

Eva was arrested by the Nazis on her fifteenth birthday and sent to Auschwitz. Her survival depended on endless strokes of luck, her own determination and the love and protection of her mother Fritzi, who was deported with her.When Auschwitz was liberated, Eva and Fritzi began the long journey home. They searched desperately for Eva's father and brother, from whom they had been separated. The news came some months later. Tragically, both men had been killed.Before the war, in Amsterdam, Eva had become friendly with a young girl called Anne Frank. Though their fates were very different, Eva's life was set to be entwined with her friend's for ever more, after her mother Fritzi married Anne's father Otto Frank in 1953.This is a searingly honest account of how an ordinary person survived the Holocaust. Eva's memories and descriptions are heartbreakingly clear, her account brings the horror as close as it can possibly be.But this is also an exploration of what happened next, of Eva's struggle to live with herself after the war and to continue the work of her step-father Otto, ensuring that the legacy of Anne Frank is never forgotten.

SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER 'This gripping biography... Pearson has done uncommonly well to unearth so much.' (Max Hastings, Sunday Times)Roger Bushell was 'Big X', mastermind of the mass breakout from Stalag Luft III in March 1944, immortalised in the Hollywood film The Great Escape.Very little was known about Bushell until 2011, when his family donated his private papers - a treasure trove of letters, photographs and diaries - to the Imperial War Museum. Through exclusive access to this material - as well as fascinating new research from other sources - Simon Pearson, Chief Night Editor of The Times, has now written the first biography of this iconic figure. Born in South Africa in 1910, Roger Bushell was the son of a British mining engineer. By the age of 29, this charismatic character who spoke nine languages had become a London barrister with a reputation for successfully defending those much less fortunate than him. He was also renowned as an international ski champion and fighter pilot with a string of glamorous girlfriends. On 23 May, 1940, his Spitfire was shot down during a dogfight over Boulogne after destroying two German fighters. From then on his life was governed by an unquenchable desire to escape from Occupied Europe.Over the next four years he made three escapes, coming within 100 yards of the Swiss border during his first attempt. His second escape took him to Prague where he was sheltered by the Czech resistance for eight months before he was captured. The three months of savage interrogation in Berlin by the Gestapo that followed made him even more determined. Prisoner or not, he would do his utmost to fight the Nazis. His third (and last escape) destabilised the Nazi leadership and captured the imagination of the world.He died on 29 March 1944, murdered on the explicit instructions of Adolf Hitler.Simon Pearson's revealing biography is a vivid account of war and love, triumph and tragedy - one man's attempt to challenge remorseless tyranny in the face of impossible odds.

Russian BombDismissed from a top secret Soviet nuclear base in the last days of communism, a KGB Major steals a suitcase bomb and buries it in his backyard. Sixteen years later he's going to sell it - to the highest bidder.British AgentThe only man standing between the world and Armageddon is an undercover police officer who has infiltrated the criminal gang acting as middlemen, and an MI6 team trailing him across Europe.Deadly MixBut can his loyalties be trusted? Whose side is he really on? If he fails, and the bomb gets through, the damage would be incalculable. The back-up team must find their man at all costs and protect him - from himself...

Deep in the world s greatest desert, the leadership of Al Qaeda, hunted and pursued, is regrouping to strike again.In this group one man stands out. His loyalty to the cause is total. To look into his face and memorise it is to court death.Searching for him amid the endless dunes are American and British experts in counter-terrorism. But the Outsider is no ordinary prey.If the Outsider is allowed to disappear again, he will re-emerge in a busy western city with a suitcase designed to wreak mass murder on detonation . . .

Cowardice is a very dirty word. When Malachy Kitchen, an intelligence officer in Iraq, is accused of running away in the face of enemy fire, his career is left in tatters.Kicked out of the amry, Malachy sinks into despair. He becomes an isolated recluse in a drug-infested London estate. But the mugging of an elderly widow by addicts draws him into a fight to regain his lost pride. His target is the network of narcotics traders.Pushers, dealers and suppliers all form part of that network, and at their head is Ricky Capel, a crime baron responsible for importing hard drugs into the UK. Untouchable up to now, Capel will have to confront an enemy more driven than any of the policemen he has so far successfully outwitted...

A young man starts a journey from a dusty village in Saudi Arabia. If his mission in faraway England succeeds he will go to his god a martyr - and many innocents will die with him.For David Banks an armed protection officer charged with neutralizing the growing menace to London's safety the certainties that ruled his thinking are no longer black and white. Banks has begun to realise that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Never have those distinctions been more dangerous to a police officer with his finger on the trigger - and to those who depend upon him.On a bright spring morning the two men's paths will cross. The suicide bomber and the policeman will have equal cause to question the roads they've taken. Win or lose neither will be the same again...

Albert Packer is the supreme baron of London crime, ruling his domain with a ruthless fist and thinking of himself as the Untouchable. As yet another criminal case against him collapses, Packer turns his attention to expanding his heroin empire abroad, deciding to travel to Sarajevo himself in order to cut out the middle man. But the Customs & Excise unit tasked with taking him down are determined not to give up. Packer may be king on his home turf, but on the war-torn streets of a city where justice is enforced by gangster warlords, he might just make a mistake. And Joey Cann, obsessed with bringing Packer to justice, will be there when he does.

From the author of Harry's Game - A Sunday Times '100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945' pickGus Peake should have kept his job and stayed at home, but an old family debt of friendship draws him to the remote wastes of Northern Iraq and to a savage forgotten war between Kurdish guerillas and Saddam Hussein's military strength.To the brutal, no-quarter combat, Peake can bring the skills he has learned as a marksman. But there is no room for mistakes on the field of battle and he must quickly learn to deal out random death at long distance, and help the guerillas to reach their goal, the city of Kirkuk, the old capital of the Kurdish people.From Baghdad, Iraq sends Major Karim Aziz, the most dedicated and professional sniper in Saddam's army. For both men their duel, from which only one can walk away, becomes an obsession. And it will only take one shot, echoing in the mountains and vallegs, to settle the score...

An English trawler strays into Russian waters. When it returns, the captain has a package to deliver to British intelligence. For the next four years a high-ranked Russian naval officer, Viktor Archenko, passes valuable information to MI6. Suddenly the flow of information stops. His contacts in London know nothing about him - but they know that he's under suspicion. The time has come to get him out.But the new breed now playing the spy game have no interest in irrelevant Cold War sparring or the risk of a scandal. There are deals to be done, alliances to be made. They would rather leave Archenko to fend for himself. Only one veteran agent realises that there is much more at stake than one man's life. Only he dares ask the question: if the war is over, who will fight the peace?

From the author of Harry's Game - A Sunday Times '100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945' pickIn a village on the Suffolk coast, Frank Perry waits for his past to arrive. A decade before he spied for the Government on the Iranian chemical and biological weapon installations. His information damaged their killing capacity for years.Now, Iran will have its revenge and has despatched their most deadly assassin to fulfil the task. Codenamed the Anvil, he will move with stealth towards his chosen objective unless Perry's protectors can reach him first.As he draws nearer, the ring of steel around Perry grows tighter. But against a faceless adversary, and with the job fatally compromised by the stifling political bureaucracy surrounding it, there seems little chance that the past will not have its day once more...

In a small town in East Germany in the winter of 1988 Stasi officer Dieter Krause captured and murdered Hans Becker, a spy. Ten years later the Berlin wall has come down and Krause has managed to overcome his past, making himself indispensable to the British Military by spying on the Russians.But, when Corporal Tracy Barnes recognises him as the murderer of Becker, her lover, she knows the time has finally come for Krause to pay. But, even in the new Germany, still at war with itself, there is always somebody watching . . . For Tracy, the waiting time is finally over. But if she fails in her quest for justice, a quiet death will be her only reward.

A mass grave is uncovered in a devastated Croatian village and the mutilated body of a young Englishwoman Dorrie Mowat is exhumed.Her mother who detested Dorrie when she was alive is determined to find out how her daughter died. But with civil war tearing apart the former Yugoslavia none of the authorities are interested in what they view as a minor war crime. She employs private investigator Bill Penn a former MI5 officer who anticipated a short trip to Zagreb where he will compile a meaningless report and receive a good fee at the end of it. But once he has seen the killing ground Penn becomes determined to find the truth behind the young woman's death.As Penn searches for evidence of war crimes he finds himself pitted against a ruthless opponent who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks...

HEAR NOTHING. SEE NOTHING. KNOW NOTHING.This is the ruthless motto in the Provisional IRA's most active brigade.To collaborate with British Intelligence means certain death.But there is a rumour that an informer is operating within the Brigade. When identified he will be ruthelssly interrogated, tortured, then shot.The MI5 agents running the informer must protect their man at all costs: he is their most critical asset, and they must keep him in place, even if that means innocent people must die.

A former SAS soldier sickened by the West s treatment of the Kurds after the Gulf War, Gord Brown has found new purpose helping the Guatemalan resistance against a brutal military dictatorship.As Gord s ragged army marches through the jungle and across the high mountains towards Guatemala City, a hopeless dream looks to become a burning reality. But the forces pitted against them are formidable, and the Guatemalan government also have a Gulf War veteran on their side, a man whom Gord has met before . . .

Mattie Furniss has run British Intelligence agents in Iran from his desk in London for two decades. But when he is ordered to the country himself, it is clear that times are desperate. One of Furniss' key informants and close friends is Charlie Eshraq, a young Iranian whose family was murdered during the revolution. Charlie is determined to avenge their deaths and becomes involved in drug smuggling to fund his campaign. When the daughter of a prominent MP dies from a heroin overdose and the British establishment demands a crackdown on Iranian drug traffickers, Mattie and Charlie suddenly find themselves alone in the spider's web. In a hostile environment where their every move is watched, will they be able to escape alive?

From the author of Harry's Game - A Sunday Times '100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945' pickPeter Holt, a young diplomat, witnesses the horrific murder of his fiance and the British Ambassador within days of a new posting to the Soviet Union. The report of the murder lands on the desk of a British Intelligence officer who suspects Palestinian involvement, althought the Russians insist that it was not a terrorist attack.The British government are determined to extract revenge and Holt is the only man able to identify the assassin. He is sent to the Lebanon and the perilous Beqa'a Valley, which serves as a stronghold for the most extreme guerilla groups. Unauthorised access to the valley is virtually impossible, and capture by the Syrian Army would result in torture and death. His only company is Noah Crane, an Israeli expert sniper, who acts as his mentor and guide. But when Syrian Intelligence learn of their presence, their cover is blown. And now it is too late to turn back.

From the author of Harry's Game - A Sunday Times '100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945' pickIt is only month before Saddam Hussein instructs his troops in invade Kuwait, and the Iraqis will stop at nothing to achieve nuclear capability. They are actively targeting scientists from the West who can help them acquire the intelligence they need.When Bill Erlich, a young FBI agent, learns that one of his closest friends has been murdered in Athens, he vows that he will find the killer, even if it means breaking the rules. The man he suspects is a British mercenary known as Colt, who has been working for the Iraqi government, and is as elusive as he is dangerous.Erlich follows Colt to England, where he has been dispatched to recruit a disaffected scientist. Determined to bring Colt to justice at whatever cost, Erlich crosses an invisible line beyond which there is no return...

From the author of Harry's Game - A Sunday Times '100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945' pickSean McNally has sworn his oath to the IRA. But then he'd turned his back on the violence and the hatred, and gone south to the Republic. Life was good, until they came for him to do one last job. But in its aftermath, McNally is captured and is facing a lifetime's imprisonment. Unless he dares think the unthinkable... and becomes a tout.Lieutenant David Ferris hadn't wanted to join the army, but found himself in it anyway. In a cruel twist of fate, his path crosses that of Sean McNally's and he quickly becomes a pawn on the frontline of a brutally tense war of nerves. As McNally prepares to gives evidence, Ferris must confront his own destiny. Not only is his life at stake, but also that of the future of the entire command structure of the IRA...

Barney Crispin, a Captain in the SAS, is as tough as they come. He is sent on an urgent mission to the Afghanistan border: to destroy one of the Soviet Mi-24 helicopters, a highly sophisticated and virtually invulnerable piece of military equipment, and retrieve the hardware. In order to do so, he needs the help of the Mujahidin resistance and must first train them in the ways of stealth and sabotage.But the guerillas he trains are ill-equipped and disorganised. Their attempt fails and several of them are killed in the process. Against orders and with only eight missiles and a local boy as his guide, Barney decides to undertake the mission alone, his own solitary battle for vengeance...