THE RISE OF THE DRAGON AND THE FALL OF KINGS Lord Regent Geder Palliako's war has led his nation and the priests of the spider goddess to victory after victory. No power has withstood him, except for the heart of the one woman he desires. As the violence builds and the cracks in his rule begin to show, he will risk everything to gain her love or else her destruction. Clara Kalliam, the loyal traitor, is torn between the woman she once was and the woman she has become. With her sons on all sides of the conflict, her house cannot stand, but there is a power in choosing when and how to fall.
Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: 'You see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?' Mrs Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he'd ever met...
Private investigator Joe Sixsmith, a former lathe operator whose skill at detection is part pure luck and part and uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, rushes into a burning cottage to save a young woman trapped inside. She's barely alive, nameless...and the subject of Joe's new mystery. Joe is in Wales for a church choir festival. He's retained by two parties to uncover the identity of the young woman. Joe's not up to any more heroics, though his clients may be. But before a killer can be brought to justice, he may have to play hero one more time-to save his own skin.
Home from the Rugby club after taking a nasty knock in a match, Connon finds his wife even more uncommunicative than usual. After passing out on his bed for five hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever - by a hole in the middle of her forehead. Down at the club, passions run high, on and off the field.This is a home game for Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel who knows all the players, male and female. But Sergeant Peter Pascoe, whose loyalties lie with another code, has a few ideas of his own.
Native American policeman Joe Leaphorn probes the murder of an old Indian soothsayer and a young Indian girl, and ends up investigating the strange kidnapping of a group of Boy Scouts and evading a plot on his own life.
