Bloomsbury Reader imprint: 830 books

A Phonecall for Bowman at two a.m.... A honeyed, velvet voice of invitation... A trip across town in the small hours...A grim discovery in a swanky apartment... From these tense beginnings, Hartley Howard-past-master of the suspense story-constructs a tight web of excitement, of sudden death,...

Spirited and independent, lady's maid Nan Smithen has ambitions far beyond her station. Marriage to a wealthy businessman enchanted by her youth brings her position, children and a comfortable union. Until her doting husband is killed on an ill-fated trip to revolutionary France. Alone with...

Readers of "The Emerald of Catherine the Great" will not have to be told that Mr. Belloc's mystery stories are written with suavity and originality and an eye for piquant situations. This new mystery tale is the story of "Rackham Catchings," a manor house in Sussex belonging to...

First published in 1972, this is a Chief Inspector Littlejohn mystery full of secrecy, duplicity and twisted loyalties. The Todds, governed by the widowed matriarch, Mrs Todd, are well-known in Fordinghurst. When Heck, the philandering youngest son, is found murdered on his boat, they do their...

Why would a French aristocrat renounce his country and live in exile? The answer lies in the Paris of the 1890s; a world of superficial glamour but, under the surface, deep social and political strife. The army, discredited by the Dreyfus case, was being purged. The young de Richleau, cadet and then...

First published in 1965, this is the final installment of the Duke De Richleau series… The years have moved on, and De Richleau has relocated from his London pad to an apartment in the Mediterranean. His great friends visit on occasion, and on this one both Rex's son and Richard Eaton's daughter...

It is the end of WW II and the household of Mrs. North, a well-to-do widow with a country cottage, is very busy. War circumstances brought both of her daughters home: loud but good-hearted tomboy, Violet, and highly-strung and over sensitive Heather with her two small children. Mrs. North is also...

First published in 1994, this is Dirk Bogarde's fifth novel. Following on from his previous novel, Jericho, evoking the manifold themes and compelling rural French atmosphere of its predecessor, A Period of Adjustment tells the story of William Caldicott. Still recovering from his ruined...

Johnnie Easter takes his family by surprise when he falls in love with Harriet Sowervy. For all his business talent Johnnie is a shy lad, awkward at social events. But when he meets gentle Harriet, beaten into submission by her brutal parents, Johnnie reveals hidden strengths, rescuing his love from...

Marian is in her mid-thirties, and trying to get over the shock of her eighteen-year-old twins leaving her to live with their father in the USA. As a distraction she takes a job looking after a younger woman, Stella, on a coach tour to Greece. It seems to be the answer to all her worries - financial...

Lieutenant-Commander, the hero of this novel, is axed from the Navy at the age of thirty-six, one of many thousands obliged to re-plan their lives as the result of cuts in the armed services. A widower with a small daughter, he has no experience or knowledge outside submarines and the Royal Navy. His...

In the beautiful countryside of Portugal, erstwhile British secret agent Julia Probyn is to attend a royal wedding. But her former acquaintance, Countess Hetta Páloczy, the young Hungarian refugee, unwittingly gets them both tangled in Cold War intrigue. After Hetta accidentally uncovers a Communist...

Julia Probyn, journalist and amateur sleuth, must acquaint herself with the world of counterespionage. Hetta, a young Hungarian Countess, just released from behind the Iron Curtain, is drawn into a communist plot. Together the two young women will need all of their strength to unravel the schemes...

This novel records the lives of a group of English diplomats in Budapest from the Spring of 1940, up to the entry of the Germans which compels them to leave in Easter 1941. Crossing the Russian frontier en route for Moscow and the U.S.A., an episode at once dramatic and distinctly comic, sees the...