Profile: 418 books

'He is a man who lied, who told a story, a wild, fanciful story, about the death of a child, a hard and unyielding story. It is that, he finds, that he hates most. The story that was told.' In 1983 Paul Hyde, aged ten, dies falling from a ledge in the mountains of the Karoo. His older brother...

Jack Searle is an American widower, bringing up his two stepdaughters Lidia and Marina alone in the border town of Laredo after losing his wife to cancer. Jack often takes the girls to visit their Mexican family over the border in Nuevo Laredo. Marina, the elder sister, persuades him to let...

The female musicians of the Instituto della Pietà play from a gallery in the church, their faces half hidden by metal grilles. They live segregated from the world. Cecilia, is a violinist who, during anguished, sleepless nights, writes letters to the mother she never knew, haunted by her and hating...

April 1943: four boys playing in Hagley Woods, Worcestershire make a gruesome discovery. Inside an enormous elm tree, there is the body of a woman, her mouth stuffed with a length of cloth. As the case goes cold, mysterious graffiti starts going up across the Midlands: 'Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?' To...

Police Constable Pete Bradley has one year in the force and dreams of moving up the ladder. He's assigned as an aid to CID and working a routine nightshift with his partner when they stumble across a young woman's body. She was working as a prostitute when she was strangled, her body dumped by a riverbank....

London, March 1992. Nearly a year after the release of Brit noir sensation, Bent, the capital is still in the grip of its cultural and stylistic impact. Diana Kemp, journalist on the alternative arts magazine Lux, is dismissive of the film?s cult following but admires the technique of its debut director,...

The legend goes like this: Vincent Smith met bandmates Stevie Mullin and Lynton Powell at a Sex Pistols concert, where he tried to kiss Sid Vicious? guitar and got a bloody nose. Together they formed Blood Simple, and for a while they made a lot of noise, a bit of money and caused a sensation wherever...

Since 1993 over 500 women have been murdered in Ciudad Ju?rez.Residents believe the true number of disappeared stands at 5,000.When a new disappearance is reported, Kelly Courter, a washed-up Texan boxer, and Rafael Sevilla, a Mexican detective, are sucked into an underworld of organised crime, believing...

As a fresh young graduate from Glasgow Veterinary College, Hugh Lasgarn could not have made a worse impression when he fell over a doorway on arriving at his first practice in the Welsh Borders. He came as a locum for thirty days and he stayed for decades. In Vet in Green Pastures Hugh Lasgarn looks...

Something's gone seriously wrong in Istanbul - a killer is on the loose, and transvestites are being murdered, the modus operandi becoming increasingly bizarre with each death. Our protagonist - fellow transvestite, nightclub owner and glamour puss extraordinaire downs her lipstick and ups the ante...

Peter Manson's apparently successful life is turned upside down when his beloved teenage daughter Prue reveals she's pregnant by her teacher, Gavin Sorenson. The very heart of the family is threatened as Peter has an intuitive sense that Gavin is on a personal quest for revenge. As Peter becomes consumed...

When the writer, Oxford scholar and photographer John Jameson visits the home of his vicar friend, he is entranced by Daisy, his youngest daughter. Jameson charms her with his wit and child-like imagination, teasing her with riddles and inventing humorous stories as they enjoy afternoons alone by...

A spellbinding story of forbidden love in the 1950s, now a major movie starring Anna Paquin and Holliday Grainger A secret love which has a whole town talking ... and a small boy very worried. Lydia Weekes is distraught at the break-up of her marriage. When her young son, Charlie, makes...

'Judas Iscariot's here, look. Here comes Judas Iscariot . . .'Nine-year old Sean has never seen anything like what happens on the day Margaret Thatcher takes power and his grandad discovers his uncle voted for her. So begins the start of a family secret and the end of Sean's idyllic childhood in the...