Stuart Fiction

It’s a ghost town, this place that haunts me, the one that made me. It’s clear to me that I’ll never outgrow Triple Falls or outlive the time I spent here. I can still feel them all, my boys of summer. Even when I'd sensed the danger, I gave in. I didn’t heed a single warning. I let my sickness and my love both rule and ruin me. I played my part, eyes wide open, tempting fate until it delivered. There was never going to be an escape. All of us are to blame for what happened. All of us are serving our own sentences.

Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. And when that kind of person discovers he's being cheated out of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

Feared and disliked for both her poison pen and her ice queen persona, bicoastal gossip columnist Amanda Dart finds the tables have turned. The unwitting victim of an anonymous gossipmonger who is faxing to national opinion makers an outrageous scandal sheet revealing the details of her ongoing indiscretions with a nationally known takeover artist, Amanda enlists the help of New York lawyer and investigator Stone Barrington to learn the identity of the faxer. Everybody is a suspect in the world of tabloid journalism.

After a devious computer hacker pulls off the CIA’s worst-case scenario, shutting down power networks all over the world, Ben and his fellow spies-in-training are forced to make a harrowing emergency landing of their plane in Indonesia. While chaos begins to erupt around the planet, Ben deduces that his team is closer to the mysterious hacker’s base than anyone else. But with all computers and phones down, there’s no way to communicate with anyone at the CIA.

'Somebody's going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won't appear to be a murder, and so the murderer won't be caught. Rectify that injustice and I'll show you the way out.' It is meant to be a celebration, but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden - one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party - can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself over and over again.

1940, England: Clementine Churchill is standing alone on a rooftop in London as bombs rain down on the city when a nearby explosion almost knocks her off her feet. Shaking, she rushes homewards to 10 Downing Street and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees the famous building is still there. It means the Prime Minister–her husband–is still alive.

With Elizabeth's wedding desecrated and one of Coudenoure's own viciously murdered, the de Grey's are thrust from their home in the dead of night and scattered to the four winds. From Scotland to Oxford to London and finally to the borders of their beloved estate, the family and their allies must risk all and pledge all to a new patron in order to regain what is rightfully theirs. Share the trials and joys of this courageous family as they defy all odds to regain their life in the storied halls of Coudenoure. The saga of the de Grey clan continues.

In Dead in the Water, Stone has hardly arrived in St. Marks, a lovely Caribbean island nation, on a sailing vacation when something very strange happens: A beautiful young woman sails into the harbor, entirely alone on a large yacht. Before long she is under the intense scrutiny of the local authorities, in the very considerable person of Sir Winston Sutherland, the minister of justice.

Berlin, 1945: Ester Pasternak walked out of the gates of Auschwitz barely alive. She survived against devastating odds, but her heartbreaking journey is only just beginning. In the camp, Ester gave birth to a tiny fair-haired infant, only for her precious baby to be snatched from her and taken to a German family. Now the war is over, Ester longs to find her little girl.

It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Three-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he's only the first. There's a serial killer stalking the Granite City, and the local media are baying for blood. Soon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die.

When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have arranged a transfer to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned to only the most hopeless cases, one of which is about to take Rostnikov deep into Siberia.

Berlin Zoo, 1943: Ten-year-old Adelaide and her newborn sister are orphaned after a devastating night of bombing. Heartbroken and frightened, Adelaide runs to her mother’s closest friend, Katharina Heinroth, and the kind zookeeper takes the two little girls under her protection. As the bombing intensifies, Adelaide tries to shut out the horrors of war by caring for her tiny sister and playing with the adorable baby monkeys. But when Katharina organizes a dangerous operation to enable children and animals to escape the battle-scarred city, something goes wrong.

Stone and his ex-partner, Dino, are facing every policeman’s worst fear. The people close to them are being murdered, probably by someone the two of them sent to prison in the past. To complicate matters, Stone finds himself involved in a distracting relationship with a woman who may be as dangerous as she is beautiful. As the body count multiplies, Stone and Dino race against time to find clues to the brilliant killer’s identity.

Cop turned lawyer and investigator Stone Barrington ventures out to the West Coast - and out on a limb - in this "stylish whodunit" ( Detroit News) filled with romance and murder. Stone's trip to Venice -with a fiery Mafia princess- is cut short by a frantic phone call from half a world away. A celebrity murder has Los Angeles in an uproar and has a former flame pining for Stone's help - in more ways than one....

Stone Barrington seems to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Manhattan’s elite are beset by a series of clever crimes - and Stone is a material witness - he and his former partner Dino Bacchetti find themselves drawn into the world of high-end security and fraud, where insider knowledge and access are limited to a privileged few, and the wealthy are made vulnerable by the very systems meant to keep them safe.

Captain Cirilo Webster is a loyal officer of the Santiago Corporation, the multistellar megacorporation that controlls all travel between the Seventy-Seven human colonies. Finally given command of his first interstellar freighter, he is determined to do well by both his crew and his employers—but nothing is ever that simple. His crew is used to Captains passing through on their way to better ships. The Company’s policies have made more enemies than he can count. Their mission is unusual and the client might be lying to him. And if all of that wasn’t enough?

Ben Ripley and his friends are training in Alaska when Cyrus Hale is kidnapped by his old Russian nemesis. Ben, Erica, and the others mount a rescue mission, but events quickly spiral out of control in a plot involving the secret history of US-Russian relations, a young KGB agent with skills to rival Erica’s—and lots and lots of bears.

Porfiry Rostnikov was one of the top detectives in Moscow - until he crossed the KGB. On the orders of the secret service, this bulldog cop is busted down to the minor crimes unit, where his talents are utterly wasted. When a drunk climbs the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square and threatens to kill himself, Rostnikov tries to talk the man down. But with a perfect somersault, acrobat Valerian Duznetzov leaps from the statue - the final jump of a storied career.

It was Daisy's birthday, and Adam had the perfect gift for his fiancée. A dozen red roses? Jewellery? A weekend in Paris? Nope.... A set of bathroom scales. Sadly, Adam's poor judgement goes way beyond god-awful gifts. He's been cursed by a lack of common sense. Now, he's about to make the worst decision of his life and stands to lose the love of his life. Enter Mungo Thunk: an odd little man who claims he can fix Adam's thinking once and for all. Can Adam really trust the mysterious stranger's bizarre brand of therapy, or will he come to rue the day he met Mungo Thunk?

Stone Barrington’s newest client does not seem the type to bring mayhem in his wake. A polite, well-deported gentleman, he comes to Stone seeking legal expertise on an unusual - and potentially lucrative - dilemma. Stone points him in the right direction and sends him on his way, but it’s soon clear Stone hasn’t seen the end of the case. Several people are keenly interested in this gentleman’s activities and how they may relate to a long-ago crime...and some of them will stop at nothing to find the information they desire.