Collection: Fiction

Social worker Alison Taylor has a passion for protecting children and seeing that justice is served on their behalf, but when she starts getting harassing phone calls and bizarre gifts, it seems she may be the one in need of protection

U.S. Marshal Jake Taylor has seen plenty of action during his years in law enforcement. But he'd rather go back to Iraq than face his next assignment: protection detail for federal judge Liz Michaels.

This collection includes The Granton Star Cause, The Acid House and A Soft Touch. All three stories come from the badlands of the schemes of north Edinburgh and take us into a dark world of drugs, deviant sex and football hooliganism.

The first story, Rain, was written in 1920 in Hong Kong and the last story was written in New York in 1945. Maugham indicates that he has grouped the stories in one particular country so the reader can take his bearings in the land he chose to lead him to

Two children meet the fairy Puck who enables them to witness events from English history

Only nine when she is orphaned and sent to live with an unloving aunt, Jane spends miserable, lonely years at boarding school before becoming a governess in the home of a mysterious man. A classic story.

When the body of a girl is found, Detective Edgar Stephens is reminded of a magic trick, the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old friend of Edgar. Max is reluctant to get involved until he finds out he knows the dead girl.

George Mallory once told a reporter that he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, “because it’s there.” On his third attempt he was last seen six hundred feet from the top. His body was found in 1999, and it still remains a mystery whether he reached the summit....

Manchester: Having survived a near-fatal attack, DC Janet Scott is quietly falling apart. Best friend and colleague DC Rachel Bailey is reeling from a love affair gone bad. DCI Gill Murray is having family problems threatening to tip her over the edge.

1963. The year the Beatles first top the charts. The year Martin Luther King has a dream. The year Truman Bird moves his family from their home in Brighton to a dilapidated caravan in the Ashdown Forest - then disappears...