14 results for "History"

A death in Cornwall: a novel

Silva, Daniel
Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary. The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. But there are a number of telltale inconsistencies, including a missing mobile phone. And then there is the mysterious three-letter cypher she left behind on a notepad in her study. Gabriel soon discovers that Professor Blake was searching for a looted Picasso worth more than a $100 million, and he takes up the chase for the painting as only he can--with six Impressionist canvases forged by his own hand and an unlikely team of operatives that includes a world-famous violinist, a beautiful master thief, and a lethal contract killer turned British spy.
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2024 416 pages

Crime scene: a novel

Kellerman, Jonathan,Kellerman, Jesse
"A former star athlete turned deputy coroner is drawn into a brutal, complicated murder in this psychological thriller from a father-son writing team that delivers "brilliant, page-turning fiction" (Stephen King). Natural causes or foul play? That's the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren't part of his beat--not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye. Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor, done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter Tatiana insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life. What emerges is a history of scandal and violence, and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man--and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert's died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record. All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father's killer--even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it. The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It's his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time, he's part of a story that makes his blood run cold. Praise for Jonathan Kellerman "Jonathan Kellerman's psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix."--Los Angeles Times "Kellerman doesn't just write psychological thrillers--he owns the genre."--Detroit Free Press "A master of the psychological thriller."--People Praise for Jesse Kellerman "Gripping and compelling. but what truly separates Kellerman from the pack is his prose. Jesse Kellerman tightens the noose slowly, and we his readers can do nothing but turn the pages."--Harlan Coben, on The Genius "Kellerman has a gift for creating compelling characters as well as for crafting an ingenious plot that grabs the reader and refuses to let go."--Publishers Weekly (starred review), on The Genius"--
Ballantine Books 2017 381 pages

Hunting El Chapo: taking down the world's most wanted drug lord

Hogan, Andrew (DEA agent),Century, Douglas
This is the untold story of the American federal agent who captured the world's most-wanted drug-lord. Every generation has its larger-than-life criminal legend living beyond the reach of the law: Billy the Kid, Al Capone, Ronnie Biggs, Pablo Escobar. But for every one of these criminals, there's a Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett or Slipper of the Yard. For Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman-Loera a.k.a. `El Chapo' - the 21st century's most notorious criminal - that man is D.E.A. Special Agent Andrew Hogan. This is the incredible story of Hogan's seven-year-long chase to capture El Chapo, a multibillionaire drug-lord and escape-artist posing as a Mexican Robin Hood, who in reality was a brutal sociopath responsible for the murders of thousands. His greedy campaign to take over his rivals' territories resulted in an unprecedented war with a body count of over 100,000. We follow Hogan on his quest to achieve the seemingly impossible: to cross the border into Mexico and arrest El Chapo, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a billionaire and Public Enemy No. 1, who had been evading capture for more than a decade and had earned a reputation for being utterly untouchable. This intimate thriller tells how Hogan single-mindedly and methodically climbed the ladder within the hierarchy of the Sinaloa Cartel - the world's wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking organization - by creating one of the most sophisticated undercover operations in the history of the D.E.A. From infiltrating Chapo's inner circle to leading a white-knuckle manhunt with an elite brigade of Mexican Marines, Hogan left no stone unturned in his hunt for the world's most powerful drug kingpin.[Bokinfo]
Harper 2019-02-07 352 pages

Wolverine/Gambit

Loeb, Jeph
The titanic team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (Spider-Man: Blue, Captain America: White, Hulk: Gray) take on the X-Men's two most dangerous mutants in this international thriller that brings Wolverine and Gambit to the shores of England! There's a serial killer tearing through London, leaving beautiful young women as his victims. Do these brutal slayings mark the return of the 19th-century serial killer known as Jack the Ripper? Or could one of the X-Men be the real killer?! Wolverine is the prime suspect - and Gambit is out to prove him guilty! Now they're grudgingly forced to work together in order to find the truth - without killing each other! It's a fast-paced murder mystery that will keep you guessing right up until the last page. COLLECTING: Wol verine /Gambit: Victims 1-4
Marvel 2013-03-19 112 pages

Ghost hunters

Blum, Deborah
In Victorian Britain, a group of eminent scientists got together to found a society expressly to prove the existence of ghosts. The age of Darwin represented the greatest scientific advances known to man. The tension between science and religion was exposed by Darwin's On the Origin of the Species in 1859, which challenged the basic tenets of belief. Yet many of those in the forefront of the scientific revolution could not give up the idea of a higher reality. Life after death was the unknown frontier. Victorian society was full of mediums claiming they could communicate with the spirits of the dead. Baffling psychic phenomena occurred every day at seances- mysterious rappings were heard, furniture moved, ghostly forms appeared, the mediums spoke in the altered voices of the dead with information only their nearest could possibly know. Pyschometry involving locks of hair and watches and children's toys; telepathy; ouija boards; apparitions; astral projection- all were commonplace. In 1882 the Society of Psychical Research was founded in London to investigate all these phenomena- it was a group led by some of the greatest scientists of the age but its membership also included Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's father, John Ruskin, the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). Six months later William James, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and the brother of Henry James visited London and went on to set up American branch. Their experiments went on for years. Many mediums, like the notorious Madame Blavatsky, were exposed as charlatans yet there were some mediums who continued to communicate directly with another world, who despite every rigorous scientific test seemed to prove that souls survived death. This is the story of this group of forward thinkers- many of whom were driven to the spirit world by personal tragedy, some whose feeling of loss lead to their own suicides. It is the story of the greatest ghost hunt of any age.
Arrow 2007 370 pages

Blood on the page: a murder, a secret trial and a search for the truth

Harding, Thomas
A groundbreaking examination of a terrifying murder and its aftermath by the bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake. In June 2006, police were called to number 9 Downshire Hill in Hampstead. The owner of the house, Allan Chappelow, was an award-winning photographer and biographer, an expert on George Bernard Shaw, and a notorious recluse, who had not been seen for several weeks. Someone had recently accessed his bank accounts, and attempted to withdraw large amounts of money. Inside the darkened house, officers found piles of rubbish, trees growing through the floor, and, in what was once the living room, the body of Chappelow, battered to death, partially burned and buried under four feet of paper. The man eventually arrested on suspicion of his murder was a Chinese dissident named Wang Yam- a man who claimed to be the grandson of one of Mao's closest aides, and a key negotiator in the Tiananmen Square protests. His trial was the first in modern British history to be held 'in camera'- closed, carefully controlled, secret. Wang Yam was found guilty, but has always protested his innocence. Thomas Harding has spent the past two years investigating the case, interviewing key witnesses, investigating officers, forensic experts and the journalists who broke the story, and has unearthed shocking and revelatory new material on the killing, the victim and the supposed perpetrator. It is a crime that has been described in the press and by the leading detective as 'the greatest whodunnit' of recent years- an extraordinary tale of isolation, deception and brutal violence, stretching from the quiet streets of north London to the Palace of Westminster and beyond.
William Heinemann 2018 338 pages

The annals of unsolved crime

Epstein, Edward Jay
One of America's most acclaimed investigative journalists re-investigates some of the most notorious and mysterious crimes of the last 200 years The beloved head of the UN dies in a tragic plane crash . . . witnesses unearthed years later suggest it wasn't an accident. Theories behind the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe change yearly, and some believe Jack the Ripper was a member of the royal family. History books say Hitler burned down the Reichstag--but did he? And who really organized the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln? Acclaimed investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein cut his teeth on one of the most notorious murder mysteries of the 20th century in his first book, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth , one of the first books on the assassination and an instant bestseller. His conclusion? The Commission left open too many questions. He examines those questions here, as well as some of the most famous "unsolved" or mysterious crimes of all time, coming to some startling conclusions. His method in each investigation is simple: outline what is known and unknown, and show the plausible theories of a case. Where more than one theory exists, he shows the evidence for and against each. And when something remains to be proved, he says as much. In The Annals of Unsolved Crime , Epstein re-visits his most famous investigations and adds dozens of new cases. From the Lindbergh kidnapping to the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, from the Black Dahlia murder to anthrax attacks on America, from the vanishing of Jimmy Hoffa to the case of Amanda Knox--Epstein considers three dozen high-profile crimes and their tangled histories and again proves himself one of our most penetrating journalists.
Melville House 2013 347 pages

Murder at Wrotham Hill

Souhami, Diana
Murder at Wrotham Hill takes the killing in October 1946 of Dagmar Petrzywalski as the catalyst for a compelling and unique meditation on murder and fate. Dagmar, a gentle, eccentric spinster, was the embodiment of Austerity Britain's prudence and thrift. Her murderer Harold Hagger's litany of petty crimes, abandoned wives, sloughed-off identities and desertion was its opposite. The texture of their lives and the impression their experiences made on their characters fated their meeting on that bleak autumn morning - and determined the manner in which both would meet their death. Featuring England's first celebrity policeman, Fabian of the Yard, the celebrated forensic scientist, Keith Simpson, and history's most famous and dedicated hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, this is a gripping and deeply moving book.
Quercus 2012 325 pages

Innocence: or, murder on Steep Street

Kovály, Heda
"This rediscovered gem of Czech literature, a crime novel by renowned Holocaust memoirist Heda Margolius Kovaly, depicts a chilling moment in history, redolent with the stifling atmosphere of political and personal oppression of the early days of Socialist Czechoslovakia. In 1985, Czech Holocaust memoirist, literary translator, and political exile Heda Margolius Kovaly turned her pen to fiction. Inspired by the stories of Raymond Chandler, Kovaly knit her own terrifying experiences in early 1950s Socialist Prague -- her husband's imprisonment and wrongful execution, her own persecution at his disgrace -- into a gorgeous psychological thriller-cum-detective novel. Set in and around a cinema where a murder was recently committed, Innocence follows the unfolding of the investigation while telling the stories of the women who work there as ushers, each of whom is forced to support herself in difficult circumstances. As the novel brings this group alive, it tells their various life stories that have brought them to this job, the secrets they share with one another, and the secrets they keep. When the detective trying to solve the first murder is found slain by the cinema, all of their secrets come into the light. A smart, evocative, and deeply stirring literary crime novel with international appeal"--
Soho Crime 2015 234 pages

The shroud

Robbins, Harold
Art investigator Madison Dupre knew the offer was too good to be true: $20,000 for a quick trip to Dubai, the fantastic Arabian Nights city on the Persian Gulf. The call came from Sir Henri Lipton, a man who was supposed to be dead—and who she sincerely had hoped was burning in hell because he had ruined her career before his violent “demise.” He told her only one tantalizing thing about the piece of art: “Let’s just say it’s a couple thousand years old and was buried with Christ.” The fact the offer came from a man wanted on three continents for art looting was fair warning that there would be a catch. But with credit collectors and an avaricious landlord pounding at her door, Madison listened when the devil whispered magic words in her ear: $20,000– cash – upfront. There was a catch, of course. A number of them. Sir Henri was up to his neck in conspiracies and needed someone to deflect the danger onto—not to mention frame for the most audacious art theft in history. Dubai, a city that has been called Las Vegas on steroids, would just be the first stop for Madison on a quest that takes her to an ancient Mesopotamian city, the dark streets of exotic Istanbul, Venice at Carnival time, and a cathedral where the most sacred object of Christendom is stored. Along the way, she finds romance in the arms of a Russian agent who she doesn’t trust—and can’t resist.
Forge 2009-10-13 334 pages

The unloved

Levy, Deborah
When a group of hedonistic West European tourists gather to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau, an English woman is murdered. Tatiana, 'the unloved child', declares she knows who did it. The subsequent inquiry into the death proves to be more of an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage and sadistic desire, framed within an unfolding narrative of colonial violence which will change the tourists' version of history for ever. The Unloved is a pivotal novel in Levy's career, first published in 1994 and reissued now for a new generation of readers.
Bloomsbury 2015 199 pages

The great game

Tidhar, Lavie
When Mycroft Holmes is murdered, it is up to retired shadow detective Smith to track down his killer, leading him to stumble onto the greatest conspiracy of his life. Young Lucy Westerna, Holmes' protégé, must follow her own path to the truth, while on the other side of the world, a young Harry Houdini must face his greatest feat of escape -- death itself. As their paths converge the body count mounts up, the entire world is under threat, and in a foreboding castle in the mountains of Transylvania a mysterious old man weaves a spider's web of secrets and lies.
Angry Robot 2016-10-04 398 pages