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It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still at large. For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend - and of that fearful winters day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch. As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount. But are people afraid of the killer, or of their own guilty pasts? With each person's story revisited, the Inspector begins to suspect that some deadly secrets are threatening to unfurl.
Harbour Street is the sixth book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera. A silent community. A murderer among them . . . As the snow falls in Newcastle, Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie travel home on the busy Metro. When the train stops unexpectedly due to bad weather, Jessie notices that one woman doesn’t leave and when trying to wake her they find that the passenger has been fatally stabbed. With no witnesses DI Vera Stanhope looks into the victim’s past and discovers she lived for years on Harbour Street, in a rundown Northumberland fishing town. As she questions the local residents Vera begins to suspect they know more than they are letting on, and the killer is hiding in their midst. Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope’s investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices, The Glass Room, The Moth Catcher, The Seagull and The Darkest Evening.
Silent Voices is the fourth book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera. No murder is ever simple . . . When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, at first, she thinks it is a death from natural causes. But then Vera spots ligature marks around the victim’s throat and has another murder case on her hands. The victim is Jenny Lister, who was an experienced social worker, but her neighbours are quick to inform Vera about Jenny’s involvement in a notorious case. A young child tragically died and a member of Jenny’s team was subsequently fired and vilified by the media. As Vera tries to pry information from the secretive community another body is found, and Vera finds herself in a race against time to stop the killer. Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, The Glass Room, Harbour Street, The Moth Catcher, The Seagull, and The Darkest Evening.
A bona fide “instant classic” (Doug Stanhope) novel that tells the story of a road comic crashing and burning by acclaimed comedian Sam Tallent Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight. Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father—comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when opportunity doesn't come—or worse—it comes and goes? “In vivid, electric sentences that read like cinematic tracking shots,” (Denver Post) Tallent hurls you into an absolute mess of a man’s life as we search for the mercy he does not want.
This is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series which is now a major ITV detective drama Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn. This case was different from anything Vera had ever worked before. Two bodies, connected but not lying together. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped here.
Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie. It was the cartoons in her Hustler magazine issues that molded the beginnings of his comedic journey, long before he was old enough to know what to do with the actual pornography. It was Bonnie who recited Monty Python sketches with him, introduced him to Richard Pryor, and rescued him from a psychologist when he brought that brand of humor to school. And it was Bonnie who took him along to all of her AA meetings, where Doug undoubtedly found inspiration for his own storytelling. Digging Up Mother follows Doug's absurd, chaotic, and often obscene life as it intersects with that of his best friend, biggest fan, and love of his life--his mother. And it all starts with her death--one of the most memorable and amazing farewells you will ever read.
Introducing Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope. The Crow Trap is the first book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, Vera. Everyone has something to hide . . . Three very different women come together at an isolated cottage on the North Pennines to complete an environmental survey. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal . . . Rachael, the team leader, is still reeling after a double betrayal by her lover and boss. Anne, a botanist, sees the survey as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace, a strange, uncommunicative young woman, hiding plenty of her own secrets. Rachael is the first to arrive at the cottage, but when she gets there she is shocked to discover an apparent suicide. But then another death occurs, and a fourth woman enters the picture – the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women’s tangled lives . . . Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope’s investigations with Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, and Silent Voices.
Lady Hester Stanhope - a wilful society hostess turned bohemian adventurer - left England as a young woman and unashamedly enjoyed a string of lovers before establishing her own exotic fiefdom in the Lebanese mountains. This is her remarkable story.
DCI Vera Stanhope returns in The Darkest Evening, the ninth novel in No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller Ann Cleeves’s phenomenally popular crime series. The darkest nights can hide the deadliest secrets . . . Driving home during a swirling blizzard, Vera Stanhope’s only thought is to get there quickly. But with the snow driving down heavily, she becomes disorientated and loses her way, eventually stumbling on another car abandoned on the road. With the driver’s door open, Vera assumes the driver has sought shelter but is shocked to find a young toddler strapped in the back seat. Afraid they will freeze, Vera takes the child and drives on, arriving at Brockburn, a run-down stately home she immediately recognizes as the house her father Hector grew up in. Inside Brockburn a party is in full swing, with music and laughter to herald the coming Christmas. But outside in the snow, a young woman lies dead and Vera has a new case. Could she be the child’s mother and, if she is, what happened to her?