FIC002000 Archives - Page 2 of 3

Viva La Madness

Hiding out in the Caribbean until the heat dies down from his last job, X is thinking it’s time to ditch the resort life and calls up his old friend Morty to plot his return to London.

But he’s hardly stepped off the plane when his associates, Sonny King and Roy ‘Twitchy’ Burns, get on the wrong side of a feuding Venezuelan drug cartel on the hunt for a sensitive package. Suddenly he’s thrown into a stand-off between rival mobs and with so many players in the game it’s tough going making out who wants to cut him a deal and who’s trying to kill him.

Darkly comic, fast-paced and full of twists Viva la Madness is packed with sex, scams, drugs and enough dirty money to fill a few offshore bank accounts.

Layer Cake

Layer cake (n): a metaphor for the murky layers of the criminal world.

Smooth-talking drug dealer X has a plan to quietly bankroll enough cash to retire before his thirtieth birthday. Operating under the polished veneer of a legitimate businessman, his mantra is to keep a low profile and run a tight operation until it’s time to get out.

When kingpin Jimmy Price asks him to find the wayward daughter of a wealthy socialite who’s been running around with a cokehead, he accepts the job with the promise that after this he can leave the criminal world behind with Jimmy’s blessing. Oh, and he needs to find a buyer for two million ecstasy pills acquired by a crew of lowly, loud-mouth gangsters, the Yahoos. Simple enough, until an assassin named Klaus arrives to scratch him off his list, revealing this job is much more than it seems at first.

From the glitz of the London club scene of the 1990’s to the underbelly of its criminal world, Layer Cake is the best in British crime fiction.

The Killing Gene

OUT OF AFRICA, INTO DARKNESS…

When an archaeologist goes missing in the Congo basin, Professor Randolph Harkness and young tearaway Ross McCartney go in search of her – only to stumble upon a conspiracy to conceal ancient horrors lost to the passage of time. Evading spies and trained killers, can they expose this cover-up? Or will they be buried with it?

An unputdownable thriller, The Killing Gene reveals the story of our species, the paradox of the modern mind and our innate predilection for murder…

The Butcher’s Daughter

‘Historical fiction at its finest’ @MargaretAtwood (Twitter)

It is 1535 and Agnes Peppin, daughter of a West-country butcher, has been banished, leaving her family home in disgrace to live out the rest of her life cloistered behind the walls of Shaftesbury Abbey.

While Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of the sisterhood, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Head of the Church of England. Religious houses are being formally subjugated, monasteries dissolved, and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge.

Cast out with her sisters, Agnes is at last free to be the master of her own fate. But freedom comes at a price as she descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive – by any means necessary…

World War Z

It began with rumours from China about another pandemic. Then the cases started to multiply and what had looked like the stirrings of a criminal underclass, even the beginning of a revolution, soon revealed itself to be much, much worse.

Faced with a future of mindless man-eating horror, humanity was forced to accept the logic of world government and face events that tested our sanity and our sense of reality. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and key players in the ten-year fight against the horde, World War Z brings the finest traditions of journalism to bear on what is surely the most incredible story in the history of human civilisation.

Read the original cult novel that propelled the zombie genre into the mainstream – now a blockbuster film and game.

The Zombie Survival Guide

Don’t be reckless with you most precious asset – life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it.

It covers everything you need to know, from how to understand zombie behaviour to survival in any territory or terrain.

The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead.

It might just save your life.

Beta Male

Sam Hunt is a confused modern male in his very late twenties. A work-shy, commitment-phobic would-be actor, he is beginning to worry that turning thirty might just be the last straw. Flatmate Alan, the sensible one, has just been proposed to by his girlfriend Jess, with his femme fatale boss looking on with a saucy gleam in her eye. Newly-dumped Ed spends his time tearfully watching ‘Sex and the City’ in a pile of his ex-girlfriend’s pyjamas and plotting his revenge.

Meanwhile unemployed doctor Matt embarks on a dubious bet with Sam to see who can be the first to ensnare a rich wife and enjoy a life of leisure… Are your carefree twenties a retreating memory? Are your friends discussing children and fixed-rate mortgages while you clutch your Xbox, sobbing? You’re not the only one. Beta Male is a riotously funny and painfully honest chronicle about friendship, masculinity, marriage and the beginning of adulthood.

Foretold by Thunder

When journalist Jake Wolsey stumbles upon a declassified file showing Winston Churchill’s interest in the ancient Etruscan civilisation his curiosity brings peril in its wake.

He soon attracts the unlikely attention of alluring archaeologist Florence Chung – and that of MI6. As the two are pursued across Europe and Africa in search of the Etruscans’ sacred text, danger closes in and more questions than answers arise. Are there powers in the sky modern science has yet to understand? Could the ancients predict the future? And what really explains the rise of Rome, that of Nazi Germany, the ebb and flow of history itself?

In a thrilling race against time and enemies known and unknown, Wolsey fears the very survival of the West may depend on his ability to stay one step ahead of his adversaries.

The Napoleon Complex

Reporter Jake Wosley has seen things he never thought possible. His life changed forever after discovering classified documents showing Churchill’s curious obsession with the ancient Etruscan civilisation. Now he’s hiding out in Thailand, trying to put the past behind him. But when a mysterious letter arrives containing cryptic references to Napoleon Bonaparte, Jake is drawn back in to a centuries-old conspiracy.

The trail leads through the Middle East, Europe and Africa to a Victorian secret that could remake the world. Will Jake crack the Napoleon complex? And can he keep one step ahead of Washington and MI6 who want this ancient lore for their own devices?

Dead Men

‘Fascinating.’ Telegraph

Birdie Bowers is a woman with a dead man’s name. Her parents had been fascinated by Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers, one of Captain Scott’s companions on his ill-fated polar expedition. A hundred years after the death of Bowers and Scott, she sets out to discover what really happened to them… The discovery of Captain Scott’s body in the Antarctic in November 1912 started a global obsession with him as a man and an explorer. But one mystery remains – why did he and his companions spend their last ten days in a tent only 11 miles from the safety of a depot that promised food and shelter?

Dead Men tells the story of two paths. One is a tragic journey of exploration on the world’s coldest continent, the other charts a present-day relationship and the redemptive power of love.

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