Showing results by publisher "Quercus" in All Categories

Phoebe Henderson may be single but she sure doesn't feel fabulous. It's been a year since she found her boyfriend Alex in bed with another woman, and wine-fueled nights of relationship analysis with her best friend Lucy have done nothing to improve her dating situation.

Brutally dumped by her girlfriend, Ally is homeless, friendless and jobless...but at least she has Malcolm. Wounded and betrayed, Ally has made off with the one thing she thinks might soothe the pain: Emily's cat. After a long train journey she arrives home to her dad in Sheffield, ready to fold herself up in her duvet and remain on the sofa for the foreseeable. Her dad has other ideas. A phone call later, and Ally is reunited with her first ever beard and friend of old, Jeremy. He too is broken-hearted and living at home again.

Following the funeral of a local farmer, Bruno gets a phone call from his son. He tells Bruno that before his father's sudden death, he had signed over his property to an insurance company in return for a subscription to a luxury retirement home. Bruno discovers that both the retirement home and the insurance company are scams with links to a Russian oligarch whose dealings are already being tracked by the French police.

Ever since the dawn of human civilisation, we have been trying to make predictions about what's in store for us. We do this on a personal level, so that we can get on with our lives efficiently (should I hang my laundry out to dry, or will it rain?). But we also have to predict on a much larger scale, often for the good of our broader society (how can we spot economic downturns or prevent terrorist attacks?). For just as long, we have been getting it wrong.

In 1965, five teenage friends fled Glasgow for London to pursue their dream of musical stardom. Yet before year's end three returned, and returned damaged. In 2015, a brutal murder forces those three men, now in their 60s, to journey back to London and finally confront the dark truth they have run from for five decades. Runaway is a crime novel covering 50 years of friendships solidified and severed, dreams shared and shattered and passions lit and extinguished.

Kitt Hartley wakes to the news that a murder has been committed in Irendale, a village high on the wild Yorkshire moors where her boyfriend, DI Malcolm Halloran lived with his ex-wife until she, too, was murdered. The MO of the two crimes is identical, right down to the runic symbols carved into the victims' hands. Unable to leave it to the local police to solve, Kitt and Halloran travel to Irendale, where a literary mystery awaits. A line of Anglo-Saxon poetry found on the victim leads to a hiding place, and another cryptic clue.

Munich, 1949, is home to all the backstabbing intrigue that prospers in the aftermath of war. A place where a private eye can find a lot of not-quite-reputable work: cleaning up the Nazi past of well-to-do locals, abetting fugitives in the flight abroad, sorting out rival claims to stolen goods. It's work that fills Bernie with disgust - but it also fills his sorely depleted wallet. Then a woman seeks him out. Her husband has disappeared. She's not looking to get him back - he's a wanted man who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland.

'Women are told, from birth, that it's our job to be small: physically small, small in our presence, and small in our impact on the world. We're supposed to spend our lives passive, quiet and hungry. I want to obliterate that expectation....' Guardian columnist Lindy West wasn't always loud. It's difficult to believe she was once a nerdy, overweight teen who wanted nothing more than to be invisible. Fortunately for women everywhere, along the road she found her voice - and how she found it!

Accused of grassing up a fellow officer and driven brutally out of home and job, DI Grace Fisher is thankful to survive some dark times and find haven with the Major Investigation Team in Essex. Any hopes of a quiet start to her new life are dashed by the discovery of the body of a female student, last seen at a popular bar in Colchester. Grace has her first case. When a second student, also out drinking, is murdered and left grotesquely posed, the case becomes headline news. Someone is leaking disturbing details to a tabloid crime reporter. Is it the killer? Or a detective close to the case?

Cycling fans obsess about climbs and big mountains. They love reading about their tests and tribulations, and they love to ride them - a cricket lover can never bat at Lord's, or a football supporter score at Wembley, but any rider can take on the challenge of an iconic mountain. There have been fine books about the big climbs before but never from the voice of an elite GC winner, taking you inside what these climbs really feel like, where the attacks come, where the pain kicks in.

Six Four. The nightmare no parent could endure. The case no detective could solve. The twist no listener could predict. For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. They would never see their daughter again. For the 14 years that followed, the Japanese public listened to the police's apologies. They would never forget the botched investigation that became known as Six Four.

Dr Siri Paiboun may be in his 73rd year, but he’s still as sturdy as a jungle boar – and as crafty as one. Reluctant coroner to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, he’s been despatched to the country’s mountainous north, where the sudden appearance of a mummified arm protruding from a concrete path laid in front of the president’s new mansion has caused an understandable degree of embarrassment.

In the hard-fought winter of 1944, the Allies advanced northwards through Italy but stalled on the fearsome mountainous defences of the Gothic Line. Two men were parachuted in, in an effort to break the deadlock. Their mission: to penetrate deep into enemy territory and lay waste to the Germans' impregnable headquarters. At the 11th hour, mission commanders radioed for David 'The Mad Piper' Kilpatrick to be flown in, resplendent in his tartan kilt. They wanted this fearless war hero to lead the assault, piping 'Highland Laddie' as he went - so leaving an indelible British signature to deter Nazi reprisals.

With her marriage in danger of falling apart, Joanna returns home to the beautiful but dilapidated Mulberry Farm Cottage in Dorset, where her sister Harriet is struggling to keep the farm afloat and cope with their eccentric mother. When Joanna discovers a bundle of love letters in the attic, written by a watercolourist named Emmy, she is intrigued and sets out to discover Emmy's true story. Emmy's letters take Joanna to the picturesque alleyways and bridges of Lisbon, Prague, and the most romantic place of all: Venice - where a whole new magical world seems to unfold in front of her.

Kristy Shen retired with a million dollars at the age of 31, and she did it without hitting a home run on the stock market, starting the next Snapchat in her garage, or investing in hot real estate. Learn how to cut down on spending without decreasing your quality of life, build a million-dollar portfolio, fortify your investments to survive bear markets and black-swan events, and use the 4 percent rule and the Yield Shield - so you can quit the rat race forever.

After successfully tracking down and killing a rogue bear in the wilderness of northern Sweden, a group of hunters is shaken by a grisly discovery when they dress the bear carcass: human remains in the stomach. Far away in the remote village of Kurravaara, an elderly woman is found murdered with frenzied brutality, crude abuse scrawled above her bloodied bed. Her young grandson, known to live with her, is nowhere to be found.

Andrew Tate started 2022 as a fringe internet celebrity, but by August he was the most Googled man in the world. Part Gonzo journalism, part masculinity rabbit hole, this book takes you on Shea and Tahsin's journey to reveal the dark secrets of Andrew Tate, the machine that brought him here, and the ideology he has unleashed on a generation of young men.

Furry Towers promises the best food and fabulous facilities for guinea pigs - Fuzzy and Coco are so excited! But when they arrive, the friends find themselves in a smelly old hutch with only moldy lettuce to eat. Coco is not impressed! And it soon becomes clear that something terribly sinister is going on at Furry Towers - can the friends save the day again?

In postwar Vienna, the term peace is relative - the Americans, British and Russians govern the city in an uneasy truce, and the main difference is that now it's the Soviet secret police making people disappear rather than the Nazis. When Bernie is asked by a high-ranking Soviet official to clear an old Kripo colleague's name of the murder of an American officer, he quickly realises he's in over his head.

Growing up, Rich Hall aspired to be a writer, and after school he trained to be a journalist. But after a stint at the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee, he found himself trying to impress a girl by doing a one-man show in a state university campus in Kansas, armed with a bucket, a loudhailer and some dog biscuits. It wasn't exactly a triumph, and he didn't get the girl, but he had found his true calling. Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall's professional and personal life where he really had to nail it.