Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group" in All Categories

In New York, if you have a problem no one else can solve, you call Leonid McGill. Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades in cash and favours, McGill's an old-school PI working a city that's got fancy all around him. When McGill is approached by a small-time office manager, he declines the case. He has better things to do than track down the man's long-lost cousin, who is about to inherit millions. But then McGill's office is broken into, and his potential client is found dead.

In the idyllic early summer of 1914, life is good for the de Witt family. German Rudolf and his aristocratic English wife, Verena, are planning the wedding of their daughter, Emmeline, while their elder son, Arthur, is studying in Paris, and Michael is just back from his first term at Cambridge. Celia, the youngest of the de Witt children, is on the brink of adulthood and secretly dreams of escaping her carefully mapped-out future and exploring the world.

Ex-FBI Agent Brigid Quinn thinks she has a second chance at life. After too many years spent in the company of evil, she's quit the Feds and is working out what normal is meant to feel like. She's swapped serial killers, stakeouts and interrogation for a husband, friends and free time. But when you've walked in darkness for so long, can you stand the light? When a local teenager dies in a tragic drowning accident, the community thinks Brigid might be able to help comfort the family.

Behind the gorgeous Georgian sweep of Pelham Crescent, Bath, everyone's getting ready for Christmas. At Number 14, Josie Ballard is up to her ears in brandy, raisins and cherries as she battles to make forty Christmas puddings to sell at Bath Christmas Market. Ever since Giles walked out the day their baby was born, Josie has had to work twice as hard to make ends meet. Sacrificing a career as a chef, her famous steamed puddings keep her and her gorgeous baby boy Titus afloat.

Features an Introduction read by Ian Rankin. Mary Miller had always been an outcast. Burnt in a chemical mix as a young girl, sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community. Now, years later, she is a single mother, caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher. Her son, Sandy, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl.

In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted 'death of print' has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are a thing of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us taxis before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange.

Running out on your wedding day never goes down well. When the pressure of her forthcoming marriage becomes too much, Jude bolts from the church, leaving a good man at the altar, her mother in a fury, and the guests with enough gossip to last a year. Guilty and ashamed, Jude flees to Pengarrock, a crumbling cliff-top mansion in Cornwall, where she takes a job cataloguing the Trevillion family's extensive library.

A prisoner sits on death row in a high-security prison. His only escape is through the words he dreams about, the world he conjures around him using the power of language. For the reality of his world is brutal and stark. He is not named, nor do we know his crime. But he listens. He listens to the story of York, the prisoner in the cell next to him who has been sentenced to death. He hears The Lady, a mitigation specialist who is piecing together York's past. He watches as The Lady falls in love with The Priest and wonders if love is still possible in this place.

As a brilliant young biochemist studying at Oxford, Martin Blackthorn had a bright future ahead of him. And then in the course of a behavioural experiment, he met a boy called John Slade, and in a moment his life took a very different and infinitely darker turn. On the surface John appeared quite normal, but when it came to inflicting pain, his behaviour was off the scale.

The brightest mind meets the darkest killer...1887. When James Murray, a young Scottish doctor fascinated by the workings of the criminal mind, travels to the vibrant city of Turin, it is to study with Cesare Lombroso, the world-renowned criminologist. But just hours after his introduction to Lombroso, the discovery of a horrifically mutilated body in the nearby Piazza Statuto, and a note that appears to implicate the celebrated criminologist himself, changes everything.

Brought up in Switzerland, the only son of well-to-do parents, Charles Fryerne is somewhat unprepared for the world he meets when he goes up to Oxford University in the early 1980s. There he meets a fascinating social set, including a stellar young playwright, a student dubbed 'the future leader of the Conservative party' and a mercurial figure with ambitions to become the youngest prime minister since Pitt. When they leave university, the characters go their separate ways.

Isy woke up one day in her late 20s to discover that the invisible deal she'd done with her best mates - that they'd prolong growing up for as long as possible - had all been in her head. Everyone around her is suddenly into mortgages, farmers' markets and nappies rather than the idea of running naked into the sea or getting hammered in Plymouth with 80-year-old men.

England, 1538. The nation is reeling after the ruthless dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. Cast out of Dartford Priory, Joanna Stafford - feisty, courageous, but scarred by her recent encounter with rebellion at court - is trying to live a quiet life with her five-year-old charge, Arthur. But family connections draw her dangerously close to a treasonous plot and, repelled by violence and the whispered conspiracies around her, Joanna seeks a life with a man who loves her.

Smoke opens in a private boarding school near Oxford, but history has not followed the path known to us. In this other past, sin is a physical attribute, visible to all, and children are born carrying the seeds of evil within them. It is in this school, surrounded by the sons of the wealthy and well connected, that two boys called Thomas and Charlie discover that the world of smoke, soot and ash is not as it seems, for sin has a secret history and virtue a politics both intricate and murderous.

Emily Jones is a new mum: she's bought the swank buggy, planned her labour soundtrack, read the books. Then her little girl actually arrives and Emily realises: she has all the gear, no idea - and only 12 months of maternity leave to figure it out. Lonely but not alone, it's the women Emily befriends in this first year who really see her through to the other side.

An Italian Summer is a novel about friendship, family secrets and second chances, set against the backdrop of Southern Italy. Sandy is in her 50s, and at a crossroads in her life: she's a teacher and respected by her pupils, but she feels she is being sidelined in favour of younger colleagues. So when her mother dies, leaving her a sealed envelope addressed to an unknown woman living in Naples, Sandy decides to head to Italy to resolve the mystery by delivering the letter herself.

Some wounds need more than time. They crave revenge. Claire's father is a privileged man: handsome, brilliant, the product of an aristocratic lineage and an expensive education, surrounded by a group of devoted friends who would do anything for him. But when he becomes the prime suspect in a horrific attack on Claire's mother - a pretty little thing who married into the elite ranks of society and dared escape her gilded cage - fate and privilege collide, and a scandal erupts. Claire's father disappears overnight, his car abandoned, blood on the front seat.

In almost 60 years of professional life, John Tusa has fought for and sometimes against the major arts and political institutions in the country. A distinguished journalist, broadcaster and leader of arts organisations, he has stood up publicly for the independence of the BBC, the need for public funding of the arts and for the integrity of universities. He has made enemies in the process.

Edith was born into a different world. But her rebellious nature brought her to the seedy glamour of the music hall, where she plays the piano by night. Oliver is an illusionist of moderate repute. But he is a man of ambition. He wants to tour the world, to pioneer groundbreaking illusions. History and fate have other ideas. When Edith and Oliver meet, they fall headlong in love. But their children arrive as the world begins to change, as cinemas crowd the high street and the draw of the music hall wanes.

Nurse Connie Byrne has lived and worked through the Second World War, has celebrated its ending with friends and patients in the East End of London and is now enjoying a fresh new chapter in her life and looking forward to her wedding. But, as many a young bride-to-be has proved, the path of true love never runs smooth.... Connie's busy professional life and the characters who are her patients serve to give her a much-needed sense of perspective.