The Naming of The Dead

Ian Rankin

July 2005, and the G8 leaders have gathered in Scotland. With daily marches, demonstrations, and scuffles, the police are at full stretch. Detective Inspector John Rebus, however, has been sidelined, until the apparent suicide of an MP coincides with clues that a serial killer may be on the loose. The authorities are keen to hush up both, for fear of overshadowing a meeting of global importance - but Rebus has never been one to stick to the rules, and when his colleague Siobhan Clarke finds herself hunting down the identity of the riot cop who assaulted her mother, it looks as though both Rebus and Clarke may be up pitted against both sides in the conflict.

THE NAMING OF THE DEAD is a potent mix of action and politics, set against a backdrop of the most devastating week in recent British history.

Undertow

By Warren Adler

This explosive novel centers around a U.S. senator with presidential aspirations and the trauma he faces when his girlfriend drowns during a weekend tryst. It dramatically details the action taken by the senator and his staff in a desperate attempt to manipulate the media and preserve his political viability.

Here is a gripping and fast-paced story that unlocks the mystery of today’s political dilemma by a writer with first-hand experience in the methods used to create and promote political leaders. Its theme is the obsession with image—the facade of perfection and innocence—of those who seek power above all else.

The Mayan Glyph

By Larry Baxter

A team of archaeologists in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula accidentally triggers a viral epidemic. Medical researcher Robert Asher uncovers a mysterious glyph, chiseled into a stela in Uxmal in the ninth century, hinting that the ancient Maya may have been decimated by an identical virus. This leads to the possibility of a cure that could be the key to saving millions of lives. Asher and Maya scholar Teresa Welles seek the answer in Uxmal and in caves below Tulum. The stakes escalate quickly as the virus spreads, but an unexpected armed force defends the caves...

Cross Bones

By Kathy Reichs

'Death by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head' is the on-scene assessment, but the victim's relatives are adamant in their rejection of suicide as an explanation. Discovered in a closet, a full week after death, the body is barely recognisable. Extreme heat has accelerated decomposition, and Dr Temperance Brennan's forensic expertise is required. Advanced putrefaction has made it virtually impossible to determine the trajectory of the bullet. But just as Tempe is attempting to make sense of the fracture patterning, an unknown man slips her a photograph of a skeleton, telling her it holds the answer to the victim's death...Detective Andrew Ryan is also on the case and, as his relationship with Tempe heats up, together they follow the trail of clues all the way to Israel. In the Holy Land, with the help of Jacob Drum, a biblical archaeologist and old friend, Tempe becomes involved in an international mystery as old as Jesus, a mystery that could rewrite 2000 years of religious history. Could one of the tombs really be Christ's last resting place? And are the bones in the ancient ossuary the last remnants of James, the brother of Jesus, as its inscription claims? But the further Tempe probes into the identity of the ancient skeleton, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger...

THE SUNDAY TIMES said: "Religion has previously not figured prominently in Kathy Reichs’s novels, and the fact that her latest involves fanatical believers battling to stop secrets about Jesus emerging suggests that she is responding to the success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Largely set in Israel, Cross Bones features two skeletons that might be Christ’s, a tomb that might be his family’s, plus clues that he could have been alive at the time of the siege of Masada in AD73 and that his followers fought there with other anti-Roman insurgents — discoveries that, if genuine, threaten several official versions of history".

A Plea of Insanity

By Priscilla Masters

ENTER THE WORLD of Greatbach Psychiatrist Unit in Stoke on Trent. A world of paranoia, madness and psychotic personalities. This is the world Doctor Claire Roget enters when she replaces her heroine Doctor Heidi Faro. But her predecessor met an untimely end at the hands of one of her own patients in the very room Claire now has to work from. Trying to put aside the history of her office, Claire takes on the patients Heidi was trying to help - but is one of them her killer? The conviction of a previously gentle but brain-damaged patient does not assuage her suspicions over the next few months that the actual person who killed her is still free, albeit within the Unit. But as Claire becomes more and more embroiled in the search for the murderer, so her own life becomes a tightrope between police cooperation, patient confidentiality and her own personal safety. And when one of the nurses disappears in suspicious circumstances, her fears become a reality.Once again Priscilla Masters spins a psychologically thrilling tale of intrigue, mistrust, deception and murder. A page-turner from beginning to end, fans of Masters will be enthralled whilst new readers will discover an author to savour.

Sight Unseen

By Robert Goddard

THE ANCIENT STONE site of Avebury in Wiltshire must have seen many comings and goings over the centuries but in 1981 it saw the abduction of a toddler and the death of young child, leaving the remaining sibling traumatised for years to come. No-one was quite sure what happened it took place so fast, and everyone who was witness to the event found their futures embroiled in the mystery of what really occurred that day. Now, more than two decades later, and after the confession and conviction from a known paedophile, the case is suddenly resurrected by an anonymous note sent to the police officer in charge of the original inquiry. Signed by an eighteenth century polemicist known as 'Junius', the plot thickens for PhD student David Umber, a witness of the event whose specialist subject at the time was discovering exactly who 'Junius' really was. Finding himself tracked down and embroiled in the search for the real kidnapper, Umber enters a world of secrets, mistrust and violence, drawing him in deeper and deeper as he comes closer to discovering exactly what did happen that day in Avebury 1981. A master storyteller, Robert Goddard, slowly but surely draws the reader in with plots and counterplots, suspects and red herrings till the final cataclysmic finale. Expert descriptive narrative brings the subjects and their surroundings to vivid life whilst the historical background to the discovery of the true 'Junius' displays research of an almost unparalleled level. A great read for fans of traditionally written thrillers.