Craig Smith

Cold Rain was one of only five novels shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2011

The author of The Blood Lance and The Painted Messiah demonstrates his versatility with this dark, stylish noir thriller set on and around a Midwestern university campus.

‘I turned thirty-seven that summer, older than Dante when he toured Hell, but only by a couple of years.’

Life couldn’t be better for David Albo, an associate professor of English at a small midwestern university. He lives in an idyllic, out-of-town, plantation-style mansion with a beautiful and intelligent wife and an adoring teenage stepdaughter. As he returns to the university after a long and relaxing sabbatical, there is a full professorship in the offingand, what’s more, he has managed to stay off the booze for two whole years. But, once term begins, things deteriorate rapidly. The damning evidence that he has sexually harassed his students is just the beginning as Dave finds himself sucked into a vortex of conspiracy, betrayal, jealousy, and murder. Unless he can discover quickly who is out to destroy him, all that he is and loves is about to be stripped away.

Reviews

‘A fine novel, suspenseful and impossible to stop reading.’  David Pitt, Booklist

‘You know that dull weekend when the weather doesn’t tempt you to go out and there’s nothing on television? Right – well this is the book you need.’ Sue Macgee, The Bookbag

Craig Smith

An intelligent and superior example of a genre whose popularity shows no signs of abating. It combines a blistering action thriller set in the streets of Zurich and on the lakes and wooded slopes of Switzerland with a compulsive and convincing account of first century Romano-Judaean politics and the real reason for Pontius Pilate’s condemnation and execution of Christ

A legend persists that, after the ‘scourging’, Pilate commanded that his victim be painted from life. Somewhere, the painting survives, the only true image of Christ, granting the gift of everlasting life to whoever possesses it.

Kate Kenyon, the wealthy young widow of an English aristocrat killed on a Swiss mountain, has an addiction to mortal risk. She feeds it by engaging in the armed robbery of priceless artefacts with her accomplice and lover Ethan Brand, a Tennessean who owns a bookshop in Zurich. Their latest target is a priceless ‘Byzantine’ icon hidden in the tower of a chateau by Lake Lucerne. So far they have never had to shoot anyone. This time will be different.

Thomas Malloy is a retired CIA man looking for his first lucrative freelance assignment. His chance comes with a presidential favour to a rich but ailing televangelist. Malloy’s task seems simple enough: pick up the preacher’s newly acquired painting from a Zurich bank and get it to the airport. But, once in Switzerland, Malloy’s old friend, the enigmatic Contessa Claudia de Medici tries to warn him off his mission.

Sir Julian Corbeau is an international criminal holed up in Switzerland to avoid US extradition proceedings. He is also the sadistic head of the modern Knights Templar. He had the painting and now he desperately wants it back as well as to wreak a bloody revenge upon those who stole it.

As the contenders vie for possession the bullets fly, the body count rises and the secrets of the portrait gradually unfold. We learn how and why it came to be painted and how an object depicting the Light of the World could exert such a baleful and malignant influence on those who possess it.

Reviews

‘I got paper friction burns on my fingers and pressure sores elsewhere because I could barely move until I’d finished it. Things were so tense that at several points I had to remind myself to breathe . . This is definitely the book for that long haul flight or the arduous train journey, you’ll be there in a flash, but be sure to pack the portable defibrillator just in case.’ 
Dovegreyreader’s literary blog

‘A marvellously thrilling book . . . the distinction between villain and hero is constantly blurred. . . a most enthralling story.’
Paul Doherty, author of the Hugh Corbett mysteries

‘A rattling good yarn.  Fast paced, exciting and very very filmic.’  
Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover literary blog

C. David Ingram

‘I guess the end justifies the means. At least that’s what I believe. Most of the time.’

After the accident, DC Cameron Stone had spent three months in intensive care before he could even recall what happened: the high speed pursuit of a vice baron through the night streets of Glasgow that had not only almost finished him but had taken the life of a teenage mother and her child. Then there’d been the message from Audrey on the back of a ‘get well soon’ card announcing that she had left him and taken their young son, Mark, with her. Booze, anti-depressants and therapy have all failed to enable him to resume his old job.

So now Stone lives in a one-room flat in the worst part of town. He pays the rent by running errands for a private detective agency. His tasks include tracking down a teenage runaway and surveillance for a woman who thinks her husband is sleeping with her sister. He’s also paid by his former colleagues, doing the work that’s not quite clean enough for them to do themselves- like putting the fear of God into Jason Campbell, a newly released sex offender whose been seen hanging around the local High School in his soft-top Mercedes.

Stone is having a bad week. Audrey is getting difficult about contact arrangements for Mark. She’s moved into the plush home of a plastic surgeon: there’s talk of marriage- and adoption for Mark. He finds his runaway in a brothel and just gets roughed-up for his trouble. There’s the knife wielding kids who try to mug him on the stairs and the daubing on his front door: Burn in Hell Baby Killer. The only brightness on his horizon is his growing friendship with Liz, the sunny Irish nurse who lives on the next floor. But then petrol is poured through his letterbox and his flat ablaze. And now a stranger has turned up at the school and driven off with his son…

Reviews

‘There were some stunning debuts this year, but if I had to pick one it would be this world class Scottish thriller… with a cracking storyline and dialogue so authentic you can here the neds speak, this Paisley author scores a massive hit with a debut that promises to be the start of something big.’ Shari Low, The Daily Record

‘This great first book makes me want to read the next instalment – Ingram having promised some interesting times ahead for Cameron Stone.’  Paul Blackburn, Eurocrime

Janis Cooke Newman

(May 20th)
Mrs Mary Lincoln admitted today – from Chicago – Age 56 – Widow of ex-President Lincoln – declared insane by the Cook County Court May 19th – 1875.

Patient Progress Reports for Bellevue Place Sanatorium.

Incarcerated in an insane asylum after committal proceedings instigated by her own son, Mary Lincoln resolves to tell her own story in order to preserve and to prove her own sanity. Details of her first encounters with Abraham Lincoln, their courtship, marriage and troubled relationship are interspersed with disturbing accounts of the ‘treatment’ and behaviour of the women around her as she fights to be released from the sanatorium.

Reviews

‘I could not put [Mrs Lincoln] down and as I read it, I wept. I cannot recommend a book more… a very powerful novel.’ Pat Schroeder, President of the Association of American Publishers

‘…one of those rare books that turns the reader into an admiring fan of both the author and her subject. You feel a compulsion to urge others to read it…Newman gives Mary a riveting voice.’ USA Today

‘… immensely readable, close-to-life story of America’s best known and most controversial First Lady. Sensitive to the facts as well as graced by realistic dialogue and an empathetic portrayal of places and people, including Abraham Lincoln, Mary finally tells her own story. This is historical fiction at its best.’ Jean H. Baker, author of Mary Lincoln: A Biography

Sally Zigmond

Stoical and industrious Carrie and carefree and vivacious May lose both home and livelihood when their Leeds pub is sold out from under them to make way for the coming of the railway. They head for Harrogate to find work and lodging in the spa town’s burgeoning hotel trade. But the sisters fall prey to fraudsters and predators and are also driven apart by misunderstanding, pride and a mutual sense of betrayal and resentment. May’s fate is a high-class brothel from which her escape leads only to hunger in the slums of Paris. Carrie becomes a virtual slave to the vicious hostess of a filthy boarding house and the victim of her vindictive son.

Alex Sinclair, a bold and warm-spirited Scot, has eschewed the wishes of his father to become a railway engineer. His companion, Charles Hammond is the dissolute heir to a vast fortune, withheld from him by an overbearing mother and grasping stepfather. Charles bides his time as a physician, a profession for which he lacks both aptitude and enthusiasm. The futures of both men will become bound up with those of the two sisters.

As time passes the sisters overcome their adversities: May becomes the most sought after dressmaker in Paris; Carrie, the proprietor of the most successful hotel in Harrogate. Feeling spurned by Carrie, Alex pours himself obsessively into new railway projects. Meanwhile, having been almost destroyed through gambling, drunkenness and self-loathing, Charles starts on the long and difficult road to redemption and fulfilment.

Carrie and May have now been estranged for several years. There seems little hope of reconciliation or of either of them or finding love and lasting happiness. But this is 1848, the ‘Year of Revolutions’. The streets of Paris erupt in bloody insurrection… while Alex Sinclair is commissioned to bring the railway to Harrogate.

Reviews

‘This novel is almost an epic, which jumps from Harrogate to Paris and back again as the two sisters pursue happiness, with friends, but also enemies and at times the reader wonders if either will ever have a quiet life. . . as far as a rollicking story goes, this should satisfy readers who like epic novels.’ Historicalnovelreviews