Mark Meadows

'The first rule is that you don't fall in love. There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. Because otherwise, of course, you slowly lose your mind . . .' Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but he was born in 1581. Owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. From Shakespeare's England to jazz age Paris and voyaging the Pacific,...

It is the tutor who tells the young Gustav that he must try to be more like a coconut - that he needs a hard shell to protect the softness inside. This is what his native Switzerland has perfected - a shell to protect its neutrality, to keep its people safe. But his beloved friend, Anton, doesn't want to be safe - a gifted pianist, he longs to make his mark on the world outside. On holiday one summer in Davos, the boys stumble across a remote building....

Danny is obsessed with two things: football- especially City Football Club - and investigating crimes. When England and City footballing hero Sam Roberts is reported missing the day after Danny saw him being taken, blindfolded, into the bowels of the City FC stadium late at night, he's determined to get to the bottom of it.

Denis is searching for his mother?s past, knowing she had secrets. In Nice, he finds her friends, Monique and Clemence. In the 1950s, they were Matisse?s assistants when he was old and ill, pinning up his coloured paper shapes, putting the great cut out works together. Monique inspired his great designs in the chapel at Vence, Clemence, in pursuit of love, was caught in an affair that led to violence and disaster. So they have their own intense and...