Look around you. Who holds the most power in the room? Is it the one who speaks loudest, who looks the part, who has the most money, who commands the most respect? Or perhaps it's someone like Christine Butcher: a meek, overlooked figure who silently bears witness as information is shared and secrets are whispered. Someone who quietly, perhaps even unwittingly, gathers together knowledge of the people she's there to serve - the ones who don't notice...

Lindsey Hutchinson returns with another Black Country saga perfect for fans of Josephine Cox. Violet Clancy can take no more of her violent stepfather's attentions, so when he meets a tragic end she feels justice has been done. Looking around the bleak and pitiless Black Country town of Wednesbury, she realises that there are many other wrongs that she could help to put right. Joining a coterie of women who call themselves The Wednesbury Wives, Violet...

Norah has just moved from Berlin to Vienna in order to leave her old life behind her for good when a homeless woman spits these words at her. Norah is unnerved: many years earlier, something terrible happened to her on February 11. She shrugs this off as a mere coincidence, however, until shortly afterwards she meets a man called Arthur Grimm. Soon Norah begins to have a dreadful suspicion: does she have a good reason to take revenge on Grimm? What...

Claymore Straker is trying to forget a violent past. Working as an oil company engineer in the wilds of Yemen, he is hijacked at gunpoint by Islamic terrorists. Clay has a choice: help uncover the cause of a mysterious sickness afflicting the village of Al Urush, close to the company?s oil-processing facility, or watch Abdulkader, his driver and close friend, die. As the country descends into civil war and village children start dying, Clay finds...

Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish. Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance,...

Mia has her life in order. She is a grown up and enjoys a grown up's relationship with Pete. Not passionate or spontaneous, but solid. She knows he is 'the one'. But then she sees a text message on Pete's phone that throws her world into a spin. It is more than friendly, signed off with a kiss, and Mia has never heard of the sender, Liz. With her carefully mapped out life sliding out of control Mia will discover a side to herself she never knew existed,...

John Milton has done some bad things in his life. Very bad things. Now he's looking for ways to make amends. But trouble always seems to be looking for him. Heading from San Francisco to Las Vegas, Milton's solo road trip takes an unexpected turn when he picks up Jessica Russo, a young woman in distress at the side of the road. She urgently needs a ride and he's happy to help her out. But what starts out as a simple favour quickly becomes something...

'There was a smug satisfaction in the knowledge that her friend?s picture-perfect life was tainted by a dirty secret. Quinn may be far from perfect, but she?d always have that over Hannah.' Old friends Hannah and Quinn have grown apart over the years as their lives take them in opposite directions. Hannah cares for her three young children, her career on hold, while Quinn has a successful job in advertising, where she works hard and plays harder....

Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated...

In Colombia you have to pick a side. Or one will be picked for you ... All Pedro Guti�rrez cares about is fishing, playing pool and his girlfriend Camila?s promise to sleep with him on his sixteenth birthday. But his life is ripped apart when Guerrilla soldiers callously execute his father in front of him, and he and his mother are banished from their farm. Swearing vengeance against the five men responsible, Pedro, with his best friend Palillo,...