The Spy Paramount

The Spy Paramount

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Mystery & Thrillers / Romance / Short Stories

Rome, 1934. Martin Fawley leaves the American secret service and is recruited by General Berati, the most feared man in fascist Italy, as a spy. After a brief encounter with a glamorous yet murderous Italian princess, Fawley's mission takes him undercover to Monaco. Suave and worldly, Fawley is quite at home in the casinos and golf courses of Monte Carlo – but he is soon entangled in a game with higher stakes. As the nations of Europe vie for power, Fawley discovers the secret weapon that will determine the outcome of the looming war.This classic thriller – undoubtedly an influence on Ian Fleming's James Bond novels – is now republished for the first time since the 1930s. With its yachts and cocktail parties, its steely hero and brutal assassins, and its cinematic range across the cities of Europe, this is a gripping and sophisticated tale of a spy who saves the world.
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The Great Impersonation

The Great Impersonation

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Mystery & Thrillers / Romance / Short Stories

East Africa, 1913. The disgraced English aristocrat Everard Dominey stumbles out of the bush, and comes face to face with his lookalike – the German Baron von Ragastein. Months later, Dominey returns to London and resumes his glittering social life. But is it really Dominey who has come back– or a German secret agent seeking to infiltrate English high society? As international tension mounts and the great powers of Europe move closer to war, Dominey finds himself entangled in a story of suspicion and intrigue. He must try to evade his insane and murderous wife as well as escape the attentions of the passionate Princess Eiderstrom – and will eventually uncover the secret of the ghost that haunts his ancestral home.This classic thriller was hugely popular when it was first published in 1920, selling over one million copies in that year alone, and was filmed three times. It was selected by the Guardian as one of 1000 novels everyone must read.
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The Drosten's Curse

The Drosten's Curse

A. L. Kennedy

Literature & Fiction / Contemporary / Nonfiction

From award-winning author A.L. Kennedy, an original Doctor Who novel featuring the beloved Fourth Doctor, as played by Tom Baker."I shall make you the jewel at the heart of the universe."Something distinctly odd is going on in Arbroath. It could be to do with golfers being dragged down into the bunkers at the Fetch Brothers' Golf Spa Hotel, never to be seen again. It might be related to the strange twin grandchildren of the equally strange Mrs Fetch--owner of the hotel and fascinated with octopuses. It could be the fact that people in the surrounding area suddenly know what others are thinking, without anyone saying a word.Whatever it is, the Doctor is most at home when faced with the distinctly odd. With the help of Fetch Brothers' Junior Receptionist Bryony, he'll get to the bottom of things. Just so long as he does so in time to save Bryony from quite literally losing her mind, and the entire world from destruction.Because something huge,...
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The Flight of the Golden Bird

The Flight of the Golden Bird

Duncan Williamson

Duncan Williamson

Duncan Williamson, one of Scotland's Travelling People, has been celebrated as the bearer of Scotland's greatest national treasure: the richest trove of story and song in Europe. In this collection, he passes on some of these wonderful children's folk and fairy tales, collected from sixty years of travelling around Scotland. This collection includes stories about silver horses and golden birds, cunning lions and trilling nightingales, brave princesses and magic scarecrows, the four seasons and old Father Time. At the heart of each story is a lesson about life and what it means to be a good person. The stories have been written down as faithfully as possible to Duncan's unique storytelling voice, full of colour, humour and life.
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The Coming of the Unicorn

The Coming of the Unicorn

Duncan Williamson

Duncan Williamson

Stories are something you carry with you, something to last your entire life, to be passed on to your children, and their children for evermore.' Duncan Williamson came from a family of Travelling People, who told stories around the campfire for entertainment and for teaching. As a child, Duncan learnt the ways of the world through stories: 'My father's knowledge told us how to live in this world as natural human beings -- not to be greedy, not to be foolish, not to be daft or selfish -- by stories.' In this collection, he passes on some of these wonderful children's folk and fairy tales. For over sixty years Duncan travelled around Scotland -- on foot, then in a horse and cart, and later an old van -- collecting tales, which not only come from the Travelling People but from the crofters, farmers and shepherds he met along the way. This collection includes tales about cunning foxes and storytelling cats, hunchbacked ogres and beautiful unicorns, helpful broonies and mysterious...
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Jack and the Devil's Purse

Jack and the Devil's Purse

Duncan Williamson

Duncan Williamson

Devil stories are always fascinating, entertaining and disturbing. These twenty tales, re-told by one of Scotland's master storytellers, are a fascinating insight into Traveller beliefs about evil, temptation and suffering in which the Devil exists not to punish, but to outwit you in a contest of intelligence and knowledge. This collection is an expanded edition of Duncan Williamson's best-selling May the Devil Walk Behind Ye!, originally published by Canongate.
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The King and the Lamp

The King and the Lamp

Duncan Williamson

Duncan Williamson

Introduced by Barbara McDermittThe telling of tales and the oral tradition in Scotland has long and honourable history, both in the annals of the folk and in the more formal pages of literary publication. Writers as different as Hogg, Scott, Stevenson, Cunninghame Graham, Buchan, Grassic Gibbon and Alasdair Gray have all drawn on the form or the voice or the features of the folk tale.Duncan Williamson, arguably the greatest traditional tale teller in modern times, is a master of this spellbinding art, and here in a single volume Linda Williamson has gathered together some of the most memorable tales in his repertoire.Transcribed from recorded sessions for the sound archives of the School of Scottish Studies, these twenty-six stories give us privileged access to the travellers' fireside with stories of talking animals; of the broonie, selkies and fairies; of cunning Jack's adventures; of kings and giants in long tales for the winter nights.'An extraordinary...
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Staying Cool

Staying Cool

E C Sheedy

E C Sheedy

A novelette: approximately 50 pages (12,000 words)Raven Force: Story #2Patrick Byrne is doing his job, which at the moment means standing in driving rain getting his butt soaked, waiting for the lights to go out on the house across the street. It's a two-bit P.I. job—that he's not happy about—keeping tabs on a high-class hooker named Silver, a woman who's been double-crossing her highest paying client, a very possessive Daddy Big Bucks.Or so Patrick's been told.What he hasn't been told is that he knows Silver from another time, another place, when he wasn't a two-bit P.I. and Silver didn't have "clients." Hell, she even had another name.Back then there'd been talk of love and one of those happily-ever-after scenarios everyone's so high on. Until, without so much as a good-bye, she'd taken off—disappeared—left him flash frozen on a street corner with egg on his mug and a clutch of wilted roses in his fist.She'd made a raw fool of him, and he wasn't up for a second helping of heartache. So...Cool. He'd stay cool. He'd complete his report for Mister Big Bucks and move on—double time.Good plan, maybe a great plan—until some guy the size of a semi follows his woman into her house and holds a pillow over her beautiful face.That's a game changer and, like it or not, Patrick is drawn into a dangerous scheme--the kind of scheme both Silver and the Raven Force are expert at.
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The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series)

The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series)

Douglas Clegg

Douglas Clegg

There's a new Nightwatchman at Harrow -- the most haunted house in the world. In this all-out horror chiller from award-winning and bestselling novelist Douglas Clegg, the old abandoned mansion on the edge of town infects the dreams and nightmares of those who sleep. Children turn against parents, old friends arrive with hatchets in hand -- and only a handful of people are strong enough to resist the seductive whisper of Harrow's haunting.The Horror of the Damned...What's been trapped inside the house has begun leaking like a poison into the village itself. A teenage girl sleeps too much, but when she awakens her nightmares break loose. A little boy encounters the ultimate fear when the house calls to him. A young woman must face unspeakable terror to keep Harrow from destroying everything she loves.And somewhere within the house, a demented child waits with teeth like knives.Warning: Not for the faint of heart or squeamish."Clegg's stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby." - Dean Koontz"Clegg is the best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation."- Bentley Little, bestselling author of The Haunting."Douglas Clegg has become the new star in horror fiction." - Peter Straub, NY Times bestselling author of The Talisman (with Stephen King) and Ghost Story.
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Toxic Treacle

Toxic Treacle

Echo Freer

Echo Freer

Toxic Treacle is a dystopian thriller for Young Adults. It is set in a society where female nurturers have excluded males from all aspects of child rearing other than breeding and financial maintenance. Monkey is 15: a pre-breeder and he will soon graduate to the male zones at the other side of town. Angel, the pre-nurturer that he loves is destined for a life of child rearing and nurturing. Society is run on the oppressive rules of T.R.E.A.C.L.E. - Training and Resources for Educating Adolescent Children in a Loving Environment. But it is not what it seems and people are going missing, including Monkey's best mate, Tragic. Monkey and Angel set out to find Tragic but discover a world of intrigue, murder and toxicity that puts their own lives at risk.
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