New York, December 1941.

Joseph Gunner, former soldier, is off the front lines and on the streets of New York, tasked with helping tip America into the Second World War.

Working for a section of the British Secret Service, Gunner spends his days covertly encouraging pro-war sentiment through planted news stories, radio broadcasts and even blackmail.

But when a honeytrap mission with a prominent US politician goes wrong and the young woman involved is found dead, Gunner realises he has a target on his back. Who silenced her? Who knew their plan? And who has betrayed Gunner?

As he investigates, Gunner is plunged into the secretive world of Nazis in America, the NYPD and the mobs of New York, as the body count quickly stacks up. With world events accelerating, Gunner finds himself in a race against time before he becomes the next victim. Soon, he'll uncover a conspiracy that goes beyond what he thought was possible.

A riveting and atmospheric wartime thriller, Deception is the second novel in the acclaimed Joseph Gunner series.

'Olly Smith brings his legendary nose to detecting dark and troubling notes in the vinous twittens of Lewes'
RICHARD COLES, author of Murder Before Evensong

🍷In an idyllic Sussex town, murder is fermenting… 🍷

Barclay Flint is the charmingly eccentric proprietor of The Bottle Bank wine shop, nestled in a picturesque Sussex town renowned for its gloriously anarchic Bonfire Night celebration.

Barclay can taste a kaleidoscopic universe in a single glass of wine and delights in matching customers to the grapes of their dreams. But when his close friend, struggling regenerative vineyard owner Victor Crawshaw, is found dead, Barclay finds himself a prime suspect.

To crack the case and clear his name, Barclay must deploy his wine detection skills and follow his nose through the rolling Sussex hills where a tangle of old resentments and rivalries awaits to ensnare him.

With a killer on the loose and Bonfire Night fast approaching, the town crackles with anticipation. This year the fireworks might not be the only things to explode…

Join Barclay and his friends from The Bottle Bank in this sparkling debut novel by wine expert Olly Smith. It's time to uncork the most exuberant and irresistible mystery of the year!

'What a wonderful debut… Barclay Flint is a brilliantly drawn, vibrant character – an unforgettable new detective with flair and wit' MEL PENNANT, author of A Murder for Miss Hortense

'Death by Noir is cosy crime at its finest: vintage storytelling with a modern twist. I loved it' CHARLOTTE PHILBY, author of Dirty Money

'Mick Herron is our best and most topical spy writer' Ian Rankin

'Clown Town is a masterpiece' India Knight, Sunday Times

'An authentic megastar of the genre' Sam Leith, Guardian

'No one can rival Mick Herron' The Times

'A superb thriller' The Spectator

'Masterly' Times Literary Supplement, books of the year

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MI5's First Desk, Diana Taverner, doesn't appreciate threats.

So when those involved in a covert operation during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland threaten to expose the ugly side of state security, Taverner goes on the offensive. And when that happens, people get hurt.

Over at Slough House, the repository for failed spies, the slow horses are hard at work: belittling each other, pushing paper, and marking time. Their boss, Jackson Lamb, wants them at their desks, but the slow horses are always looking for a way back on to Spook Street.

Meanwhile, another slow horse, River Cartwright, is waiting to be passed fit for work. At a loose end, and with his grandfather – a legendary former spy – long dead, River investigates the secrets of the old man's library, and a mysteriously missing book. What stories will it hold? And who wants those stories to stay silent?

After all, spies lie, they betray, it's what they do.

*Mick Herron's Clown Town was a Sunday Times Number Four bestseller in hardback in the second week of September 2025

'More than a cosy crime mystery . . . it's the story of a community' Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things

Death has come to her doorstep . . .

Retired nurse, avid gardener, renowned cake maker and fearless sleuth Miss Hortense has lived in Bigglesweigh, a quiet Birmingham suburb, since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. She takes great pride in her home, starching her lace curtains bright white, and she can tell if she's been short-changed on turmeric before she's even taken her first bite of a beef patty. Thirty-five years of nursing have also left her afraid of nobody – be they a local drug dealer or a priest – and an expert in deciphering other people's secrets with just a glance.

Miss Hortense uses her skills to investigate the investments of the Pardner network – a special community of Black investors, determined to help their people succeed. But when an unidentified man is found dead in one of the Pardner's homes, a Bible quote noted down beside his body, Miss Hortense's long-buried past comes rushing back to greet her, bringing memories of the worst moment of her life, one which her community has never let her forget.

It is time for Miss Hortense to solve a mystery that will see her, and the community she loves, tested to their limits.

'A vibrant tribute to the Windrush generation' Jessica Bull, author of Miss Austen Investigates

‘Wonderfully entertaining’ John Banville, author of Booker Prize-winning The Sea

‘Wolff is the new maestro’ Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Head of British Intelligence is having a bad day. Only six months off retirement and Sir William Rentoul is wondering if he’ll make it that far, what with the sudden descent of a brain fog dense enough to turn every day into a series of small humiliations.

To make matters worse, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee – the body that oversees Sir William – has received an anonymous complaint from one of his officers. Sir William dimly recalls accepting that there should be a channel for whistleblowers, but he never expected that they would pick his most sensitive case, one involving an Iranian assassin and a trail of dead bodies, or that the person who turned up to poke their nose into his files should be a lowly parliamentary researcher named Aphra McQueen, who displays smarts, tenacity and rebelliousness in unsettling measures.

Aphra seems to know more about the operation than she is letting on. What will she uncover? What is she really up to? And can she survive the unexpected events that will bounce her from London to Birmingham to Paris to Lausanne?

‘Extraordinarily good’ The Spectator

A memorable voice in the genre’ New York Times

*Pre-order now!*

‘Blending academia, history and danger, this high-stakes thriller will have your heart pounding’ Woman & Home

For over a century two rival organisations of women have gone to deadly lengths to secure a precious scrap of fraying embroidery in the hopes of finding the original medieval manuscript from which it was torn.

There’s the Order of St Katherine: devoted to the belief that women must pull strings in the shadows in order to exercise covert control. And the Fellowship of the Larks: determined to amass as many overt positions of power for women as possible . . . while making sure their methods never come to light.

When trailblazing paleographer Dr Anya Brown is headhunted by the exclusive Institute of Manuscript Studies at St Andrews, she’s unaware that she is in grave danger – her new employers are the Larks, and they’ll stop at nothing to achieve their mission.

As Dr Brown is drawn deeper into this ancient web, events spiral beyond her control. To uncover the truth, and escape with her life, she must summon all her expertise to decipher a series of messages that have lain hidden for centuries.

An exhilarating and page-turning race against time, The Burning Library whisks you from the hallowed cloisters of Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews to the stunning medieval Italian city of Verona.

‘A notably original protagonist . . . swept up in a high-level conspiracy reaching from Whitehall’s corridors of power to Berlin and Rudolf Hess’s doomed flight to Scotland . . . enthralling’ Financial Times

‘Great storytelling . . . I loved it’ Peter James, #1 bestselling author of the Roy Grace series

March 1941. Joseph Gunner is back on the streets of Glasgow after being wounded on the front lines in France.

Keeping the pain in his leg at bay with the help of morphine, Gunner, a former detective, is hoping to lie low as the Luftwaffe begins bombing Glasgow.

But when he runs into his old boss Drummond, he is persuaded to help examine a body found in the wreckage. When it turns out to be that of a German, mutilated to disguise his identity, Gunner reluctantly agrees to investigate.

As he begins to hunt for the truth Gunner runs into old flames and bitter enemies, before finding himself embroiled in a high-level conspiracy that reaches far beyond his hometown of Glasgow.

Partly inspired by the true story of Rudolf Hess’s secret mission to broker appeasement with Britain during the Second World War, Gunner is an atmospheric and addictive new thriller from one of Britain’s best-loved writers.

‘Great stuff . . . a vivid sense of place and time and what a main character!’ Ian Rankin, #1 bestselling author of the Rebus series

Discover the lost masterpiece from the father of Celtic noir

The Inn Closes for Christmas is a deliciously dark and haunting tale of one man’s nightmarish obsession and how far he’ll go to escape it. For fans of Shirley Jackson, MR James, and Andrew Michael Hurley, rediscover this forgotten classic.

The Bank manager, as he had done for so many Christmases now, opened the file. And as always, as he opened it he wondered why he must do this each year. For the man had asked him that he should do this every Christmas for as long as he should live.

In the file, the bank manager sifts through some papers – local newspaper cuttings, a pathologist report, a statement from the town’s dentist William Sterrill, and a death notice for his wife, Mrs Doreen Sterrill. But it is the last paper that stops him in his tracks. It is the confession of William Sterrill.

In William’s confession we learn about the terrible accident that caused his wife to have her leg amputated, the prosthetic leg she then had to wear, how this leg slowly drives William to murder, and then the descent into madness as we walk through William’s nightmares, visions, and thoughts.

The Inn Closes for Christmas is also accompanied by a selection of short stories, full of the uncanny and creepy where Hughes points us towards the darkest places in the human psyche with the lightest of touches.

‘A rich, gothic mystery, The Salvage has a moody, salt-drenched atmosphere, and layers of intrigue that span centuries. I couldn’t put it down’ Flynn Berry, New York Times bestselling author of A Double Life

It is 1962, and Marta Khoury, a trail-blazing marine archaeologist, has travelled to Cairnroch, a small island off the east coast of Scotland. An Arctic shipwreck containing the remains of a famous Victorian explorer has been towed back to the island at the behest of his wealthy descendants. Marta’s job is to retrieve valuable artefacts from the vessel, deep beneath the freezing Scottish waters. But on her first dive, she becomes convinced she has seen a ghostly figure lurking in the wreckage.

When Marta discovers objects from the vessel have inexplicably disappeared, she must work to uncover their whereabouts before her boss – who is also her ex-husband – discovers their absence. As a series of unsettling and strange occurrences begins to unfold, Marta’s work trip turns into a long winter as the worst snowstorms of the century sweep in and trap the islanders, and their ghosts, in an icy wilderness.