Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. The Big Sleep finds the world-weary, wisecracking investigator consulted by a wealthy family man with two big problems: his children. Carmen Sternwood has got herself mixed up with ...

A BBC Radio 4 drama in which professional illusionist, Will Morgan, fronts a TV show in which he exposes spiritualist mediums as frauds. 'Haunted' was originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 19 January 2011. Hayley Taylor is the spiritualist medium who refuses to back down under illusionist Will's scrutiny - a challenge Will can't walk away from. Both are to have their belief systems sorely tested when a voice from one of their pasts refuses to keep silent... Starring Steffan Rhodr...

Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. In Playback, Marlowe is awakened early in the morning by a phone call from a lawyer. Clyde Umney instructs him to meet the eight o’clock train from Chicago, and shadow one of the pa...

The Maltese Falcon is the definitive masterpiece of the hard-boiled detective genre. It introduces legendary PI Sam Spade, a loner who follows his own code and the rules of the street as he zeros in on his partner’s killer and the famous jewel-encrusted bird. Humphrey Bogart immortalized the tough-guy detective in the classic 1941 film.

A cult classic in the United Kingdom since its first publication there in the 1970s, Don’t Point That Thing at Me is the first of a series of hilarious and dark-humored crime thrillers featuring the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai, degenerate aristocrat, amoral art dealer, seasoned epicurean, unwilling assassin, and acknowledged coward.With his thuggish manservant, the incomparably named Jock Strapp, Mortdecai endures all manner of nastiness involving stolen paintings, a vinta...

In This Sweet Sickness, David Kelsey has an unyielding conviction that life will turn out all right for him; he just has to fix “the situation” of being in love with a married woman. Obsessed with Annabelle and the life he has imagined for them, David prepares to win her over, whatever it takes.In this riveting tale of a deluded loner, Highsmith reveals her uncanny ability to draw out the secret obsessions that overwhelm the human heart.

England, 1255. What could drive a girl on the cusp of womanhood to lock herself away from the world forever?Sarah is just seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a cell that measures only seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth as well as pressure to marry the local lord’s son, she decides to renounce the world—with all its dangers, desires, and temptations—and commit ...

Once upon a time, though not so long ago, there was a girl named April Kyle–a beautiful teenage runaway who turned to prostitution to escape her terrible family life. Now, April Kyle’s return in Hundred-Dollar Baby is nothing short of shocking.When a mature, beautiful, and composed woman strides into Spenser’s office, the Boston PI barely hesitates before recognizing his once and future client. Now a well-established madam herself, April is still looking for Spenser’s appro...

“Robert B. Parker is that rarity–a prolific author whose books are consistently original, suspenseful and fascinating. His crackling dialogue is always fresh and smart-alecky. You’re happily hooked before you know it.”-ForbesHeidi Bradshaw is wealthy, beautiful, and well connected–and she needs Spenser’s help. In a most unlikely request, Heidi, a notorious gold digger recently separated from her latest husband, recruits the Boston P.I. to accompany her to her private islan...

Lily Ellsworth--erect, firm, white-haired, and stylish--is the grand dame of Dowling, Massachusetts, and possesses an iron will and a bottomless purse. When she hires Spenser to investigate her grandson Jared Clark's alleged involvement in a school shooting, Spenser is led into an inquiry that grows more harrowing at every turn. Though seven people were killed in cold blood, and despite Jared's being named as a co-conspirator by the other shooter, Mrs. Ellsworth is convinced of her grandso...

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, distinguished historian, and bestselling author Barbara W. Tuchman finally turns her sights homeward. Here she analyzes the American Revolution in a brilliantly original way, placing the war in the historical context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland, demonstrating how the aid of both of these nations made the triumph of American independence possible. She sheds new light on the key role played by the contendi...

To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny, and bitterness.Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence, and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.