Tense and suspense-filled thriller from the author of The Straw Men and The Lonely Dead.

Notorious serial killer the Upright Man has escaped from a supermax prison. The FBI have no idea how it happened, or where to start looking. Ex-CIA agent Ward Hopkins suspects the Straw Men, a shadowy conspiracy of killers with a macabre agenda.

But apart from Ward’s girlfriend Nina, a discredited federal agent, the only person who believes the Straw Men even exist is John Zandt, a homicide detective obsessed with tracking down his daughter’s killers- and who is now wanted for murder himself.

The terrifying thing is that Ward’s right- his brother was broken out for a reason. The Straw Men are planning something big.

And now only Ward, Nina and Zandt stand between them and a spectacular act of carnage…

An electrifying thriller from the author of the international bestsellerThe Straw Men.

A guilty man walks alone into the cold mountain forests of Washington State, aiming never to return. What he finds there starts a chain of events that will quickly spiral out of control.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles a woman's body is discovered, sitting bolt upright in a motel bedroom. She is dead, and her killer has left his mark. It soon becomes clear he has something to say, and a lot more work to do.

And Ward Hopkins, an ex-CIA agent recovering from the recent shocking death of his parents, is on the trail of his past, tracking down the men who destroyed everything he once held dear, and the murderer whose face he sees every time he looks in the mirror.

These three are ominous strands in a web of deadly secrets, roads to a dark history that should never have been told. There are people who will do anything to protect it. Anything at all. It's not a matter of who dies. We're all going to die.

What matters is who dies last.

Michael Marshall's unique voice adds a chilling intensity to the serial-killer plot, combining dazzling narrative, a white-hot pace and a deeply disturbing backdrop of conspiracy.

Michael Marshall Smith’s surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection.

May we introduce you to Stark.

Oh, and by the way — good luck.

Stark is the private investigator who goes to work when Something Happens to you. And when a Something happens it’s no good chanting ‘go away go away go away’ and cowering in a corner, because a Something always comes from your darkest past and won’t be beaten until you face it. And that’s not easy in a city where reality is twisting and broken, a world in which friends can become enemies in a heartbeat — and where your most secret fear can become a soul-shredding reality.

And the worst of it is, for this nightmare you don’t even have to be asleep…

Considered a modern classic, and consistently featured in lists of Books To Read Before Your Head Explodes, ONLY FORWARD is a novel you'll never forget.

A uniquely dark and elegant tale that illuminates the loneliness of childhood, the pain of loss and the power of imagination. It will charm and haunt its readers in equal measure.

Eleven-year-old Mark is bored. He spends his days on the Brighton sea-front, practicing on his skate-board. His mother is too ill to leave the house, and his stepfather is determined that Mark shouldn’t disturb her. So when the old lady who lives in the flat downstairs introduces him to rock cakes and offers to show him a secret, he’s happy to indulge her.

The old lady takes a large, old-fashioned key and leads Mark down a dusty corridor to a heavy door. Beyond the door is a world completely alien to Mark’s understanding. For behind the old lady’s tiny apartment, the house’s original servants’ quarters are still entirely intact, although derelict. Mark finds himself strangely drawn to this window onto the past, and when, the next time he visits, the old lady falls asleep, he steals the key and goes to visit the servants’ quarters alone.

And suddenly Mark’s life takes a bizarre turn, as the past seems to collide with the present, dreams invade reality and truths become apparent to this hitherto unperceiving boy.

Michael Marshall's unique voice adds a chilling intensity to the serial-killer plot, combining dazzling narrative, a white-hot pace and a deeply disturbing backdrop of conspiracy.

Sarah tries to struggle, but the man holds her. The scream never makes it out of her throat. 'Nobody watching,' the man says with hateful calm. 'I made it this way. I can walk where nobody sees.’

Sarah Becker is the fifth girl to be abducted by this maniac. Judging from the state of the bodies that have been found, her long hair will be hacked off and she will be tortured. She has about a week to live.

Former LA homicide detective John Zandt has an inside track on the perpetrator – his own daughter was one of his victims two years ago.

But the key to Sarah's whereabouts lies with Ward Hopkins, a man with a past so secret not even he knows about it. His parents have just died in a car accident, but they leave Ward a bizarre message that leads him to question everything he once believed to be true.

As he begins to investigate his own past Ward finds himself drawn into the shadowy, sinister world of the Straw Men – and into the desperate race to find Sarah, before her time runs out.

Stories, edited by bestselling authors Neil Gaiman (author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane and the epic American Gods) and Al Sarrantonio, is 'an unmissable collection' (Guardian), filled with distinctive, original and thrilling tales from writers such a Jodi Picoult, Lawrence Block, Roddy Doyle and many more.

Rather than being dictated by genre, for co-editors Gaiman and Sarrantonio there is only one true distinction in fiction: the one dividing realistic and imaginative fiction. STORIES is a collection of the very best original fiction from some of the most imaginative writers in the world, as well as a showcase for some of fiction's newer stars.

One hell of a huge book of great, exciting stories which will become a uniting force for readers of all forms of imaginative fiction.

An unpredictable, poignant, and captivating tale for readers of all ages, by the critically acclaimed author of Only Forward.

There are a million stories in the world. Most are perfectly ordinary.

This one… isn’t.

Hannah Green actually thinks her story is more mundane than most. But she’s about to discover that the shadows in her life have been hiding a world where nothing is as it seems: that there's an ancient and secret machine that converts evil deeds into energy, that some mushrooms can talk — and that her grandfather has been friends with the Devil for over a hundred and fifty years, and now they need her help.

Now a major BBC TV show starring John Simm. Taut, menacing, sinister, gripping, intelligent, action-packed – everything you could want from a thriller.

When ex-LAPD patrol cop Jack Whalen’s wife goes missing on a routine business trip to Seattle, his world is shaken.

Meanwhile, a ten-year-old girl vanishes from a beach in Oregon after an encounter with a sinister stranger – but it gradually becomes clear that she’s very far from defenceless.

Searching for answers in the shadowy secrets of a past that still haunts him, Jack discovers that the truth has roots deeper and darker than he ever feared.