'"I should imagine this was murder, too, because it would be very difficult to build yourself into a heap of sandbags and then die..."' In the blackout conditions of a wintry London night, amateur sleuth Agnes Kinghof and a young air-raid warden have stumbled upon a corpse stowed in the walls of their street's bomb shelter. As the police begin their investigation, the night is interrupted once again when Agnes's upstairs neighbour Mrs Sibley is terrorised by the sight of a grisly pig's head at her fourth-floor window. With the discovery of more sinister threats mysteriously signed 'Pig-sticker', Agnes and her husband Andrew - unable to resist a good mystery - begin their investigation to deduce the identity of a villain living amongst the tenants of their block of flats. A witty and lighthearted mystery full of intriguing period detail, this rare gem of Golden Age crime returns to print for the first time since its publication in 1943.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series turns her prodigious talents to this World War I standalone novel, a lyrical drama of love struggling to survive in a damaged, fractured world.

By July 1914, the ties between Kezia Marchant and Thea Brissenden, friends since girlhood, have become strained--by Thea's passionate embrace of women's suffrage, and by the imminent marriage of Kezia to Thea's brother, Tom, who runs the family farm. When Kezia and Tom wed just a month before war is declared between Britain and Germany, Thea's gift to Kezia is a book on household management--a veiled criticism of the bride's prosaic life to come. Yet when Tom enlists to fight for his country and Thea is drawn reluctantly onto the battlefield, the farm becomes Kezia's responsibility. Each must find a way to endure the ensuing cataclysm and turmoil.

As Tom marches to the front lines, and Kezia battles to keep her ordered life from unraveling, they hide their despair in letters and cards filled with stories woven to bring comfort. Even Tom's fellow soldiers in the trenches enter and find solace in the dream world of Kezia's mouth-watering, albeit imaginary meals. But will well-intended lies and self-deception be of use when they come face to face with the enemy?

Published to coincide with the centennial of the Great War, The Care and Management of Lies paints a poignant picture of love and friendship strained by the pain of separation and the brutal chaos of battle. Ultimately, it raises profound questions about conflict, belief, and love that echo in our own time.

"A powerful and elegant debut novel about love, memory, exile, and war."
One snowy December morning in an old European city, an American man leaves his shabby hotel to meet a local woman who has agreed to help him search for an apartment to rent. THE APARTMENT follows the couple across a blurry, illogical, and frozen city into a past the man is hoping to forget, and leaves them at the doorstep of an uncertain future-their cityscape punctuated by the man's lingering memories of time spent in Iraq and the life he abandoned in the United States. Contained within the details of this day is a complex meditation on America's relationship with the rest of the world, an unflinching glimpse at the permanence of guilt and despair, and an exploration into our desire to cure violence with violence.
A novel about how our relationships to others-and most importantly to ourselves-alters how we see the world, THE APARTMENT perfectly captures the peculiarity and excitement of being a stranger in a strange city. Written in an affecting and intimate tone that gradually expands in scope, intensity, poetry, and drama, Greg Baxter's clear-eyed first novel tells the intriguing story of these two people on this single day. Both beguiling and raw in its observations and language, THE APARTMENT is a crisp novel with enormous range that offers profound and unexpected wisdom.

The next thrilling adventure, all NEW from MJ Porter Icel is a lone wolf no more... Oath sworn to Wiglaf, King of Mercia and acknowledged as a member of Ealdorman AElfstan's warrior band, Icel continues to forge his own destiny on the path to becoming the Warrior of Mercia. With King Ecgberht of Wessex defeated and Londonium back under Mercian control, the Wessex invasion of Mercia is over. But the Wessex king was never Mercia's only enemy. An unknown danger lurks in the form of merciless Viking raiders, who set their sights on infiltrating the waterways of the traitorous breakaway kingdom of the East Angles, within touching distance of Mercia's eastern borders. Icel must journey to the kingdom of the East Angles and unite against a common enemy to ensure Mercia's hard-won freedom prevails. Praise for MJ Porter 'Immediate and personal' Bestselling author Matthew Harffy 'No lover of Dark Age warfare is going to be disappointed. Personal, real, fascinating and satisfying.' S.J.A. Turney 'If you love history, fiction, adventure and great stories - You won't regret it!" Eric Schumacher 'MJ Porter recounts a sensitive, reluctant hero's coming-of-age within a Dark Age realm riven by chaos and conflict' Bestselling author Matthew Harffy 'Refreshing... I was reluctant to put the book down' Historical Novel Society Readers are spell-bound 'So real I felt I was there!... A page-turner' Reader review 'Wonderful to read and hard to put down' Reader review 'I found the pages flying by... A great book' Reader review