Why would anyone risk his life blowing up tanks of toxic chemicals? This is the question barrister Trish Maguire must answer in her ninth investigation. When the explosion rips through quiet fields in the north of England, it destroys much more than the innocent life of the man who farmed them. In her grief his widow, Angie, turns on the company responsible. Trish finds herself in turmoil when she is called on to defend not the ruined and heartbroken Angie, but the multinational company that owned the tanks. At the same time, she faces other explosions at home. Her adopted son, David, has a new school friend in the damaged and volatile Jay. When Jay's mother is found brutally beaten, Trish becomes embroiled in two huge battles - one for everything she has worked for, and one for everything she believes is right.

Can you ever trust anyone, however much you care about them? Things aren't always what they seem . . . In the eighth Trish Maguire novel, Abandoned as a baby and brutalised in care,sculptor Sam Foundling is the obvious suspect when his wife Cecelia is found beaten to death in his studio. Trish, who Maguire acted as his barristerfor him years ago, when he was an abandoned child being brutalised in care. She saved him then, but trying to protecting him b hopes he didn't do it. Her campaign for him ,now will brings her up against DCI Caro Lyalt, the senior investigating officer . . . and her own best friend. Evidence against Sam mounts up. Cecilia's powerful mother is pressing for his arrest. The police hierarchy want him charged for the brutal murder. If Trish is to save his sanity, and her own, she must unlock the secret offind out exactly what happened in the studio that morning, and time is running out . . .

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me . . . In the seventh Trish Maguire novel London is awash with secret information and vicious rumour. A politician fights for his reputation. Gangs of organized criminals poison the streets with their lesson that greed and violence always pay. Some of those who hunt them bend the rules; others take their money. A whistleblower goes in fear of her life. Trish and her close friend, DI Caro Lyalt of the Met, will have to disentangle fact from fiction if they are to protect the innocent and pin down the guilty. But their actions bring danger horrifyingly close to home . . .

Why did investigative journalist Jamie Maxden have to die? Did someone need to stop him revealing the scandalous secrets of the food industry? In the sixth Trish Maguire novel, the coroner says Jamie's death was suicide. His family agree. The case is closed. Only one man fights to re-open it, but he's known as a conspiracy theorist and he can't make anyone believe him until he turns to Trish. Felled by food poisoning in the middle of a big trial, she is ready to believe almost any story about the adulteration of meat on sale in London. Even though she has more than enough to do with her work as a barrister, the fight to protect a child in terrible danger, and plenty of emotional complications of her own, she agrees to help. The investigation takes her deep into the countryside, showing that cruelty and intimidation can flourish in a ravishing landscape just as they do in the grimmest of inner-city housing estates. Moving between the two, trying to save lives and sanity, inexhaustible Trish is driven into a crusade that combines excitement, drama and agonising human tragedy.

How can a ravishing art collection be built on so much blood and pain? In the fifth novel in the series, London barrister Trish Maguire brings her forensic intelligence to bear on the dark secrets behind the paintings in the collection. Hidden away end of the First World War, they are now curated by an expert with scandal in his past and all too many threats to face in the present. Taking a crash course in the dark mysteries of the art world, Trish must also help her young half-brother come to terms with his mother's violent death. Having learned about the agonizing reality of life in the trenches, lightened only by an engrossing love story, she uncovers a web of deceit that has spanned the decades since 1918. Now the innocent, the violent, and the victims all have to free themselves. And not everyone can escape with their life.

How could anyone refuse to help an eight-year-old boy running for his life? In the fourth Trish Maguire novel, her whole world is changed when the boy is knocked over by a skidding car outside her London flat. Fighting to save his life, the casualty team find Trish's name and address sewn into his clothes. He looks so like her that the police are convinced he's her son. Only she knows he can't be. So who has sent him? And why? Her desperate search for his identity takes Trish to a brutal inner-city housing estate, where she picks up the trail of a violent murder. It is not long before she discovers that the chief suspect is her father . . .

How can you prove a convicted killer is innocent when everyone hates her? In the third novel featuring London barrister Trish Maguire, Deb is serving a life sentence for the murder of her father. At first Trish is sure Deb didn't do it, but the more she learns about the family's secrets and the jealousies that boiled beneath the surface of their lives, the more troubled she becomes. Then another of Deb's supporters is murdered. With pressure mounting, and with her own father at death's door in hospital, Trish finds her personal and professional lives crashing together with explosive force.

How do you bear it when your 4-year-old child goes missing? When Antonia Weblock's daughter, Charlotte, vanishes from a London playground, even her enemies are sympathetic. Villified for putting her City career above her child's welfare, she has plenty of those. She turns to barrister Trish Maguire for help. As a specialist in the darkest cases involving children, Trish knows exactly what can happen to them at the hands of abusive adults. While she does everything she can to support Antonia, the police pull out all the stops to find Charlotte, asking the questions that are in everyone's mind: did she wander off or was she kidnapped? Could her apparently devoted nanny have killed her and hidden the body? Why wasn't her stepfather looking after her as he'd promised? And where was her real father when she disappeared? No one who knows Charlotte can be above suspicion and it is not long before Trish herself is at risk. Trish Maguire is a memorable character whose strong ideals and fierce intelligence belie her private torments and vulnerability. Creeping Ivy is a menacing story of manipulation and betrayal which will stay in the mind long after the book is finished.

With the threat of identity theft ever on the rise, this anthology from the Crime Writers Association is both timely and fascinating, exploring this disturbing modern day crime phenomenon in more than 20 chilling tales. Featuring such leading crime writers as Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendel, Stuart Pawson, and Kate Ellis, the collection includes tension-wrought psychological thrillers and unnerving cat-and-mouse mysteries that prove no character's identity, from the criminal to the victim, is ever fully known.