Along came a spider
What have we got? A missing little girl named Maggie Rose a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him – even after he’s been captured. Gary Soneji wants to commit the crime of the century. Alex Cross is the brilliant homicide detective pitted against him. Jezzie Flanagan is the first female supervisor of the Secret Service. They complete one of the most unusual suspense triangles in any thriller you have ever read. Alex and Jezzie are about to have a forbidden love affair—at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji is playing at the top of his game. The latest of the unspeakable crimes happens in Alex Cross’s precinct and it happens under the nose of Jezzie and her men. Alex faces the ultimate test: how do you outmaneuver a brilliant psychopath?
Road Rage
The woods outside of Kingsmarkham were lovely, dark, and deep. And much of them were about to vanish forever when the new highway cut through.
While Chief Inspector Wexford privately despaired about the loss of his hiking grounds, local residents and outsiders were organizing a massive protest. Some of them may have been desperate enough to kidnap five hostages and threaten to kill them. One hostage was Wexford’s wife, Dora.
Now, combining high technology with his extraordinary detecting skills, Wexford and his team race to find the whereabouts of the kidnappers. Because someone has crossed from political belief to fanaticism, and as the first body is found, good intentions may become Wexford’s personal path to hell.
Thirteen steps down
From the multi-award-winning author of The Babes in the Wood and The Rottweiler, a chilling new novel about obsession, superstition, and violence, set in Rendell’s darkly atmospheric London.
Mix Cellini (which he pronounces with an ‘S’ rather than a ‘C’) is superstitious about the number 13. In musty old St. Blaise House, where he is the lodger, there are thirteen steps down to the landing below his rooms, which he keeps spick and span. His elderly landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, was born in St. Blaise House, and lives her life almost exclusively through her library of books, so cannot see the decay and neglect around her.
The Notting Hill neighbourhood has changed radically over the last fifty years, and 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious John Christie committed a series of foul murders, has been torn down.
Mix is obsessed with the life of Christie and his small library is composed entirely of books on the subject. He has also developed a passion for a beautiful model who lives nearby — a woman who would not look at him twice.
Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own. But when reality intrudes into Mix’s life, a long pent-up violence explodes.
“The Flamboya Tree is a fascinating story that will leave the reader informed about a missing piece of the World War II experience, and in awe of one family’s survival.” — It is a well-known fact that war, any war, is senseless and degrading. When innocent people are brought into that war because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it becomes incomprehensible. Java, 1942, was such a place and time, and we were those innocent people.” Fifty years after the end of World War II, Clara Olink Kelly sat down to write a memoir that is both a fierce and enduring testament to a mother’s courage and a poignant record of an often overlooked chapter of the war. As the fighting in the Pacific spread, four-year-old Clara Olink and her family found their tranquil, pampered lives on the beautiful island of Java torn apart by the invasion of Japanese troops. Clara’s father was taken away, forced to work on the Burma railroad. For Clara, her mother, and her two brothers, the younger one only six weeks old, an insistent knock on the door ended all hope of escaping internment in a concentration camp. For nearly four years, they endured starvation, filth-ridden living conditions, sickness, and the danger of violence from their prison guards. Clara credits her mother with their survival: Even in the most perilous of situations, Clara’s mother never compromised her beliefs, never admitted defeat, and never lost her courage. Her resilience sustained her three children through their frightening years in the camp.
The learning curve
En Anglais – Nicky Hobbs loves teaching at the local primary school. She’s idolised by her class – in particular ten-year-old Oscar Samuels – but she’s starting to find she’d quite like some adult adoration for a change. Mark Samuels is a frazzled single father working all the hours God gives to provide for his beloved son, Oscar. But he’s unable to see that Oscar would prefer his presence to his presents once in a while. Ms Hobbs knows Mr Samuels is a heartless workaholic. Mr Samuels is certain Ms Hobbs is an interfering busybody. But when they finally meet they start to discover that first first impressions can be deceptive. And perhaps they’ve both got a bit of learning to do…
The hit list
En Anglais – When a tycoon apparently falls from his yacht and drowns, the two secret service operatives who have in fact murdered him are also killed. The top secret governmental organisation that had employed them needs to find new recruits. Peter Slater, a former SAS soldier, is working as a games master in a public school. When he foils an attempt by terrorists to kidnap an Arab boy, the boy is hurt and Slater is sacked. Down on his luck he is framed for the murder of his girlfriend, and blackmailed into working for MI7. The missions he is asked to undertake on behalf of the British government become so evil that he finds himself preferring to die rather than complete these missions successfully.
Invisible
En Anglais – Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Not even Emmy’s ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison « Books » Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected. That is, until Emmy finds a piece of evidence he can’t afford to ignore. More murders are reported by the day–and they’re all inexplicable. No motives, no murder weapons, no suspects. Could one person really be responsible for these unthinkable crimes? INVISIBLE is James Patterson’s scariest, most chilling stand-alone thriller yet. (Série INVISIBLE n° 1)
Cryptonomicon
En Anglais – Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods–World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They’re part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit’s strange workings to Waterhouse. « When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first… Of course, to observe is not its real duty–we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed… Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious. » All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes–inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe–team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.
Skin privilege
En Anglais In a stifling jail cell in a run-down Georgia town, detective Lena Adams sits in self-imposed silence, bruised, angry, and the only suspect in a horrific murder that left a woman incinerated beyond recognition. A hundred miles away, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver receives the call.
One night in winter
En Anglais – Inspired by a true story, prize-winning historian and acclaimed novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore explores the consequences of forbidden love in this heartbreaking epic of marriage, childhood, danger, and betrayal that unfolds in Stalin’s Moscow during the bleak days after World War II. … As Moscow celebrates the motherland’s glorious victory over the Nazis, shots ring out on the crowded streets. On a nearby bridge, a teenage boy and girl—dressed in traditional nineteenth-century costumes—lie dead. But this is no ordinary tragedy, because these are no ordinary teenagers. As the son and daughter of high-ranking Soviet officials, they attend the most elite school in Moscow. Was it an accident, or murder? Is it a conspiracy against Stalin, or one of his own terrifying intrigues? On Stalin’s instructions, a ruthless investigation begins into what becomes known as the Children’s Case. Youth across the city are arrested and forced to testify against their friends and their parents. As families are ripped apart, all kinds of secrets come spilling out. Trapped at the center of this witch-hunt are two pairs of illicit lovers, who learn that matters of the heart exact a terrible price. By turns a darkly sophisticated political thriller, a rich historical saga, and a deeply human love story, Montefiore’s masterful novel powerfully portrays the terror and drama of Stalin’s Russia.
The bridges of Madison county
En Anglais – The story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere-and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.