Prodavnica

Moscow lies deep under snow, and Arkady Renko is called in to handle a delicate matter: passengers riding the last metro of the night have reported seeing the ghost of Stalin on the platform edge. Not everyone, it seems, likes the fact that Stalin is dead . . . But in the midst of a blizzard nothing is as it first appears to be. Renko’s girlfriend Eva and his adopted son, Zhenya, seem to be slipping into danger. The owner of a matrimonial agency wants her husband killed. An innocent `Russian Bride’ employs a garrotte. A chess grandmaster wanders into Renko’s life and leads him into the line of fire. Diehard Communists gather to sing along with Stalin. `Red Diggers’ uncover secrets buried for half century in a desolate forest and Renko discovers ghosts that have been waiting for him all his life . . . As Russia swings more and more to the right, Renko is more and more out of step. Not only an original and deeply humane thriller, Stalin’s Ghost is also a wonderful evocation of the emerging New Russia. Praise for Martin Cruz Smith: `Cruz Smith not only constructs grittily realistic plots, he also has a gift for characterisation of which most thriller writers can only dream’ Mail on Sunday

FROM THE DRUG GANGS OF DOWNTOWN INDIANAPOLIS, THE ONE TRUE KING WILL ARISE. Guided by the crazed visions of his advisor Merle, King knows that he must unite the opposing factions, before the streets erupt in all-out war. But how can he preach peace when even his own warriors are plotting against him? A heart-stopping mix of ancient myth and powerful gang action, from the author of King Maker. File Under: Urban Fantasy [ Street gangs | Drug wars | Wild magic | Gather darkness ]

Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor is fed up of trying to decipher the strange things prophesied in The Book of the Dead. At the end of her tether, she strikes a deal with Satan who promises to help – if she and her half-sister Laura pay a visit to Hell. Hell, it would seem, is more terrifying than Betsy could have ever imagined – a waiting room with bad carpeting, re-runs of 70s TV shows and ancient Good Housekeeping magazines. But when Betsy and Laura find themselves catapulted back and forth through time, they realise they could seriously screw everything up for good…

Surviving a near fatal attack by a ghostly killer will leave its mark. Seventeen-year-old Rory Devereaux has painful scars and deadly new powers at her fingertips.But without her secret ghost-fighting squad she feels brutally alone. She's lying to her boyfriend, failing in class and, worse still, Rory fears that a terrifying horror stalks the street of London.

'Police are searching today for a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared a week ago from her home in the totterdown area of Bristol.' Actress Kate Creech hears the new with alarm - her niece, Maisie, is fifteen and lives in Totterdown ...When another girl's corpse is found in a local part the Bristol police suspect Maisie's dad, an odd character who gathers young people to him like a magnet. Even though Bristol is out of his jurisdiction, Detective Inspector John Bright can't stay away - Kate is there, rehearsing As You Like It, and he adores Maisie as though she were his own. Bright, off his own patach, resorts to his own unofficial methods of investigation, methods which unearth some uncomfortable facts and lead him to a sinister young man who is keeping a diary ...