Nigel McCrery

Stretching along the shelf, standing upright, were twelve wooden coffins. Nine were closed, and three open... with little dolls standing inside them...

It was supposed to be the most special day of her life - until the unthinkable happened. Leslie Petersen is shot dead on her wedding day. With the bride's killer vanished without a trace, the investigation into the murder grinds to a halt before it's even begun.

But then, the decomposing body of an unidentified homeless man is found in an old Cold War bunker, and DCI Mark Lapslie makes a bizarre discovery. Hidden near the body is a shrine full of miniature wooden coffins. Each coffin contains a little doll, all dressed differently.

One of the dolls is dressed as a bride - could this be a link to Leslie's murder? And if so, who do the other dolls represent? Can Lapslie and his team stop the countdown of the 'dying dolls' before it's too late?

As people disappear from his streets, and a handful of battered and broken bodies are discovered on his patch, Lapslie has no idea that he's up against a man who feels sound like he can taste it. He hunts people down. Men, women, anyone with a voice. He makes them hurt, he makes them bleed, he makes them scream. If the sound is ugly, he dispatches them without thought, but if it makes him feel good inside, he keeps them in his basement. Torturing them slowly, listening for that awful, wonderful sound. And sooner or later he'll have enough to make them sing his favourite things.

DCI Mark Lapslie suffers from a rare neurological condition that 'cross-wires' his senses. The sickening clamour of sounds he can taste has smothered his marriage and stifled his career...and it's getting worse. His colleagues have written him off as a drunk - or worse, a lunatic - and Lapslie has quarantined himself in an isolated Essex cottage, only venturing out at night when peace reigns. Carl Whittley, 22, stays at home too, caring for his crippled father. He's got his own problems to deal with too: he's just tortured a minor TV celebrity to death and blown an apparently anonymous commuter to pieces. Tooth & Claw is a visceral thriller that will draw DCI Lapslie into a deadly game where the troubled detective might just discover that his gravest weakness is also his greatest strength.

From the creator of Silent Witness another gripping mystery featuring Dr Sam Ryan. When the beautiful wife of a local MP is found brutally murdered in her own home, the entire resources of the Cambridge Constabulary are brought to bear. Leading the investigation is Chief Superintendent Adams, who is determined to further his career by solving this high profile case.

Before his diagnosis, DCI Mark Lapslie thought everyone was like him. Now he knows he suffers from synaethesthesia - a rare neurological condition that has cross-wired his senses. The sickening clamor of sounds he can taste has smothered his marriage and stifled his career. At the scene of a fatal traffic accident, Lapslie's interest isn't in the recently deceased driver, rather the desiccated corpse found lying next to him. Something about the body stirs a fleeting recollection at the back of Lapslie's mind...he can't quite put his finger on it, but he can almost taste it...Memories haunt Violet Chambers too.She does what she can to stay ahead of them.

In 1914, as today, successful footballers were heroes and role models. They were the sporting superstars of their time; symbols of youth, health and vigour. Naturally enough, when war broke out they felt it was their duty to join up and fight. Between 1914 and 1918, 213 professional players fell in action. Some teams lost half their players, either killed or else so badly injured in mind and body that they were never to play again.

The Final Season is the powerfully moving account of these young men who swapped the turf of the pitch and the cheers of the fans for the freezing mud of the battlefield and the terrible scream of shell fire. It follows them as they leave their fans and families behind, undergo training and then travel on to the bloody arenas of war: Ypres, Gallipoli, the Somme, Passchendaele.

Nigel McCrery paints these men in vivid detail. From their achievements on the football pitch to their heroic conduct on the battlefield, we will learn of the selfless courage and determination they displayed in the face of adversity. For far too many, we will also learn when, and how, they made the ultimate sacrifice.

A crime scene. A murder. A mystery.

The most important person on the scene? The forensic scientist. And yet the intricate details of their work remains a mystery to most of us.

Silent Witnesses looks at the history of forensic science over the last two centuries, during which time a combination of remarkable intuition, painstaking observation and leaps in scientific knowledge have developed this fascinating branch of detection. Throwing open the casebook, it introduces us to such luminaries as 'The Wizard of Berkeley' Edward Heinrich, who is credited with having solved over 2000 crimes, and Alphonse Bertillon, the French scientist whose guiding principle 'no two individuals share the same characteristics' became the core of identification. Along the way, it takes us to India and Australia, Columbia and China, Russia, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. And it proves that, in order to solve ever more complicated cases, science must always stay one step ahead of the killer.