Dreams are a red flag for the danger-prone. Postwar van der Holts. Sophistication sticks to Head of Music Isabel – and so does new headmaster, the mysterious and semi-dictatorial Richard Schneider. Dissent from doctorly conventionality leads Anneliese into digressions deviant even for her as she squares off not just against Susanna but a serial offender of the law. Sparks fly between old flames; new fears prove equally exciting. Loyalties are switched and cravings itched in this compendium of the forbidden driven by foreboding: a mere taste of the temptations still to come. Treats are aplenty for the reader who prefers vicarious living in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 3: a world abundant in the traps of passion’s shackles. Into the higher stakes we go.

Curiosity can be a killer. The clock begins to tick on Anneliese’s moral compass as the sleuth-psychiatrist delves deeper into London’s social dregs – encountering a playbook too subversive for her tastes. While Isabel belittles the idea of jealousy Charles Anthony views his obsession as a Jezebel. Susanna’s (other) indiscretions are hard-pressed to rest in peace as torments old and new distort her life. Headmaster Richard on the other hand sparks strife when he reviles his troublesome subordinate… again. Repression treads with clumsy thumps on both the sisters’ souls in this suspicion-rousing feast of silent dreams: a gallery of scintillating scenes where passion and possessiveness lurk still beneath the surface. Envy, pride, wrath and desire light a fire in The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 4: the part inviting you to pick your poison.

Lost are the creatures destined never to be understood. 1926. Professor Josef van der Holt obtains a post at an all women’s college overseas. Stuffy London suddenly becomes the site for the unseemly exploits of his half-Dutch and half-German daughters Anneliese and Isabel. When tragedy carves out a hollow in their lives, an ailing soul sends the sororal twins along a jagged path: while Isabel takes flight in sensual hedonism Anneliese skirts danger in her role as sleuth. Elusive are the sentiments they seek: swift stopovers of fleeting feeling. Seditious loves and passions scarcely probable veer each away from the predictable. And when the obvious appears unstoppable the opposite may achingly be true. Spanning the twentieth century’s five most volatile decades, The Crooked Little Pieces is a series about inextricable entanglements. Perverse relationships pervade a glossary of scenes. Plots criss-cross over a rich tapestry of twists and tension-fuelling characters: some relatable, others opaque and many “crooked”. It is television drama. Novelised.

“May be destined to become one of the great underground classics of the twenty-first century.” —Lansing State Journal Burned-out private dick Michael McGill needs to jump-start his career. What he gets instead is a cattle prod to the crotch. The president’s heroin-addicted chief of staff wants McGill to find the Constitution—the real one the Founding Fathers secretly devised for the time of gravest crisis. And with God, civility, and Mom’s homemade apple pie already dead or dying, that time is now. But McGill has a talent for stumbling into every imaginable depravity—and this case is driving him even deeper into America’s darkest, dankest underbelly, toward obscenities that boggle even his mind. “Combines the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler with the grotesqueness of Chuck Palahniuk’s infamous short story ‘Guts’ and the acerbic social commentary of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch.” —Chicago Tribune “Laugh-out-loud funny . . . a deeply inventive look at the undercurrents beneath the mainstream popular culture.” —Charlotte Observer “Not for the faint of heart.” —Entertainment Weekly

Travelling alone in the depths of winter, Morlock Ambrosius (bitterly dry drunk, master of all magical makers, wandering swordsman, and son of Merlin Ambrosius and Nimue Viviana) is attacked by an unknown enemy. To unmask his enemy and end the attacks he must travel a long crooked way through the world: past the soul-eating Boneless One, past a subtle and treacherous master of golems, past the dragon-taming Khroi, past the predatory cities of Sarkunden and Aflraun, past the demons and dark gnomes of the northern woods. Soon he will find that his enemy wears a familiar face, and that the duel he has stumbled into will threaten more lives than his own, leaving nations shattered in its chaotic wake. And at the end of his long road waits the death of a legend.

This book contains70 short storiesfrom 10 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the criticAugust Nemo, in a collection that will please theliterature lovers. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: - Robert Louis Stevenson:The Waif Woman The Bottle Imp Thrawn Janet Markheim The Body Snatcher Olalla Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert E. Howard:Worms of the Earth The Queen of Black Coast Pigeons from Hell The Children of the Night Red Nails The Twilight of the Grey Gods The Shadow of the Vulture - G. K. Chesterton:The Blue Cross The Invisible Man The Man Who Was Thursday A Nightmare The Strange Crime of John Boulnois The Three Tools of Death The Wrong Shape The Mistake of the Machine - Edgar Wallace:The Cat Burglar Circumstantial Evidence The Ghost of Downhill The Poetical Policeman Red Aces The Four Just Men The Shadow Man - Arthur Machen:The Great God Pan The White People The Black Seal The Novel of the White Powder The Red Hand The Inmost Light The Bowmen - Ambrose Bierce:An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge One Summer Night The Death Of Halpin Frayser The Moonlit Road A Psychological Shipwreck The Stranger The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - Talbot Mundy:The Soul Of A Regiment The Pillar Of Light The Lady and the Lord Kitty Bruns Her Fingers The Mystic India Speaks The Real Red Root The Hermit and the Tiger - Abraham Merritt:The Pool Of The Stone God The Last Poet And The Robots The Fox Woman The People Of The Pit The Drone Through The Dragon Glass Three Lines Of Old French - Zane Grey:Amber's Mirage The Ranger Don: The Story Of A Lion Dog The Wolf Tracker Lure of the River A Missouri Schoolmarm Monty Price's Nightingale - Edgar Rice Burroughs:Tarzan's First Love A Jungle Joke Tarzan Rescues the Moon John Carter and the Giant Of Mars The Ancient Dead Beyond Thirty Skeleton Men of Jupiter

One of the landmark Australian true-crime books, with a new introduction following the death of disgraced Police Commissioner Terry Lewis. Three Crooked Kings is the shocking true story of Queensland and how a society was shaped by almost half a century of corruption. At its core is Terry Lewis, deposed and jailed former police commissioner. From his entry into the force in 1949, Lewis rose through the ranks, becoming part of the so-called Rat Pack with detectives Glen Hallahan and Tony Murphy under the guiding influence of Commissioner Frank Bischof.The next four decades make for a searing tale of cops and killings, bagmen and blackmail, and sin and sleaze that exposes a police underworld that operated from Queensland to New South Wales. This gripping book examines the final pieces of the puzzle, unearths new evidence on cold cases, and explores the pivotal role that whistleblower Shirley Brifman, prostitute and brothel owner, played until her sudden death.Awarded journalist and novelist Matthew Condon has crafted the definitive account of an era that changed a state and is still reverberating to this day.