A chilling literary thriller about a motiveless murder in provincial China 'One of the most important voices to emerge from the People's Republic in years' Daily Express On a normal day in provincial China, a teenager goes about his regular business, but he’s also planning the brutal murder of his only friend. He lures her over, strangles her, stuffs her body into the washing machine and flees town, whereupon a perilous game of cat-and-mouse begins. A shocking investigation into the despair that traps the rural poor as well as a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense, A Perfect Crime is a thrilling and stylish novel about a motiveless murder that echoes Kafka’s absurdism, Camus’ nihilism and Dostoyevsky’s depravity. With exceptional tonal control, A Yi steadily reveals the psychological backstory that enables us to make sense of the story’s dramatic violence and provides chillingly apt insights into a country on the cusp of enormous social, political and economic change.

In his new book, perhaps the most cogent expression of his mature thought, Jean Baudrillard turns detective in order to investigate a crime which he hopes may yet be solved: the "murder" of reality. To solve the crime would be to unravel the social and technological processes by which reality has quite simply vanished under the deadly glare of media "real time." But Baudrillard is not merely intending to lament the disappearance of the real, an occurrence he recently described as "the most important event of modern history," nor even to meditate upon the paradoxes of reality and illusion, truth and its masks. The Perfect Crime is also the work of a great moraliste: a penetrating examination of vital aspects of the social, political and cultural life of the "advanced democracies" in the (very) late twentieth century. Where critics like McLuhan once exposed the alienating consequences of "the medium," Baudrillard lays bare the depredatory effects of an oppressive transparency on our social lives, of a relentless positivity on our critical faculties, and of a withering 'high definition' on our very sense of reality.

Don’t miss the new, devastatingly good thriller from Helen Fields, The Institution. Coming March 2023 – available to pre-order now! ‘One of the best crime fiction series out there... Helen Fields always delivers gripping, compelling, thrilling and tense stories full of intriguing characters.’ Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

When 21 shots from a semi-automatic pistol rang out across the Alpine woodland high above Lake Annecy, there was nobody nearby to raise the alarm. In a car, in a lay-by off the single-land track above, were the bloodied bodies of British computer engineer, Saad al-Hilli, his dentist wife, Iqbal, and her mother, Suhaila. Nearby, on the road, lay the corpse of French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, punctured by seven shots from the same gun. Saad's eldest daughter, Zainab, seven, had been shot, pistol-whipped and left for dead. Cowering underneath her mum Iqbal's skirt in the back seat of the car was Zainab's little sister Zeena - the only one of the six people there left unharmed. Was this a professional assassin's error, or a humane gesture by someone who knew the girls? Two years on from this most implausible crime, French police remain baffled. This book explores the background of the case.

Presents seventeen short crime stories with sections giving clues and solutions for each.

The dead tell no tales. And the unspeakable evil they know of, may be one that would forever remain buried six feet under... How do you solve an unsolvable string of robberies that leaves a bloody trail of murder and mayhem? FBI agent Blake Wilder is all too familiar with unsolved cases. Plagued by the mysterious tragedies that destroyed her family. She made it her life mission to solve crime and punish the evil doers in this world. This time Blake takes on an unsolved case from her early career, one that spans half a decade. But as she and her team dive further into the investigation, they uncover another string of shocking savage crimes that are claiming the lives of innocent women. As they delve into their case, the coincidences continue to mount until the truth cannot be denied and Blake realizes that they have uncovered something far more complex and disturbing than she had ever imagined. The clock is ticking and Blake must solve this case and make an arrest, or risk losing the killers and thieves once again. And as Blake races to solve the case, a note from someone that knew her parents has the mystery of Blake's deadly and dangerous past catching up to her. There are shadows she's unaware of moving behind the scenes. Pieces being moved about on the board, and a force that's frightening in its scope being brought to bear against her. Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. But how do you avoid it when it comes knocking on your door?