Dead Lagoon


Book Description

'A rollicking good tale.' INDEPENDENT 'A first-rate mystery.' WASHINGTON POST AN AURELIO ZEN MYSTERY Aurelio Zen returns to his native Venice in an unofficial capacity, to investigate the disappearance of an American millionaire. But he is quickly reminded that, amid the hazy light and shifting waters of the lagoon, nothing is what it seems. As he is drawn deeper into the ambiguous mysteries surrounding the discovery of a skeletal corpse, he is also forced to confront a series of disturbing revelations about his own life. 'Absolutely brilliant . . . made me want to go back to travel in Italy again.' 5* reader review 'I loved this book . . . a good storyline, and enough twists to keep me guessing.' 5* reader review 'Perfect entertainment.' 5* reader review 'My personal favourite in a great series.' 5* reader review PRAISE FOR MICHAEL DIBDIN AND THE INSPECTOR ZEN SERIES: 'He wrote with real fire.' IAN RANKIN 'A maestro of crime writing.' SUNDAY TIMES 'One of the genre's finest stylists . . . And Zen himself is a masterly creation: he is anti-heroic and pragmatic but obstinate, cunning and positively burdened with integrity.' GUARDIAN 'Dibdin tells a rollicking good tale that you want both to read fast, because of its gripping storyline, and to linger over, to savour the evocative descriptions of place and mood.' INDEPENDENT 'One of British crime fiction's most distinguished and distinctive voices.' ANDREW TAYLOR 'Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader.' Ruth Rendell 'Zen is one of the greatest creations of contemporary crime fiction.' OBSERVER 'I love the way these books capture the atmosphere and contradictions of Italy.' 5* reader review 'Aurelio Zen novels are a great treat.' 5* reader review 'There is no better writer than Dibdin. His books are a joy to read.' 5* reader review 'Love these books . . . I am sure you will get hooked too!' 5* reader review




Dead Lagoon


Book Description

Among the emerging generation of crime writers, none is as stylish and intelligent as Michael Dibdin, who, in Dead Lagoon, gives us a deliciously creepy new novel featuring the urbane and skeptical Aurelio Zen, a detective whose unenviable task it is to combat crime in a country where today's superiors may be tomorrow's defendants.Zen returns to his native Venice. He is searching for the ghostly tormentors of a half-demented contessa and a vanished American millionaire whose family is paying Zen under the table to determine his whereabouts-dead or alive. But he keeps stumbling over corpses that are distressingly concrete: from the crooked cop found drowned in one of the city's noisome "black wells" to a brand-new skeleton that surfaces on the Isle of the Dead. The result is a mystery rich in character and deduction, and intensely informed about the history, politics, and manners of its Venetian setting.




Eaters of the Dead


Book Description

From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes an epic tale of unspeakable horror. It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.




Dead Man's Island


Book Description

“A sassy heroine . . . [Henrie O] says what she thinks (when it serves her purposes) and pulls no punches.”—Chicago Sun-Times When arrogant media magnate Chase Prescott is nearly killed by a box of cyanide-laced candy, he dials his long-ago lover, retired newshound Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins, with a simple request: He’ll assemble all the suspects if Henrie O will kindly point out the would-be murderer. It’s a case—her first—that fills Henrie O with grave misgivings, especially when she arrives on Chase’s private island off the South Carolina coast to meet the players in this deadly drama. Among Prescott’s unstable young wife, his sullen stepson, and his toady of a secretary, she has trouble narrowing the field of suspects—even when a second attempt is made on Chase’s life. As Henrie O unearths a will and fascinating new evidence, a killer hurricane sweeps up from Cuba, threatening to maroon them in this vacation hell . . . where the trappings of luxury are put to lethal use and the secrets of the past have the power to engulf them all.




Sherman's Lagoon


Book Description

More adventures of Sherman the shark and his friends on Kapupu Island.




Cosi Fan Tutti


Book Description

An Aurelio Zen Novel Michael Dibdin's overburdened Italian police inspector has been transferred to Naples, where the rule of law is so lax that a police station may double as a brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors with his impolitic zealousness in every previous posting, Zen is determined not to make waves. Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in Naples's harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, the result is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery.




The House on the Lagoon


Book Description

Finalist for the National Book Award: “A family saga in the manner of Gabriel García Márquez,” set in Puerto Rico, from an extraordinary storyteller (The New York Times Book Review). This riveting, multigenerational epic tells the story of two families and the history of Puerto Rico through the eyes of Isabel Monfort and her husband, Quintín Mendizabal. Isabel attempts to immortalize their now-united families—and, by extension, their homeland—in a book. The tale that unfolds in her writing has layers upon layers, exploring the nature of love, marriage, family, and Puerto Rico itself. Weaving the intimate with the expansive on a teeming stage, Ferré crafts a revealing self-portrait of a man and a woman, two fiercely independent people searching for meaning and identity. As Isabel declares: “Nothing is true, nothing is false, everything is the color of the glass you’re looking through.” A book about freeing oneself from societal and cultural constraints, The House on the Lagoon also grapples with bigger issues of life, death, poverty, and racism. Mythological in its breadth and scope, this is a masterwork from an extraordinary storyteller.




Dead Man's Isle


Book Description




Dead West


Book Description

In the words of Lee Child on Gone to Dust, “I want more of Nils Shapiro.” New York Times-bestselling and Emmy Award-winning author Matt Goldman happily obliges by bringing the Minneapolis private detective back for another thrilling, standalone adventure in Dead West. Nils Shapiro accepts what appears to be an easy, lucrative job: find out if Beverly Mayer’s grandson is foolishly throwing away his trust fund in Hollywood, especially now, in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death. However, that easy job becomes much more complicated once Nils arrives in Los Angeles, a disorienting place where the sunshine hides dark secrets. Nils quickly suspects that Ebben Mayer’s fiancée was murdered, and that Ebben himself may have been the target. As Nils moves into Ebben’s inner circle, he discovers that everyone in Ebben’s professional life—his agent, manager, a screenwriter, a producer—seem to have dubious motives at best. With Nils' friend Jameson White, who has come to Los Angeles to deal with demons of his own, acting as Ebben’s bodyguard, Nils sets out to find a killer before it’s too late. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Blood Rain


Book Description

Aurelio Zen—cynical and tough, yet worn down from years of law enforcement—has just been given the worst assignment he could imagine. He has been sent to the heart of hostile territory: Sicily, the ancient, beautiful island where blood has been known to flow like wine, and the distinction between the police and the criminals is a fine one. Even worse, he has been sent to spy on the elite anti-Mafia squad.The only thing that makes the job palatable—and takes his mind off routine details like the rotting body found in a remote train car—is that Zen's adopted daughter, Carla, is also in town. But life becomes precarious for Carla when she stumbles upon some information she'd be better off not knowing and befriends a local magistrate on the Mafia's most wanted list. What ensues is a breakneck plot of amazing complexity that culminates in a stunning finale. Blood Rain, emotionally gripping and defiantly original, is surely one of Dibdin's finest works.