The brain-teasing new thriller from the “master of the clever twist.” A sequence of extraordinary events over the past 300 years provides the links in a chain of intrigue, deceit, greed and murder: The loss of HMS Association with all hands in 1707. An admiralty clerk's secret mission thirty years afterwards. A fatal accident during a dive to the wreck in 1996. An expatriate's reluctant return home ten years later. The simple task he has come to accomplish, shown to be anything but. A woman he recognizes but cannot identify. It's a conspiracy of circumstances that is about to unravel his life. And with it, the past.

1931. The new, luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a scam they have left behind them in the United States. A chance meting on deck brings them a tempting new target in the shape of the beautiful and wealthy heiress, Diana Charnwood.It's a trick they've pulled before, with some success. Charm the daughter into an engagement to marry, then get the father to buy you off. So confident are they of success, in fact, that they make a pact: whichever of them wins Diana Charnwood's love will share his fortune with the other. But a violent death is to interrupt their neat little scheme. And they find themselves stumbling into something much darker than either had suspected...

On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls passionately in love with the mysterious and beautiful Marian. Back in the UK, Ian resolves to leave his wife for her - only to find Marian has disappeared, and the photographs of their brief time together have been savagely destroyed. Searching desperately for her, Ian comes across a quiet Dorset churchyard. Here he meets a psychotherapist, who is looking for a missing client of hers: a woman who claims she is the reincarnation of Marian Esguard, who may have invented photography ten years before Fox Talbot. But why is Marian Esguard unknown to history? And who and where is the woman Ian Jarrett has sacrificed everything for?

At a lush villa on the sun-soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What’s more, Martin is being offered a job—to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family. Martin is intrigued by Strafford’ s story, by the man’s overwhelming love for a beautiful suffragette, by her inexplicable rejection of him and their love affair’s political repercussions. But as he retraces Strafford’s ruination, Martin realizes that Strafford did not fall by chance; he was pushed. Suddenly Martin, who has not cared for many people in his life, cares desperately—about a man’s mysterious death and a family’s terrible secret, about a love beyond reckoning and betrayal beyond imagining. Most of all Martin cares because the story he is uncovering is not yet over—and among the men and women still caught in its web, Martin himself may be the most vulnerable of all….

Goddard weaves a compelling tale of murder, family mystery, literary scandal, and hazardous romance...,Robbery seems to be the motive for the death of dowager Beatrix Abberly; shady antiques dealer Colin Fairfax is quickly arrested and charged with her murder. Colin, however, maintains his innocence, and asks his timid brother, Derek, to clear his name. Charlotte Ladram, Beatrix's loyal godchild and heir, has doubts abouth everything, including the motive for the crime. Her godmother was the sister of the great English poet Tristram Abberley, who died fifty years earlier in the Spanish Civil War. When long-lost letters he wrote to Beatrix are unearthed, they reveal shocking secrets about Tristram's work - secrets any number of people would kill to possess. Drawn together by their passionate desire to find the answers, Charlotte and Derek follow a labyrinthine trail of clues across rural England to Wales, New York, Paris, and Spain - only to discover that no one and nothing are what they seem. A pattern of evil is surfacing that will change forever their sense of the world... and lead them on a quest even more intriguing than the Chinese box of mysteries they've opened in the aftermath of an old woman's cruel murder...

It is a golden evening of high summer in July 1990. Robin Timariot has set out that morning on what he has planned as a six-day tramp along part of Offa's Dyke. At the close of his first day's walk he encounters an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place among the sheep and gorse of Hergest Ridge. They exchange only a few words of conversation, but their talk is enigmatic -- and unforgettable. A few days later, at the end of his walk, Timariot returns home to learn from the newspapers that, just a few hours after their meeting, the woman, whose name was Louise Paxton, was raped and then murdered, along with an artist, Oscar Bantock, who lived near by.A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot -- and others -- that all is not what it seems. Timariot, fascinated by Louise Paxton's memory, is drawn irresistibly into the complex motives and relationships of her family and friends,...

Martin Radford, history graduate, disaffected and unemployed, jumps at the chance to visit Madeira at the invitation of an old university friend who is running the local English language newspaper. Luck continues to run for him when he is offered a lucrative commission to research the mysterious resignation and subsequent obscure retirement on Madeira of Edwardian cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. However, his investigation triggers a bizarre and inveitably violent train of events which remoreslessly entagles him and those who believed they had escaped the spectre of crimes long past but never paid for.From Publishers WeeklyWritten in clear, resonant prose, Goddard's first novel, nominated for the Booker prize, is a poised telling of a complex tale. A fascinating "could this be true?" story within a story is reminiscent of Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time, while Thomas Hardy's tragic characters are deliberately echoed in the Edwardian British politician Edwin Strafford and the troubled historian Martin Radford, who has been chosen to research Strafford's tormented life. Radford finds a memoir that contains hints of a political and moral crime, past but not forgotten, so devastating that even in 1977 it reverberates through the corridors of power. As he reads the memoir, Radford eventually comes to regard the dead Home Secretary as a friend, even as his search uncovers corruption and murder. The novel's subtlety is reflected in the different meanings of its title, and the satisfying climax weaves together the strands of past and present. In one sense a historical thriller, and in another a romantic novel of a love affair gone disastrously wrong, this is, in any case, a wonderful read. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalUnemployed and disenchanted, Martin Radford is delighted to accept an old schoolmate's invitation to visit him in Madeira where not only the climate but an offer of funded research from his friend's employer revives this historian manque. Leo Sellick gives Martin the memoir of the previous owner of his estate, former British consul and member of Asquith's cabinet Edwin Strafford, hoping he will unearth the reason for Strafford's abrupt dismissal by his suffragist fiancee and his political peersa mystery that baffled Strafford as much as anyone. Exploring the sudden downfall of the rising politician, Martin enters a maze of lies and intrigue that forces him to confront his own past as well as Strafford's. Psychological drama and intricate plot will entice readers.Cynthia Johnson Whealler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The new race-against-the-clock thriller from the master of the triple cross.Not all scars are visible. Jonathan Kellaway needs no reminding of that on the verge of his retirement from china clay conglomerate Intercontinental Kaolins. The company has left its mark in pits and spoil heaps around the world. But it has also left a no less enduring mark on some of those who have worked for it, Kellaway included. Its past, as well as its future, is a treacherous place.So Kellaway is surprised when IK's founder and former chairman, Greville Lashley, sets him a final task before he quits. The academic hired by the board to write the company's history has discovered a gap covering several years in the records of the small Cornish china clay outfit Lashley started with and where Kellaway also began his career. He is despatched to Cornwall to learn what has become of the missing documents.But the search is a voyage into dangerous waters. A dead friend, a lost lover and a clutch of mysteries from Kellaway's youth in Cornwall and Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him -- and to tempt him with the hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies and misfortunes that blighted those years. It is a truth that has claimed several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may only add himself to the list.But pursue it he must. Because the truth, he belatedly realizes, is the secret that has consumed his life. This time -- this last time -- he will not stop. Until he has found it.

Nick Paleologus is summoned to the unyielding bosom of his family to help resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. Michael Paleologus, retired archaeologist and supposed descendant of the last Emperors of Byzantium, lives alone at Trennor, a remote and rambling house on the Cornish bank of the Tamar. A ridiculously generous offer has been made for the house, but he refuses to sell despite the urgings of his children, for whom the proceeds would solve a variety of problems. Nick accomplishes little in the role of mediator, but the stalemate is soon tragically broken. Only then do Nick and his siblings discover why their father was bound at all costs to reject the offer and what may really be the motives of the prospective buyer. Their increasingly desperate efforts to conceal the truth drag them into a deadly conflict with an unseen and unknown enemy, who seems as determined to force them into a confrontation with their family's past as he is to conceal his own identity. Late in the day, perhaps too late, Nick realizes that the only way to escape from the trap their persecutor has set for them is to hunt him down, wherever - and whoever - he may be. But the hunt involves excavating a terrible secret from their father's archaeological career. And once that secret is known, nothing will ever be the same again. 

Intricate, fascinating and deeply satisfying to the last page -- another classic Robert Goddard mystery.Actor Toby Flood, formerly of big and small screen but now seldom seen on either, arrives in Brighton with the other cast members of the Joe Orton play Lodger in the Throat. They have been on tour since September, but hopes of a West End transfer have been abandoned and they are all looking forward to the end of the run the following Saturday.Flood is visited that night by his estranged wife, Jenny, now living with wealthy entrepreneur Roger Colborn. Jenny runs a shop in the Lanes and is worried about a strange man who is hanging around outside. Roger has dismissed her concerns but Jenny persuades Toby, for old times' sake, to do something. The next day Flood trails the man and confronts him. Derek Oswin is an unemployed loner who blames Roger Colborn for his father's death from cancer on account of dangerous practices at the now-closed plastics factory run by...

January, 1721. London is reeling from the effects of the greatest financial scandal of the age - the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. William Spandrel, a penniless mapmaker, is offered a discharge of his debts by Sir Theodore Janssen, a director of the South Sea Company, on one condition: he must secretly convey an important package to Amsterdam.The package safely delivered, Spandrel barely survives an attempt on his life, only to discover the recipient has been murdered, and Spandrel is the prime suspect. Spandrel quickly realises that he has become a pawn in several people's games - British Government agents, and others, are on his trail, believing that the mysterious package contains secrets that could spark a revolution in England.Spandrel's only chance of survival is to recover the package and place its contents in the right hands. But what are the contents and whose exactly are the right hands?

Harry Barnett thought he had left his military career behind, so he is startled when two figures from his past turn up on his doorstep after fifty years. An old friend has organised the reunion to end all reunions: a weekend in the Scottish castle where the ex-comrades took part in a psychological experiment many years before. They haven't seen each other since. As they set off on their all-expenses-paid jaunt to Aberdeen, the old friends are in high spirits. But the cheerful atmosphere is quickly shattered by the apparent suicide of one of their party.When a second death occurs, a sense of foreboding descends on the group. It appears that the past is coming back to haunt them, a past that none of them have ever spoken about. Their recollections are all frighteningly different. So what really happened?Then when one of them uncovers an extraordinary secret, he becomes convinced that they will never leave the castle alive...

Geoffrey Staddon had never forgotten the house called Clouds Frome, his first important commission and the best thing he had ever done as an architect. Twelve years before the day in September 1923 when a paragraph in the newspaper made his blood run cold, he had turned his back on it for the last time, turned his back on the woman he loved, and who loved him. But when he read that Consuela Caswell had been charged with murder by poisoning he knew, with a certainty that defied the great divide of all those years, that she could not be guilty. As the remorse and shame of his own betrayal of her came flooding back, he knew too that he could not let matters rest. And when she sent her own daughter to him, pleading for help, he knew that he must return at last to Clouds Frome and to the dark secret that it held. 

The breathtaking new race-against-the-clock thriller from the master of the triple cross.There's no such thing as easy money. As surgeon Edward Hammond is about to find out. Thirteen years ago he performed a life saving operation on a Serbian gangster, Dragan Gazi. Gazi is now standing trial for war crimes in the international court in The Hague. After his life was saved, his men went on to slaughter thousands in the Balkan civil wars.Now Gazi's family want more from him: in exchange for keeping Hammond's dirty little secret, they want him to find for them the man who holds the key to all the money Gazi squirreled away before he was locked up. But Italian financier, Marco Piravani, doesn't want to be found, not by Hammond, not by anyone. No sooner has Hammond tracked him down, than Piravani has disappeared again. His pursuit will take him first to the Hague, and then to Milan to find the Italian, and then finally back to the scene of his crime, Belgrade, where he must...