No catches, no fine print just unadulterated book loving, with your favourite books saved to your own digital bookshelf.
New members get entered into our monthly draw to win £100 to spend in your local bookshop Plus lots lots more…
Find out moreLooking for your next literary adrenaline rush? Or to live vicariously through a thrill-seeking hero/heroine? Have a look at the titles in our Action/Adventure/Spy section for the latest danger and intrigue-filled novels.
An incredibly raw, at times difficult to read, quite gobsmacking debut. Cherry made me flinch, both physically and mentally, at times I had to look away and think of something else, yet the words continued to call to me. The author Nico Walker, as of 2019, is still in prison in the USA, he served as an army medic in Iraq, and returning home with severe PTSD started to rob banks to pay for his drug addiction. This story centres on a narrator who serves as an army medic in Iraq, and returning home with severe PTSD starts to rob banks to pay for his drug addiction (yes the same tale as the author). Let me be clear, this is a novel, yet the voice of the author is clearly heard, this is his story and he stamps his words, his very being on every single page. Hammer hard, quick firing sentences (with some choice language attached) shoot off of the page. There were times when I really didn’t like the narator, some of his life choices are difficult to understand, yet that is the whole point. The story turns full circle from the prologue, creating what feels like a never ending loop. This book made me ache, it often physically hurt to soak up the words, yet I would read it all again tomorrow, and so Cherry has to be one of my picks of the month.
Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'Popular Fiction of the Year' 2012. With characteristically meticulous research Cornwell’s new historical blockbuster weaves a complex story, epic in scope, that has as its climax the battle of Poitiers, the second but less well known decisive battle in the Hundred Years War. English archer Thomas of Hookton is ordered to find the mythical, and lost, sword of St Peter said to grant victory to whoever possesses it. The quest however, leads to a confrontation that sparks a must bigger conflict. Medieval history brought to life by a master storyteller.
Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'Popular Fiction of the Year' 2012. With characteristically meticulous research Cornwell’s new historical blockbuster weaves a complex story, epic in scope, that has as its climax the battle of Poitiers, the second but less well known decisive battle in the Hundred Years War. English archer Thomas of Hookton is ordered to find the mythical, and lost, sword of St Peter said to grant victory to whoever possesses it. The quest however, leads to a confrontation that sparks a must bigger conflict. Medieval history brought to life by a master storyteller.
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012. If you love fast-paced, topical thrillers that you simply can't put down, then Andrew Gross and especially 15 Seconds is a great place to go. Pulled over by a traffic cop who is then shot by someone else leaves surgeon Henry Steadman framed for murder and on the run trying to prove his innocence. It's thrilling stuff. May 2012 Book of the Month.
One very much for the holiday club reader mixing sex, sun and drugs into a wacky thriller, Ibiza based. It is the third from him and they are great fun. The Big Issue summed it up brilliantly, “a contemporary trash classicâ€.
March 2013 Guest Editor Charles Cumming on A Coffin for Dimitrios... I read a lot of Eric Ambler when I was writing The Trinity Six. Ambler specialized in stories about ordinary men who find themselves caught up in extraordinary circumstances. In A Coffin for Dimitrios, a successful thriller writer becomes fascinated by a notorious criminal, believed to have been murdered in Istanbul. Highly recommended.
In his splendid previous spy thriller A Foreign Country, Cumming introduced once-disgraced and now covertly back in the fold operative Thomas Kell and MI6’s first female head Amelia Levene. In his new book, they both appear again. Following the mysterious death of Turkey’s Head of Station the remaining evidence points Tom to a traitor inside Western Intelligence. Kell’s task of unravelling the conspiracy is not made any easier by disturbing news emerging from Levene’s own past. Tom Kell is more Smiley than James Bond and his adventures ring terribly true and easily sow many seeds of doubt about the undercurrent of world affairs in a disturbing perspective in this much up to date thriller. Cumming knows his stuff. ~ Maxim Jakubowski Sarah Broadhurst's view... A cracking story with all the ingredients of a Le Carré Smiley novel and then some! It is the second work to feature Thomas Kell, a disgraced spy introduced to us in A Foreign Country. It is up-to-date in dealing with the Irish question and although not quite so with Ukraine, it does give a good background to the present situation in a great adventure of cover-up, duplicity, betrayal and double agents. All very tense, complex and satisfying, it is a very fine spy novel indeed. Click here to view the new editions of The Hidden Man and Typhoon by the same author.
A Maxim Jakubowski selected title. In his splendid previous spy thriller A Foreign Country, Cumming introduced once-disgraced and now covertly back in the fold operative Thomas Kell and MI6’s first female head Amelia Levene. In his new book, they both appear again. Following the mysterious death of Turkey’s Head of Station the remaining evidence points Tom to a traitor inside Western Intelligence. Kell’s task of unravelling the conspiracy is not made any easier by disturbing news emerging from Levene’s own past. Tom Kell is more Smiley than James Bond and his adventures ring terribly true and easily sow many seeds of doubt about the undercurrent of world affairs in a disturbing perspective in this much up to date thriller. Cumming knows his stuff. May 2014 eBook of the Month. Sarah Broadhurst's view... A cracking story with all the ingredients of a Le Carré Smiley novel and then some! It is the second work to feature Thomas Kell, a disgraced spy introduced to us in A Foreign Country. It is up-to-date in dealing with the Irish question and although not quite so with Ukraine, it does give a good background to the present situation in a great adventure of cover-up, duplicity, betrayal and double agents. All very tense, complex and satisfying, it is a very fine spy novel indeed. Click here to view the new editions of The Hidden Man and Typhoon by the same author.
Len Tyler has, until now, been best known for his humorous Ethelred and Elsie series, in which a mid-list crime writer and his intrepid agent solved perky crimes with aplomb. This, however, is another kettle of fish, the debut volume in an ambitious historical series, featuring John Grey, a young lawyer with few clients at the time of Oliver Cromwell and Charles Stuart. Painstaking research gives the proceedings a strong patina of credibility and the main character, a man with a mission to defend the truth in a period of plots and counterplots involving the wrath of John Thurloe, Cromwell's spy master and the corpse of a Royalist spy found in an Essex village, proves engaging and sympathetic. From the success of Hilary Mantel's novels, we know the fascination the period exerts on readers; Tyler might well have found a new criminal milieu. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
A Maxim Jakubowski selected title. A most welcome reissue of an important and until now forgotten Cold War spy classic that first appeared in 1966 (and was actually filmed with Laurence Harvey in the title role...). Featuring an enlightening introduction by Tom Stoppard, with whom the late Derek Marlowe shared a flat as he was writing the book, this is the fast-moving tale of Eberlin, a faceless civil servant who is also a double agent, and something of a fancy dresser to alleviate the apparent dullness of his life. The call comes to eliminate a ferocious Russian agent responsible for the assassination of many British agents. There is only one problem: the man he is assigned to eliminate is no other but himself! How Eberling navigates the treacherous mission is both a delight and gripping. Like John Le Carre on acid! ~ Maxim Jakubowski
A gripping storyteller . (Peter James). Former detective Lacey Flint quit the force for a safer, quieter life. Or that's what she thought. Now living alone on her houseboat, she is trying to get over the man she loves, undercover detective Mark Joesbury. But Mark is missing in action and impossible to forget. And danger won't leave Lacey alone. When she finds a body floating in the river near her home, wrapped in burial cloths, she can't resist asking questions. Who is this woman, and why was she hidden in the fast-flowing depths[unk] And who has been delivering unwanted gifts to Lacey? Someone is watching Lacey Flint closely. Someone who knows exactly what makes her tick...
John Le Carré redefined spy thrillers when he wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in just three weeks in 1963. Since then he has grown into a true master, whose books strip open truths about how we live now alongside gripping stories. A Delicate Truth is indeed a very delicately plotted book with hints and insinuations of real events, from the death of David Kelly to recent ministerial scandals, laced into its fictionalised plot and the entire plot turns on a breathtaking trick that will have you wanting to burst into spontaneous applause it’s so brilliant.
May 2013 Book of the Month. A tightly woven tale of moral dilemma, bold action and unexpected love from the undisputed master of the spy novel. Le Carré, seemingly effortlessly, delivers a stunningly written, furiously paced yet subtly nuanced and absorbing read - it really is remarkably good. Mary Mount, Editorial Director at Viking/Penguin, on A Delicate Truth... 'A Delicate Truth is one of le Carré’s finest novels. It is unbelievably tense but is also full of wit and brilliantly realised characters. It is extraordinary how le Carré is able to write with such tremendous pace while, at the same time, going right to the heart of who we are. A Delicate Truth is one of his most British books in recent years. I was stunned by it. It is a thrill and a privilege to publish a novel as good as this.'
Let Bernard Cornwell sweep you back to Arthurian times, or into the heat of battle with Richard Sharpe. Sail the high seas with Patrick O'Brian. Raise your pulse-rate with Michael Crichton. Experience the adrenaline of combat with Andy McNab. Feel the clear and present danger of Tom Clancy's thrilling Jack Ryan stories... Live on the edge with Lee Child's itinerant hero Jack Reacher? Navigating your way through all the twists and turns of this roller-coaster genre can be an adventure in itself.
So, let us help you find your next fuel-injected foray into the fields of battle, espionage, danger,heroism and even history rewritten. From Dan Brown, Tom Clancy and Ken Follett to Wilbur Smith, David Gibbins and Stieg Larsson, you’ll be over the waves, under the radar, up mountains, outside the law, beyond help, dicing with danger, battling monsters, rescuing the stricken, flying through flack, laying mines, playing political parlour-games, conning Congress, kidnapping commandos clashing with conquistadors and crossing swords with Crusaders … and all from the safety of your favourite chair.