Роберт Годдард - все книги по циклам и сериям | Книги по порядку

Estranged from his family for most of his adult life, Chris Napier is persuaded to return home for his niece's wedding. At the reception, he is shocked to recognise a dishevelled intruder as his childhood friend Nicky Lanyon, whose presence is a chilling reminder of a murder and subsequent trial that Chris has tried hard to forget.

When Nicky hangs himself, Chris is compelled to revisit the tragic events of 34 years ago, and the apparent justice that was served. But as present day mysteries begin to shadow his footsteps into the past, his search for the truth soon becomes a desperate struggle for his own survival.

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?

It could be your average suicide. A man found dead in his car, engine running, parked at the end of a lonely track, a tube feeding deadly fumes from the exhaust through the window. Except for the seven-year-old boy still breathing in the boot...

For Jonathan Kellaway, the past is somewhere he chooses not to go. Dead friends, lost lovers and a family dynasty hell-bent on self- destruction lie buried there.

But if he is to uncover the truth, he must confront all the secrets which have consumed his life, and which may yet consume him...

Spring, 1919. James ‘Max’ Maxted, former Great War flying ace, returns to the trail of murder, treachery and half-buried secrets he set out on in The Ways of the World. He left Paris after avenging the murder of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, a senior member of the British delegation to the post-war peace conference. But he was convinced there was more – much more – to be discovered about what Sir Henry had been trying to accomplish. And he suspected elusive German spymaster Fritz Lemmer knew the truth of it.

Now, enlisted under false colours in Lemmer’s service but with his loyalty pledged to the British Secret Service, Max sets out on his first – and possibly last – mission for Lemmer. It takes him to the far north of Scotland – to the Orkney Isles, where the German High Seas Fleet has been impounded in Scapa Flow, its fate to be decided at the conference-table in Paris. Max has been sent to recover a document held aboard one of the German ships. What that document contains forces him to break cover sooner than he would have wished and to embark on a desperate race south, towards London, with information that could destroy Lemmer – if Max, as seems unlikely, lives to deliver it...

A thrilling espionage story set in Paris after the First World War, full of classic Goddard double crosses and triple twists.

1919. The eyes of the world are on the city of Paris where diplomats, politicians, spies and opportunists have gathered to discuss the fate of Germany in the aftermath of the cataclysm that was the First World War. In such circumstances, the last thing the British diplomatic community need is the untimely death of one of their delegation. So when Sir Henry Maxted falls from the roof of his mistress’ apartment block in mysterious circumstances, their first instinct is to sanitize any unexplained aspects to his death.

But his son ex Royal Flying Corps ace, James ‘Max’ Maxted, has other ideas. He resolves to get to the bottom of Sir Henry’s death - even if it does mean disturbing the impression of harmonious calm which the negotiating teams have worked so hard to maintain. In a city where nations are jostling for position at the crossroads of history and stakes are very high, it is difficult to tell who is a friend and who is a foe. And Max will soon discover how much he needs friends.

When Tim Harding agrees to do a friend a favour by bidding for an antique ring at an auction on his behalf, he is unaware of the secrets tied up with it - secrets that date back three hundred years. But the ring is stolen before it can be sold, and a shocking murder follows. Harding is quickly thrown into a web of conspiracies surrounding the ring's origins. As he draws closer to the heart of the mystery, he comes across a young woman he is certain he recognizes, even though they have never met. But as he goes in search of her identity, his life begins to fall apart. Somewhere, a perilous truth awaits him, coupled with a terrible…

Lance Bradley, idling his life away in Somerset, suddenly receives a call for help from the eccentric sister of his old friend Rupert Alder. Rupe appears to have vanished without trace. Reluctantly, Lance goes to London where he discovers that Rupe's employers want him tried for fraud. A Japanese businessman claims he has stolen a document of huge importance. And Rupe has hired a private detective to try and trace an American called Townley, who was involved in a mysterious death thirty years before.

No sooner has Lance decided that whatever Rupe was up to is far too risky to get involved in, than he finds that he already is involved. And the only way out is to get in deeper still. Where is Rupe? What is the document he has stolen? Who is Townley? And could the seemingly unexplainable events of the past hold the key to a secret more shocking than Lance Bradley could ever have imagined?

For actor Toby Flood, Brighton is the final week of a long tour. One night he is visited at the theatre by his estranged wife, Jenny, who, visibly scared, thinks she is being stalked. She asks Toby, for old times' sake, to find out what is going on.

Alarmingly he discovers a sinister connection with Jenny's new partner. Spurred on by a desire to win Jenny back, Toby begins to ask some difficult questions. Before he fully understands the risks he is running, he finds himself caught up in a mysterious - and dangerous - tangle of family rivalries and murderous intent. Suddenly the prospects for his survival start to look very far from good...

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?

It is a hot summer's day in the tourist village of Avebury. A man sits outside the Red Lion pub, waiting. He sees a woman with three young children, two of them running ahead while their sister dawdles behind. A child's voice catches on the breeze.

For want of anything more interesting to do, the man watches. He sees nothing sinister or threatening. Even when another figure enters his field of vision, he does not react. The figure is ordinary - male, short-haired, stockily built.But he is moving fast, at a loping run.

And then it happens. In one swift movement, the running man grabs the youngest child and carries her away. Still the man outside the pub does not react. Suddenly, awhite transit van bursts into view, its engine racing, its rear door slamming shut. The child and her abductor are inside. The child's sister rushes forward. The man outside the pub jumps up...

The tragedy begins at Avebury. But it does not end there.

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...

Geoffrey Staddon turned his back on the best things in his life. He turned his back on the beautiful house Clouds Frome, his finest achievement as an architect. He turned his back on the woman he loved, Consuela Caswell, and who loved him in return. Twelve years later, amidst the tatters of his career and marriage, he is forced to contemplate the remorse and shame of his betrayal.

But when he reads that Consuela has been charged with murder, he knows instinctively that she cannot be guilty. And when she sends her own daughter to him, pleading for help, Geoffrey cannot ignore the dangerous lure of the past any longer. He must return to Clouds Frome, and face the dark secret it holds.

Tristram Abberley was an acclaimed English poet of the 1930s whose legendary reputation was sealed when he died fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly fifty years later, his sister Beatrix is brutally murdered in her seaside cottage.

Her family are stunned by the crime - especially Beatrix's niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn her aunt as fifty years of secrets begin to unravel. Beatrix is the victim of a dark conspiracy, one that her loved ones are powerless to defeat. A harrowing quest for answers begins, one that uncovers a shocking tale of wartime greed and treachery, and a vendetta seemingly without end...

One fateful summer evening, businessman Robin Timariot meets a strikingly beautiful woman while out walking. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later, the newspapers are full of the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton - and to his horror, Timariot realises that this was the woman he met just hours before her death.

A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of bizarre events begin to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems. Against his better judgement, he is soon sucked into the tortuous complexity of the dead woman's life. But the closer Timariot gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late, he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to live...