Kirjahaku

The cult bestseller that launched Jake Arnott as one of the most exciting new voices of the decade - 'A gangster novel every bit as cool, stylish and venomous as the London in which it's set' (Independent on Sunday)'I'll tell you what happens now,' Harry says, reading my mind. 'You can go now. We're quits. You don't talk to anybody about anything. You've had a taste of what will happen if you do.'Meet Harry Starks: club owner, racketeer, porn king, sociology graduate and Judy Garland fan. To be in his orbit is to be caught up in the music, the parties, the people and the sex of London in the Swinging Sixties. But behind the rough charm and cheap glamour is a man prepared to do what it takes to get what he wants.

Jake Arnott's 'mesmerizing, brilliant' (New York Times Book Review) second novel, a literary thriller that delves into corruption on both sides of the law and at the heart of the state.During the long hot summer of 1966, a senseless murder shocks the nation and brings the World Cup euphoria to an abrupt end. Yet it marks a beginning for three men, who are inextricably linked to the crime and its consequences: an ambitious detective struggling with his conscience; a tabloid journalist with a nose for a nasty story; and a disaffected thief, haunted by his violent past. Spanning three decades of profound social change, this gripping novel explores corruption on both sides of the law and at the very heart of the state.

A blistering take on Cool Britannia and London's underbelly in the 1990s, the third novel in Jake Arnott's loose trilogy following The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers. It's 1995, and crime is the new cool. Actress Julie wants none of it as she comes to terms with her hidden criminal roots. But her public-school boyfriend is going all mockney and writing the script of his 'classic British gangster movie'. Meanwhile, 'Geezer' Gaz, wannabe villain, is losing control as he preys on the Essex rave scene. And sixties gang boss Harry Starks is back to haunt them all . . .New lads meet old lags, celebrity villains mix with media types and Cool Britannia is stripped bare in wickedly sardonic fashion. Welcome to Cruel Britannia.

'Hypnotic, feverish and altogether wonderful' (Guardian) - the author of the bestselling Long Firm trilogy turns his eye on the anarchic 1970s. As the dreams of the 1960s give way to anger and political unrest in the '70s, the charismatic anarchist Declan O'Connell commits suicide, leaving his boyfriend Pearson and fellow squatter Nina to try to make sense of what has happened. Enter Sweet Thing, a streetwise rent boy, who has an uncanny hold over glam rock star Johnny Chrome; and in the wings lurks Detective Sergeant Walker of the newly formed Bomb Squad, who knows more about O'Connell than anyone ever suspected. The course of all their lives is about to change forever.

'A consummate performance...virtuoso' GuardianA fascinating, unusual and seductive historical novel by the bestselling author of The Long Firm.In a Parisian restaurant, Aleister Crowley, the notorious occultist, chances on Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald: once one of the greatest heroes of the British Empire, now facing ruin in a shocking scandal - and vulnerable to Crowley's curious offer of help. An extraordinary night of transgression and revelation ensues . . . Probing beneath the surface of Victorian conformity, this is an enthralling tale of imperialism, sexuality and the nature of belief, which captures a world on the brink of a brutal new era.

A mind-bending, thrilling journey into 20th-century history and outer space - 'a brightly coloured portrait of our times that is alternatively intimate and epic . . . brilliant' (Independent on Sunday). In 1941, Larry Zagorski was a naïve young writer of science-fiction. Seven decades on, he looks back on that crucial year and traces his place in a mysterious web - one that connects the Second World War with the Space Age, stretches from London to Cuba and Southern California, and links Ian Fleming with Rudolf Hess in a conspiracy that reverberates in the present.Could this be the secret history of the 20th century? In a mesmerising novel peopled by spies and propagandists, the conned and the heartbroken, dreamers and fanatics, the question is: who will you believe?

'A work of dazzling imagination and linguistic inventiveness' ObserverNewgate Gaol, 1726. An anonymous writer sets down the words of Edgworth Bess as she confides the adventures and misfortunes that led her all too soon to the judgement of London:Cruelly deceived, Bess is cast out onto the streets of the wicked city - and by nightfall her ruin is already certain. What matters now is her survival of it.In that dangerous underworld known in thieves' cant as Romeville, she will learn new tricks and trades. And all begins with her fateful meeting, that very first night, with the corrupt thief-taker general Jonathan Wild.But it is the infamous gaol-breaker, Jack Sheppard, who will lay Romeville at her feet . . . Drawing on the true story that mesmerised eighteenth-century society, the acclaimed author of The Long Firm delivers a tour de force: a riveting, artful tale of crime and rough justice, love and betrayal. Rich in the street slang of the era, it vividly conjures up a murky world of illicit dens and molly-houses; a world where life was lived on the edge, in the shadow of that fatal tree - the gallows.

“It happened at a place where three roads meet. Junction 1A of the M25, heading east towards Gravesend. There’s a killer on the road.” Lee Royal – the King of Kent – is dead. Killed on the M25 in a brutal act of road rage. But was this a random attack or something more premediated – something stemming from a dark and long-kept secret? With Lee’s death, so begins a cat and mouse game to discover the truth … Jo Royal, Lee’s wife, has long been discontented in her marriage. A complicated relationship and a marriage fraught with secrets and betrayals has left a steady resentment for Lee bubbling away under the surface. But does this give her motive enough to want him dead? Eddie Pierce – young, ambitious and ruthless – is the new kid on the block. Determined at any cost to move up the ranks within the criminal underbelly of Kent, his growing infatuation with Jo only gives him more to fight for. But as his obsession with finding Lee’s killer takes over, his grip on what is fact and fiction begins to dangerously unravel. What is he capable of doing to become the next King of Kent? Commander Ray Spinks of Scotland Yard has been a long-time associate of Lee’s. Brash, arrogant and underhand – he is owed his share of the wealth Lee has amassed and he won’t let anyone get in his way. What starts as a seemingly random act of violence will soon turn into a high-stakes man hunt for a killer and the revelation of an explosive secret that will have devastating consequences. Blood Rival is a fast-paced, addictive and twisty thriller told at a whiplash speed, rife with dark family secrets and deadly stakes. A story of lust, betrayal and tragedy.

Mixing the invented and the real, The House of Rumour explores WWII spy intrigue (featuring Ian Fleming), occultism (Aleister Crowley), the West Coast science fiction set (Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Philip K. Dick all appear), and the new wave music scene of the '80s. The decades-spanning, labyrinthine plot even weaves in The Jonestown Massacre and Rudolf Hess, UFO sightings and B-movies. Told through multiple narrators, what at first appears to be a constellation of random events begins to cohere as the work of a shadow organization--or is it just coincidence? Tying the strands together is Larry Zagorski, an early pulp fiction writer turned US fighter pilot turned "American gnostic," who looks back on his long and eventful life, searching for connections between the seemingly disparate parts. The teeming network of interlaced secrets he uncovers has personal relevance--as it mirrors a book of twenty-two interconnected stories he once wrote, inspired by the Major Arcana cards in the tarot. Hailed as an heir to Don DeLillo's Underworld by The Guardian, The House of Rumour is a tour de force that sweeps the reader through a century's worth of secret histories.

A sensuous, vivid and unsettling modern gothic tale about a couple who move to the seaside town of Hastings and find themselves living in the former home of a notorious local occultist over whom the shadow of former town resident Aleister Crowley looms large. Ideal for fans of Andrew Michael Hurley or Francine Toon. Exhausted by the pressures of life in London, Justine and Adam move to Hastings. With Adam’s failed career as an artist and a recent miscarriage causing rifts in their marriage, Justine wants this to be a fresh start for them. As they try to settle into their new seaside home, they find a bolted door in their basement, behind which is a cave. Adam feels a strange but enchanting pull to the cave while apprehension begins to claw at Justine. Inside the cave, they find a witch bottle and with this discovery, the couple begin to uncover disturbing rumours about the home’s previous owner, John Malachy. A sinister figure, Malachy was known for his obsession with chaos magic, and association with Sacred Disease - a band that rose to fame in the 80s that supposedly experimented with blood magic and occult forces and was made a scapegoat in the media due to their association with satanism. Justine and Adam seek answers from James Blackwood, a local occultist and former member of Sacred Disease. He warns them to leave things be and not to tamper with ancient rituals, dark magic and secrets long buried in the past. But John Malachy is long dead and surely everything the media said about him was only superstition? Despite Blackwood's warning, Adam can’t resist opening the witch bottle. With this, a sinister chain of events begins to unfold. Justine notices that Adam’s behaviour changes and the obsession he once had with his art is reignited but begins to veer into something unnatural. Justine herself wakes night after night, haunted by the screams of a young woman that seem to come from the cave beneath the house. When Justine once again finds herself pregnant, and people in the town begin to turn up dead or missing, the lines between truth, reality and the mystical all begin to blur. The ghosts of John Malachy and the one and only Aleister Crowley himself loom large and a dark sacrificial reckoning closes in on both Justine and Adam.