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Crime and Thrillers


"Politicians should read science-fiction, not westerns and detective stories."
-Arthur C. Clark-

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1. obr Living With the Dead
Kelley Armstrong

Description:
Robyn Peltier has always lived a normal life. So when her boss is murdered and she is named prime suspect, she is way out of her depth. As the bodies pile up only her friend Hope, and Hope's somewhat spooky boyfriend Karl, are on her side. Hope, meanwhile, has a few secrets of her own. Namely that she is half-demon, and her 'spooky' boyfriend is actually a werewolf. Hope also knows that Robyn has accidentally stumbled into a bloody supernatural turf war. And the only way she can keep her friend alive is by letting her enter a world she's safer knowing nothing about ...



Hardback
CZK 500
2. Checkpoint
Nicholson Baker

Description:
Two men - Jay and Ben - sit in a Washington hotel room. Jay has called his old friend Ben there - to tell him why and how he wants to kill the President. Jay is a bit of a loser (he's lost his girlfriend, his job, his car), generally easy-going, but now he's on edge and he's angry - and he's acquired some radio-controlled flying saws, and is working on a boulder with a depleted uranium centre- but he also has a gun and bullets. Ben is the voice of liberal reason, with a job and a family. Jay switches on a tape machine, and the two men argue. Well, Ben tries feebly to reason or cajole, while Jay rants and rages about everything from the horror of what happened at that southern Iraq checkpoint where US forces opened fire on a Shiite family in a Land Rover, killing most of them, and decapitating two young girls; to the iniquities of the present administration, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al., and abortion (if they're against abortion, how come they can kill women and children?), not to mention the napalm-like substance ('improved fire jelly') used in bombs in Iraq. Their dialogue veers from chilling and serious to wacky and crazed (Bush, says Jay, is 'one dead armadillo'). Checkpoint is a novel about a man pushed to the extremes, by a writer who is clearly angry. Like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, it takes the temperature of America just below the surface and finds it at boiling point.


Trade Paperback
CZK400
3. obr The Chatelet Apprentice
Jean-Francois Parot

Description:
Its France, 1761. Beyond the glittering court of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour at Versailles, lies Paris, a capital in the grip of crime and immorality ...A police officer disappears and Nicolas Le Floch, a young recruit to the force, is instructed to find him. When unidentified human remains suddenly come to light, he seems to have a murder investigation on his hands. As the city descends into Carnival debauchery, Le Floch will need all his skill, courage and integrity to unravel a mystery which threatens to implicate the highest in the land. This is the first in a series of six historical crime novels which has sold in excess of 400,000 copies in French. The author brings eighteenth century Paris vividly to life and the story features real-life characters Madame de Pompadour and Loius XV as well as engaging hero Nicolas le Floch. It is soon to be adapted for French Television.

Trade Paperback
CZK 440
4. obr A Morbid Taste for Bones
Ellis Peters

Description:
In 1137 the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the remains of Saint Winifred for his Benedictine order. Brother Cadfael is part of the expedition sent to her final resting place in Wales, where they find the villagers passionately divided by the Benedictines' offer for the saint's relics. Canny, wise and all too worldly, Cadfael isn't surprised when this taste for bones leads to bloody murder. The leading opponent to moving the grave has been shot dead with a mysterious arrow, and some say Winifred herself dealt the blow. Brother Cadfael knows that a carnal hand did the killings, but he doesn't know that his plan to unearth a murderer may dig up a case of love and justice, where the wages of sin may be scandal - or his own ruin.

Hardback
CZK 400
5. Kindred in Death
J.D. Robb

A phone call from up high interrupts Eve's plans to have a lazy day with her husband: The teenage daughter of Captain Jonah McMasters, head of the NYPD drug squad, has been found raped and strangled in her bedroom. A terrifying video of Deena, bloody and beaten beyond recognition, hints at a link between her death and a criminal in McMasters's own past, someone determined to exact revenge in the cruelest way possible. Searching through McMasters' cases leads Eve nowhere - until another rape-murder, and another video, reveals the killers deadly intent: to target every single person involved in his family's case over a decade ago. With barely anything to go on except a tangle of dead ends, Eve and her team must work fast to identify the next victim of a killer with who will stop at nothing ...
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Trade Paperback
CZK 520
6. obr Under the Dome
 Stephen King

Description:
Two high profile victims - a former Left-wing radical turned environmental campaigner and a geneticist researching the possibility of inherited memory - are found murdered within 24 hours of each other. Both men have been scalped. Forensic tests reveal that single red hairs left at each scene belong to neither victim, but were cut from the same head - twenty years earlier. Jan Fabel and his murder team find themselves under political and media pressure to track down a killer whom the press has already christened 'The Hamburg Hairdresser'. Connections in the victims' pasts begin to emerge, but Fabel's team is working against the clock. Fabel is caught in a web of intrigue, obsession and revenge that seemingly spans sixteen centuries. He must discover the crucial link between an ancient mummified body, a long-disbanded terrorist group and its infamous leader and a killer who believes he has been reincarnated to exact a terrible revenge on those who betrayed him in a previous life.

 Hardback
CZK 500
7. The Crucifix Killer
Chris Carter

Description:
In a derelict cottage in L.A, a young woman is found savagely murdered. Naked, strung from two wooden posts, the skin has been ripped from her face - while she was still alive. On the nape of her neck is carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer. But that's not possible. Because, two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this be the work of a copycat? Or is Homicide Detective Robert Hunter forced to face the unthinkable? Is the real Crucifix Killer still out there, taunting Hunter with his inability to catch him? Robert Hunter and his rookie partner are about to enter a nightmare beyond imagining ...

 Trade Paperback
CZK 520
8. The Expected One
Kathleen McGowan
Description:
The standard religious-thriller architecture is evident in McGowan's much-heralded debut, which coincidentally shares similarities with The Da Vinci Code (e.g., murders, Vatican interference, nefarious secret societies), but mostly the characters sit and talk about biblical history and the search for Magdalene-connected treasure. Biblical dreams and visions plague American Maureen Paschal, author of the bestselling HERstory—a Defense of History's Most HatedHeroines. When she travels to France's mysterious Languedoc region at the urging of Magdalene scholar Lord Berenger Sinclair, Maureen finds what has eluded centuries of treasure hunters—the original Magdalene scrolls that detail her love affair with Jesus, their marriage and the crucifixion. Though the author makes no effort to render these gospel excerpts in period prose, they're the most compelling part of a novel otherwise freighted with romance-fiction stylings and unadorned facts numbingly narrated. Originally self-published, this first of a trilogy has already sold foreign rights in 22 countries.


Paperback
CZK 280
9. The Secret Speech
Tom Rob Smith

Description:
Set in 1956, bestseller Smith's edgy second thriller to feature Leo Demidov (after Child 44) depicts the paranoia and instability of the Soviet Union after the newly installed Khrushchev regime leaks a secret speech laying out Stalin's brutal abuses. Now working as a homicide detective, Leo has long since repudiated his days as an MGB officer, but his former colleagues, fearful of reprisals from their victims, have begun taking their own lives. Leo himself becomes the target of Fraera, the wife of a priest he imprisoned. Now the leader of a violent criminal gang, Fraera kidnaps Leo's daughter, Zoya, and threatens to kill Zoya if Leo doesn't liberate her husband from his gulag prison. Shifting from Moscow to Siberia and to a Hungary convulsed by revolution, this fast-paced novel is packed with too many incidents for Smith to dwell on any in great depth. Though its drama often lacks emotional resonance, this story paints a memorable portrait of post-Stalinist Russia at its dawn.

 Paperback
CZK 280
10. Look Again
Lisa Scottoline

Description:
When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a ‘Have You Seen This Child?’ flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops. The child in the photo looks exactly like her adopted son, Will. All her instincts tell her to deny the similarity between her son and the photo, for she knows his adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and can’t stop thinking about the image until she figures out the truth. Moreover, she can’t shake off the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? As she investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, she digs too deep, endangering her own life – and that of the son she loves. In this emotionally charged, heart-pounding thriller Lisa Scottoline has broken new ground. Look Again examines the very essence of parenthood and raises a question that will haunt readers long after they have finished the last page: ‘What would I do?’


Trade Paperback
CZK 320