Collection: PRE-LOVED BOOKS

Nikki Griffin isn't your typical private investigator. In her office above her bookstore’s shelves and stacks, where she luxuriates in books and the comfort they provide, she also tracks certain men. Dangerous men. Men who have hurt the women they claim to love. And Nikki likes to teach those men a lesson, to teach them what it feels like to be hurt and helpless, so she can be sure that their victims are safe from them forever.

When a regular PI job tailing Karen, a tech company's disgruntled employee who might be selling secrets, turns ugly and Karen's life is threatened, Nikki has to break cover and intervene. Karen tells Nikki that there are people after her. Dangerous men. She says she'll tell Nikki what's really going on. But then something goes wrong, and suddenly Nikki is no longer just solving a case—she's trying hard to stay alive.

Part Lisbeth Salander, part Jack Reacher, part Jessica Jones, Nikki Griffin is a kickass character who readers will root for as she seeks to right the world's wrongs. S.A. Lelchuk’s Save Me from Dangerous Men marks the beginning of a gripping new series and the launch of a fabulous new character.

Series: Nikki Griffin, #1

Condition: Pre-loved, Excellent

Format: C, 326 Pages, Hardback
Published: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 9781250170248
Language: English

The first novel in the Oslo Crime Files, a tense and dark quartet of thrillers for fans of Camilla Lackberg and Jo Nesbo. 'Sleek and cunning' Evening Standard
A woman vanishes from a forest near Oslo. Days later her body is found, seemingly mauled and maimed by a bear. When another woman is reported missing and then found dead with the same scratches and bites, police find the link between them is local doctor, Axel Glenne.
Forensics reveal the women were murdered and a net of suspicion tightens around Axel, who is convinced his twin brother Brede is responsible. But no one has seen him for years and if Axel is to prove his innocence, he needs to find Brede. And fast. But there isn't a single photograph of the brothers together and neither Axel's wife nor his children has ever met a man called Brede ...

Series: Oslo Crime Files, #1

Condition: Pre-loved, Fair

Format: B, 346 pages, Paperback
Published: September 1, 2013
ISBN: 9781472206831
Language: English

John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.
He's spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.
He's obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn't want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he's written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.
Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don't demand or expect the empathy he's unable to offer. Perhaps that's what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there's something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat---and to appreciate what that difference means.
Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can't control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.
Dan Wells' debut novel is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.

Series: John Cleaver, #1

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: B, 280 pages, Paperback
Published: March 30, 2009
ISBN: 9780755348817
Language: English

Augustine, a brilliant, ageing scientist, is consumed by the stars. He has spent his entire life searching for the origins of time itself. He has now been left alone on a remote research base in the Arctic circle, all communication with the outside world broken down. But then he discovers a mysterious child, Iris, who must have hidden herself away when the last of his colleagues departed.
Sully is a divorced mother. She is also an astronaut, currently aboard The Aether on a return flight from Jupiter. This is the culmination of her career, the very reason for all the sacrifices she has made - the daughter she left behind, the marriage she couldn't save. When all communication goes silent, she is left wondering what she will be returning to.
Marooned in the vast silence of space and the achingly beautiful sweep of the Arctic, both Augustine and Sully begin to understand their place in the world, and what gives their life meaning. For only in the silence can we find out who we truly are.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: B, 256 pages, Paperback
Published: August 9, 2016
ISBN: 9781474600606
Language: English

Isserley picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny-like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. She has a remarkable face and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Her posture is suggestive of some spinal problem. Her breasts are perfect; perhaps implants. She is strangely erotic yet somehow grotesque, vulnerable yet threatening. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch of men-trailer trash and travelling postgrads, thugs and philosophers. But Isserley is only interested in whether they have families and whether they have muscles. Then, it's only a question of how long she can endure her pain--physical and spiritual--and their conversation.
Michel Faber's work has been described as a combination of Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka, as Somerset Maugham shacking up with Ian McEwan. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory-our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: B, 296 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 2000
ISBN: 9781841950945
Language: English

In this riveting take on One Thousand and One Nights , Shaherazade, at the center of her own story, uses wit and political mastery to navigate opulent palaces brimming with treachery and the perils of the Third Crusade as her Persian homeland teeters on the brink of destruction. In twelfth century, Persia, clever and dreamy Shaherazade stumbles on the Malik’s beloved wife entwined with a lover in a sun-dappled courtyard. When Shaherazade recounts her first tale, the story of this infidelity, to the Malik, she sets the Seljuk Empire on fire.
Enraged at his wife’s betrayal, the once-gentle Malik beheads her. But when that killing does not quench his anger, the Malik begins to marry and behead a new bride each night. Furious at the murders, his province seethes on rebellion’s edge. To suppress her guilt, quell threats of a revolt, and perhaps marry the man she has loved since childhood, Shaherazade persuades her beloved father, the Malik’s vizier, to offer her as the next wife. On their wedding night, Shaherazade begins a yarn, but as the sun ascends she cuts the story short, ensuring that she will live to tell another tale, a practice she repeats night after night.
But the Malik’s rage runs too deep for Shaherazade to exorcise alone. And so she and her father persuade the Malik to leave Persia to join Saladin’s fight against the Crusaders in Palestine. With plots spun against the Seljuks from all corners, Shaherazade must maneuver through intrigue in the age’s greatest courts to safeguard her people. All the while, she must keep the Malik enticed with her otherworldly tales?because the slightest misstep could cost Shaherazade her head.
This suspenseful first-person retelling is vividly rendered through the voice of a fully imagined Shaherazade, a book lover whose late mother bestowed the gift of story that becomes her power. Created over fourteen years of writing and research, Jamila Ahmed’s gorgeously written debut is a celebration of storytelling and a love letter to the medieval Islamic world that brings to life one of the most enduring and intriguing woman characters of all time.

Condition: Pre-loved, Excellent

Format: C, 432 pages, Paperback
Published: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781474600606
Language: English

The streets of Preston are alive with music and banter.
But nothing can drown out the sound of breaking bones.
Inseparable since childhood and feared by their community, Tony, Eddie and Frankie are beyond the reach of justice.
The brutal gang, The Three Dogs, are a law unto themselves. Detective Jim Hacker has watched The Dogs grow from thuggish youths to psychotic criminals.
He seems to be the only one who wants to see their empire fall.
Meanwhile Jamie Strange, a young Royal Marine, finds himself embroiled in the lives of The Three Dogs when his girlfriend, Laurie Holland, cuts off their engagement… to be with the most dangerous of The Frankie Verdi..

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: B, 351 pages, Paperback
Published: December 4, 2017
ISBN: 9781911445883
Language: English

A beautifully crafted tale of gothic romance. Fresh with grief for her recently-deceased father and forced to live with an aunt who doesn’t want her, Emily is plunged into a nightmarish world in this terrifying gothic classic by Ann Radcliffe. Having been forced apart from the man she loves, Emily finds herself at the mercy of her aunt’s husband, the threatening Count Montoni, who imprisons her in the eerie Castle Udolpho. The cold intimidating fortress walls echo the desolation of Emily’s own mind as she confronts the waking terrors of the castle and the machinations of Montoni. Steeped in atmosphere and full of dark sweeping landscapes, Radcliffe offers a disturbing tale couched in seductive language.
FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and fantasy to science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic. Each book features a brand new biography and glossary of Literary, Gothic and Victorian terms.

Condition: Pre-loved, Excellent

Format: B, 640 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 1794
ISBN: 9780857756794
Language: English

Set in the 17th century, a breathtaking debut, and a potential prize-winner, about the power of women, witchcraft, fury, revenge and the ties that bind us.

After witnessing the brutal murder of her mother by witch-hunters, Evey vows to avenge her and track down the killers. Fury burns in her bright and strong. But she has promised her mother that she will keep Dill, her little sister, safe.

As the lust for blood and retribution rises to fever pitch, will Evey keep true to the bonds of sisterhood and to the magick that is her destiny?

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Mitch Rapp is a gifted college athlete who just wants retribution for the Pan Am Lockerbie attack. He trains six months intensely with other clandestine operatives, under CIA Operations Director Thomas Stansfield and protégé Irene Kennedy, to stop terrorists before they reach America. The assassin leaves a trail of bodies from Istanbul across Europe to Beirut, where he needs every ounce of skill and cunning to survive the war-ravaged city and its deadly terrorist factions.

Series: Mitch Rapp, #1
Condition: Pre-loved, Excellent

Criminologist Martin Knight lives a gilded life and is a thorn in the side of the police. But then his wife Liz goes missing. There is no good explanation and no sign of Martin... To make things worse, Liz is the ex-girlfriend of DCI Craig Gillard who is drawn into the investigation. Is it just a missing person or something worse? And what relevance do the events around the shocking Girl F case, so taken up by Knight, have to do with the present? The truth is darker than you could ever have imagined. Utterly gripping and full of twists, this is a compulsive thriller from master Nick Louth for fans of Robert Bryndza, Patricia Gibney and Carol Wyer. 'An unputdownable, heart-thudder of a read' Carol Wyer , author of Little Girl Lost
This was up there with the best thrillers I have ever read. Had me hooked from the start! I would definitely recommend this book. It grips you from the first page to the last. Excellent.

Series: DCI Craig Gillard, #1
Condition: Pre-loved, Excellent

Format: A, 384 pages, Paperback
Published: August 1, 2018
ISBN: 9781788631457
Language: English

My real name, no one remembers.
The truth about that summer, no one else knows.

In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe's life is in ruins.

Over one hundred and fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items: a sepia photograph of an arresting-looking woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist's sketchbook containing the drawing of a twin-gabled house on the bend of a river.

Why does Birchwood Manor feel so familiar to Elodie? And who is the beautiful woman in the photograph? Will she ever give up her secrets?

Told by multiple voices across time, The Clockmaker's Daughter is a story of murder, mystery and thievery, of art, love and loss. And flowing through its pages like a river, is the voice of a woman who stands outside time, whose name has been forgotten by history, but who has watched it all unfold: Birdie Bell, the clockmaker's daughter.

Condition: Pre-loved, Good

Format: C, 329 Pages, Paperback
Published: September 1, 2018
ISBN: 9781742376523
Language: English