Steven Crossley

The US and UK intelligence services suspect a major Al Qaeda operation is being planned, but how can they get more information? Would it be possible to infiltrate Al Qaeda? Could a westerner pass as an Arab? This is what Iraqi born Mike martin attempts to do!

How can Christianity touch the imagination of our contemporaries when ever fewer people in the West identify as religious? Timothy Radcliffe argues we must show how everything we believe is an invitation to live fully.

Anyone who understands the beauty and messiness of human life - novelists, poets, filmmakers and so on - can be our allies, whether they believe or not. The challenge is not today's secularism but its banality. We accompany the disciples as they struggle to understand this strange man who heals, casts out demons and offers endless forgiveness.

In the face of death, he teaches them what it means to be alive in God. Then he embraces all that afflicts and crushes humanity. Finally, Radcliffe explores what it means for us to be alive spiritually, physically, sacramentally, justly and prayerfully. The result is a compelling new understanding of the words of Jesus.

Sam Carver has a rival, a copycat assassin using his modus operandi to organize fatal 'accidents'. Hounded by suspicion, forced to clear his name, and to protect his reputation as the best in the business, Carver must go head to head with the challenger in a deadly game of cat and mouse. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex. Book 3 of series.

The Prime Minister’s days are numbered. The Master, a shadowy figure from his party’s past, plans to replace him with someone he can manipulate to his own ends. Against a backdrop of intrigue and betrayal at Westminster, a struggle of sacrifices and compromises to seize the greatest political prize of all begins.

When his loving wife Betty plans a trip to Ireland for Fatty O’Leary’s 40th birthday things go wrong almost immediately: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; Irish bathroom furniture is not as commodious as he'd have liked. And all the time Fatty must put up with the unthinking cruelty of strangers.

Former BBC radio producer Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, are old school friends who have never lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed. When the three dine at Libor's apartment, it's a bittersweet evening of reminiscence. Man Booker Prize Winner.

Cairo, 1942, when a British officer is found murdered, it is assumed to be a political assassination by local extremists opposed to British rule. Joe Quinn, a former New York cop, isn't convinced, and his investigation centres on a high placed spy who is feeding secrets to Rommel.

September 2017, and the United Kingdom is on the verge of a referendum that will determine if the country remains a member of the European Union. But, unknown to all but a handful of members of the Prime Minister's innermost circle, there is a shocking secret that would change everything.

Where is 'home'? For Amartya Sen home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh where he grew up, the village of Santiniketan where he was raised by his grandparents as much as by his parents, Calcutta where he first studied economics and was active in student movements, and Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he came aged nineteen.

Sen brilliantly recreates the atmosphere in each of these. Central to his formation was the intellectually liberating school in Santiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore (who gave him his name Amartya) and enticing conversations in the famous Coffee House on College Street in Calcutta. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he engaged with many of the leading figures of the day. This is a book of ideas - especially Marx, Keynes and Arrow - as much as of people and places.

In one memorable chapter, Sen evokes 'the rivers of Bengal' along which he travelled with his parents between Dhaka and their ancestral villages. The historic culture of Bengal is wonderfully explored, as is the political inflaming of Hindu-Muslim hostility and the resistance to it. In 1943, Sen witnessed the Bengal famine and its disastrous development. Some of Sen's family were imprisoned for their opposition to British rule: not surprisingly, the relationship between Britain and India is another main theme of the book. Forty-five years after he first arrived at 'the Gates of Trinity', one of Britain's greatest intellectual foundations, Sen became its Master.

The story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780. Fifty years later, the passing of the Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'. Yet, had the Irish Catholics been a 'millstone' or were they the prime movers? Antonia Fraser brings colour and humour to this vivid drama, reflecting the political issues arising from religious intolerance.

Lionel 'Buster' Crabb was renowned for his feats of underwater daring in the Second World War. In 1956, during a visit to Britain by the Russian leader Khrushchev, Crabb disappeared, and to this day no-one knows how or why. From this true story, we have a fictional explanation and Cold war drama.

When Doug Perkins is asked to do the PR for a feline extravaganza called ‘Cats Through the Ages’, he doesn’t hesitate. But at the event, a robbery sets nerves on edge. The theft is not exactly a PR man's dream, but this disaster pales in comparison to the gruesome murder that follows. It's up to Doug to find an elusive killer who appears to have nine lives of his own.

Max Hastings examines the espionage and intelligence machines of all sides in World War II and the impact of spies, code breakers and partisan operations on events. With accounts from British, American, German, Russian and Japanese sources he tells the story of a secret war waged unceasingly by men and women whose actions profoundly influenced the outcome.

England, 1549: Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos . . .  The nominal king, Edward VI, is eleven years old. His uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, rules as Protector. The extirpation of the old religion by radical Protestants is stirring discontent among the populace while the Protector's prolonged war with Scotland is proving a disastrous failure and threatens to involve France. Worst of all, the economy is in collapse, inflation rages and rebellion is stirring among the peasantry. Since the old King's death, Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry's younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of Edith Boleyn, the wife of John Boleyn - a distant Norfolk relation of Elizabeth's mother - which could have political implications for Elizabeth, brings Shardlake and his assistant Nicholas Overton to the summer assizes at Norwich. There they are reunited with Shardlake's former assistant Jack Barak. The three find layers of mystery and danger surrounding Edith's death, as a second murder is committed.

And then East Anglia explodes, as peasant rebellion breaks out across the country. The yeoman Robert Kett leads a force of thousands in overthrowing the landlords and establishing a vast camp outside Norwich. Soon the rebels have taken over the city, England's second largest. Barak throws in his lot with the rebels; Nicholas, opposed to them, becomes a prisoner in Norwich Castle; while Shardlake has to decide where his ultimate loyalties lie, as government forces in London prepare to march north and destroy the rebels. Meanwhile he discovers that the murder of Edith Boleyn may have connections reaching into both the heart of the rebel camp and of the Norfolk gentry . . .  Book 7 of series.

As a six-year-old Joanna Mason witnessed a gruesome crime, now she’s an Edinburgh GP who has gone missing and only her young nanny seems to be worried. Meanwhile ex-detective Brodie Jackson is on his way back to the same city on a journey that will end in carnage. Richard & Judy Bookclub