Ben Allen

Renaissance Venice is a furnace of ideas and ambition. Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary colour. Yet artist Giorgione 'Zorzo' Barbarelli's career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. When Zorzo hears a rumour of a mysterious, other-worldly new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the colour and secure his name in history.

Winning a commission to paint a portrait of the man's wife, Sybille, Zorzo thinks he has found a way into the merchant's favour. Instead he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy that stretches across Europe and a marriage coming apart inside one of the floating city's most illustrious palazzos.

As the water levels rise and the plague creeps ever closer, an increasingly desperate Zorzo isn't sure whom he can trust. Will Sybille prove to be the key to Zorzo's success, or the reason for his downfall?

At MI5 they call Jonas Merrick 'the eternal flame', because he never goes out. Never goes undercover, or on surveillance, or kicking down doors. But in Jonas is a steely concentration, a ruthless ability to find the enemy who hides in plain sight like a submerged crocodile. When Cameron Jilkes, a young man from a broken background, trained as a Jihadi in the harshest theatre of war comes ashore near Dover, he plans to live unnoticed, before unleashing a terrifying strike. And this time, Jonas Merrick must go out - to hunt the crocodile himself.

Jago is a kid from a rough part of London who has worked hard to get a job in a bank. Marcantonio is a member of the 'Ndrangheta crime families from Southern Italy. When Jago witnesses Marcantonio commit a vicious assault, he is drawn into the middle of a delicate surveillance operation…

Rob Stone comes back from the horrors of the First World War unable to forget the things he has seen. Haunted by the ghost of his dead Captain, all that Rob has left of him is a picture of his family. Rob sets out to find them, hoping that by bringing them the picture, he can bring peace to the Captain's ghost - and to his own troubled heart. Quick Reads.

It is the summer of 1961 and the brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more perilous.

Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don't know it, but they are about to compete in the deadliest game ever played.

Shadowing them is Greta, a ruthless resistance fighter who grew up the hard way in the forests of Lithuania, but who is now hunting down some of the most dangerous men in the world.

Men who are also on the radar of Vassily, perhaps the Soviet Union's greatest spymaster. A man of cunning and influence, Vassily was Yulia's minder during her visit to the West, but even he could not foresee the consequences of her meeting Michael.

When the world is accelerating towards an inevitable and catastrophic conflict, what can just four people do to prevent it?

Epic in scope, The Partisan is a thrill ride like no other, taking you from the hallowed halls of Cambridge to the grimy depths of the Moscow underworld, from 1960s London to the Eastern Front in the Second World War.