Finlay Robertson

Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops into a war zone when he is gravely injured by an exploding IED. This devastating moment and the transformative months that follow are narrated here by forty-five objects, telling one unforgettable story.

Detective George Cross receives a very bizarre call from a distressed family after their picnic was horribly interrupted. Just as they were about to tuck into their sandwiches, a human arm landed unceremoniously next to them. Soon, another limb followed.

As they looked up, they were horrified to see a decaying, disarticulating body perched at the top of a very tall tree.

DS George Cross is an exceptional detective but it doesn't take a genius to work out what needs answering first:

How on earth did it get up there?

Part of the DS Cross series.

The body of a bookseller is discovered, lying in a pool of blood in his Bristol bookshop. Police have one question: how did the man meet such a violent, murderous end in this peaceful place?

DS Cross's ability to dismiss red herrings is challenged by a worrying development in his personal life. Hopelessly distracted, he needs to rely on those around him in a way he has never been comfortable doing before.

It may be a quiet profession, but it's full of passionate, ambitious characters who know the value of a rare book. Their extensive reading means they also know how to get away with murder. But is that enough to fool the tenacious DS George Cross?

Book 7 in the DS Cross series.

Paul Tremelling was just seven years old when he watched the Royal Navy's Sea Harriers leave their home base in Somerset to do battle against the Argentine Air Force in the Falklands War. Two decades later he would join this exclusive club, one of an elite band of Fleet Air Arm fighter pilots, charged with standing in the way of Her Majesty's enemies.

This is the story of what it takes to make it in the dog-eat-dog arena of fighter combat. In the cockpit or crew room, the pressure is relentless, the humour merciless. It's no place for the faint-hearted.

Whether landing on a pitching aircraft carrier deck in the middle of the night or screaming in to save the lives of heroes under fire in Afghanistan, there was no room for self-doubt; only honesty, confidence and do-or-die hard truth. Big Boys Rules.

In return Tremelling and his fellow airborne warriors enjoyed levels of exhilaration and job-satisfaction that would almost unimaginable in any other walk of life.

Either Winston Churchill or George Orwell (or maybe neither of them ...) is reputed to have said 'we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm'.

For nearly twenty years, Tremelling was one of those men. And never happier than when he was in the cockpit of the legendary British jump jet.

Combining visceral action with sharp intelligence, laced with acerbic humour, Harrier pulls no punches in bringing to life the hi-octane, unforgiving world of the fighter pilot, in the air and on the ground.

Strap-in ...

When George is informed that his mother will be joining him and his father for Christmas, he is sent into a tailspin. How on earth is he meant to know what present to get her?

Soon after, one cold winter morning, Cross goes to inspect a dead body found tangled in thick hedgerow. It appears the young man was trying to scramble through the hedge when he died. Perhaps he was running away from something - or someone...

With frost on the ground obscuring evidence and secretive neighbours not giving anything away, finding the killer won’t be easy. But even with the odds stacked against him, DS George Cross is more confident in solving this murder than successfully working out what to get his mother for Christmas…

Part of the DS Cross series.

In The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put inequality at the centre of public debate by showing conclusively that less-equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across everything from education to life expectancy. The Inner Level now explains how inequality affects us individually, how it alters how we think, feel and behave. It sets out the overwhelming evidence that material inequalities have powerful psychological effects: when the gap between rich and poor increases, so does the tendency to define and value ourselves and others in terms of superiority and inferiority. A deep well of data and analysis is drawn upon to empirically show, for example, that low social status is associated with elevated levels of stress, and how rates of anxiety and depression are intimately related to the inequality which makes that status paramount.

DS George Cross's father, Raymond, always takes an annual holiday in a local care home. He enjoys the company it brings him. He busies himself repairing the residents' wheelchairs and has become their self-appointed tech guru. But this time it's different. A new arrival causes a stir – he's convinced one of the older residents, suffering with dementia, is the man who killed his father decades before.

The staff say it has to be a mistake, but after Cross investigates, he discovers that a similar murder really did take place. With Cross reopening this cold case, can the truth be revealed? Or is it already lost to time and unreliable memory?

Part of the DS Cross series.

Towards the end of the Second World War, young British artist Kenneth Brill is arrested for painting landscapes near the old village of Heathrow. The authorities suspect his paintings contain coded information about the new military airfield that is to be built there. Under interrogation a more complicated picture emerges as Brill tells the story of his life..