Lamar Public Library

Maverick police inspector Alan Banks finds himself drawn into London's underworld when he aids his archrival Chief Constable Riddle, after the chief's missing daughter turns up on a pornographic website.

The crime scene awaiting Acting Detective Superintendent Alan Banks is among the worst he has ever encountered. The assailant, Terence Payne, hovers close to death himself. And Payne's brutalized wife, Lucy - whose overheard screams prompted the original call - has already been moved to a local hospital for treatment. But these sins and tragedies pale before what else has transpired in a dank basement the press will soon dub the "House of Payne."...

The night sky is ablaze as fire engulfs two barges moored end to end on a Yorkshire canal. On board are the blackened remains of two human beings. One was a reclusive and eccentric local artist, the other a junkie, a sad and damaged young girl. To the seasoned eye of Inspector Alan Banks, this horror was no accident, its method so cruel and calculated that only the worst sort of fiend could have committed the dark act. And it isn't long before the...

The story of a complicated friendship between two very different women: shy and socially constrained Caroline, the poor niece of a tyrannical clergyman; and the independent heiress Shirley, who has both the resources and the spirit to defy convention. The romantic entanglements of the two women with a local mill owner and his penniless brother pit the claims of passion against the boundaries of class and society.

Wuthering Heights tells the story of a romance between two youngsters: Catherine Earnshaw and an orphan boy, Heathcliff. This tale of hauntings, passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of the dark side of love.With an Afterword by David PinchingDesigned to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality...

"It looks and sounds like a traditional Christmas scene - a log fire, brightly decorated tree, classical music on the stereo. But appearances can be deceptive. Caroline Hartley, the beautiful young woman lying on the sofa, has been brutally murdered." "For Chief Inspector Alan Banks, the former Londoner who is finally beginning to feel at home in Yorkshire, the case is new but the emotions it evokes - anger, outrage, a sense of loss - are familiar."...

Olivia Hewes has one dream: to make Chatham Manor's wool-producing venture profitable. When she meets Randolph Sherbourne, the heir of her largest competitor, the two are drawn toward a forbidden love that will mean betraying both their families and the centuries-old feud that has separated them. But when the shocking truth about the death of Randolph's father is revealed, their future happiness seems doomed.

When water drains from a man-made reservoir, a forgotten town is discovered, and when local residents find a human skeleton, Inspector Alan Banks is called in to solve a murder that is more than forty years old.

When country milkman Martin Snell makes his usual delivery to fifteenth-century Celandine Cottage one fine spring morning in Kent, he expects to be greeted by the cottage's seductive tenant, Gabriella Patten, not the ugly remains of a fire pointing to murder. A burnt-out chair, a peculiar pattern of soot on the walls, an asphyxiated corpse, two footprints, and a collection of discarded cigarette butts bring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his...

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks must face his most challenging and personal case yet. A distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to Banks. Since he's away on holiday, his partner, Annie Cabbot, steps in. The woman tells Annie that she's found a loaded gun hidden in the bedroom of her daughter, Erin--a punishable offense under English law. When an armed response team breaks into the house to retrieve the weapon,...