Roberts again proves that he's perfectly at home in the urban sprawl of ancient Rome as his sleuth Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger follows a trail of suspicious deaths to the heart of a dangerous conspiracy. When a banker and a building contractor are murdered in the street, Roman officials are disinterested. Although the second murder was clumsily amateurish, Decius suspects the murders are related and ominous portents of things to come: he also has stumbled on a cache of arms hidden in the Temple of Saturn.
When a sacred woman's rite in the ancient city of Rome is infiltrated by a corrupt patrician dressed in female garb, it falls to Senator Decuis Caecilius Metellus the Younger, whose investigative skills have proven indispensable in the past, to unmask the perpetrators. When four brutal slayings follow, Decius enlists the help a notorious and dangerous criminal. Together, they establish a connection between the sacrilege and the murders, and track the offenders from the lowest dregs of society to the prominent elite of the upper class, finding corruption and violence where Decius least expects it.
The Murders in the Run Morgue and The Purloined Letter. (level 6)
Two cases of detection for Monsieur Auguste C. Dupin, Poe's great detective. Who could have committed the atrocioius murders in the Rue Morgue and so how did the murderer get in, or out? Will Dupin find the purloined letter and save the royal personage? Where is the minister hiding it?
The Small Shop Keeper With No Name is back. Hired to find the vandals responsible for spraying graffiti on an insurance magnate's advertising hoarding, he soon finds himself battling to solve murders which echo in the corridors of power. With MI5 involved and everyone on the hunt for a missing Jack Russell, can our hero stay alive as well as keep his world renowned bookshop afloat?
In Alias Grace, bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since The Handmaid's Tale. She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders.
