Showing results by author "A. Shepherd" in All Categories

London, 1749. Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionery shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author and new magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account, because he believes it might be illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

When your life changes in a moment, how do you rewrite your story? In 1940s Britain, with the Second World War raging, Alice is working in a laboratory developing a new miracle medicine. Made to leave school at sixteen and abandon her aspiration to be a teacher, she learns instead how curing people may be her destiny.

For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and occupation.

What can death teach us about life? Conducting many thousands of post-mortems has given Dr Richard Shepherd the opportunity to examine death at every stage of life. Each autopsy is its own unique investigation, providing evidence of how, through life, the risks to us ebb and flow. From old to young, from murder to misadventure and from illness to accidental death, each body has taught him something: about human development, about mortality, about its owner's life story, about justice and even about himself.

Tomas has a secret - a big secret. He has his own tiny dragon, Flicker! A dragon which grew on a very special tree at the bottom of his granddad's garden. And not only that - his friends Ted, Kai and Kat have dragons, too, all grown on the same dragonfruit tree.... Having your own dragon is magical - but Tomas is also about to find out what living with a dragon is really like.

Christmastime in London: a period of joy and togetherness. Not for Metropolitan Police Commander Austin Grant, though. Three dead bodies have turned up on his patch, and the only thing they have in common is a number carved into their foreheads. A professor of ancient mythology, a sculptor of curious idols, frontman of The Blasphemers. It seems the killer is meting out their own justice, Biblically, punishing those who transgress the Ten Commandments. With seven commandments left, Grant sets the Met's best detectives to the case, scouring the capital before the zealot can strike again.

Imagine if you could grow dragons...in your very own garden! When Tomas discovers a strange old tree at the bottom of his grandad's garden, he doesn't think much of it. But he takes the funny fruit from the tree back into the house - and gets the shock and delight of his life when a tiny dragon hatches! The tree is a dragonfruit tree, and Tomas has got his very own dragon, Flicker....

The third novel from Laura Shepherd-Robinson, in which a young woman in eighteenth-century England is on a journey to discover who she really is.

Tomas is a fully fledged expert dragon grower and protector of the dragonfruit tree. He has eyes in the back of his head for watching over those sneaky dragons, awesomely fast reflexes for putting out sparks and dodging the diving antics of whirling newly hatched dragons. He's got it all down pat—and managing his little lightning bolt dragon Zing, too. But he's not quite prepared for the adventure that awaits him when a huge secret is revealed about his new friend, Aura.

Adventure is never far away for Tomas as he finds out when another dragon hatches on the dragonfruit tree at the bottom of the garden, a dragon who quite quickly decides he is sticking firmly with Tomas! Zing is a tiny dragon with oversized wings, who causes havoc wherever he goes. When a new girl, Aura, starts at school, proclaiming herself to be a dragon expert, Tomas is thrown into confusion. He is the one with the dragons and the dragonfruit tree, after all! Before he knows it, Tomas has blurted out his secret to Aura.

From Dickens's A Christmas Carol to the ghost stories of M.R. James, the tradition of a haunted tale at Christmas has flourished across the centuries. The twelve stories of The Winter Spirits are all centred around Christmas or Advent, boldly and playfully re-imagining a beloved tradition for a modern audience. Taking you from a haunted Tuscan villa to a remote Scottish island with a dark secret, and drawing inspiration from festive traditions from all around the globe, these vibrant haunted stories are your ultimate companion for frosty nights.

June, 1781. An unidentified body hangs upon a hook at Deptford Dock - horribly tortured and branded with a slaver’s mark. Some days later, Captain Harry Corsham - a war hero embarking upon a promising parliamentary career - is visited by the sister of an old friend. Her brother, passionate abolitionist Tad Archer, had been about to expose a secret that he believed could cause irreparable damage to the British slaving industry. He’d said people were trying to kill him, and now he is missing....

Tomas can't imagine life without his little dragon, Flicker. He's become more than a pet - he's a friend like no other. And growing dragons on the dragonfruit tree in the garden with his friends Ted, Kat and Kai is the most amazing thing ever. But Tomas has promised Grandad something - that he and his friends will let their dragons go back to where they belong. The only problem is - that isn't such an easy thing to do. Not when they are still having so much fun with dragons Flicker, Sunny, Crystal and Dodger. Not when they still have to work out where the dragons' home is and how to get the dragons to leave.

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done and so sets out to solve the crime herself.

Private investigator Charles Maddox is surprised when he is approached by Edward Tulkinghorn for help. The feared and shadowy attorney offers Charles a handsome price he can't refuse to do some sleuthing for a client. Charles learns that Sir Julius Cremorne has been receiving threatening letters, and now Tulkinghorn wants him to find and stop whoever is responsible. But what starts as a simple open-and-shut case swiftly escalates into something bigger and much darker. As he cascades toward a collision with powerful forces, Charles will need all the assistance he can get…

In Conversation with Terry Shepherd, award-winning broadcaster and author of the Jessica Ramirez Thrillers. A deep dive into the people and support systems behind the stories we love.

A Jane Austen heroine murdered. A literary villain turned hero. And an investigator between it all. The year is 1814 when Fanny Price is found murdered in Mansfield Park. Once a rich heiress who was spoiled, condescending, and generally hated throughout the county. But her death is none-the-less haunting. It then takes Mary Crawford, who is now as good as Fanny was bad, to team up with a thief-taker, Charles Maddox, from London to solve the brutal crime. But with dramatic confrontations comes consequences...some even deadly.

Contains books one, two and three of the Star Lawyers series, an action-packed deep space adventure filled with humour, romance, and adventure.

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