Francis Cottam

Martin Stride is a retired rock star, enjoying the quiet life with his young family on their beautiful estate. On the edge of his grounds lies a derelict Edwardian railway station waiting room once used to transport troops in The Great War. Silent for many years, it has become a playground for Martin's children but now they won't go near it. Strange occurrences in the waiting room lead Martin to seek the help of TV's favourite ghost-hunter Julian Creed. But Creed's psychic ability is a fabrication to gain viewers. He doesn't believe in the paranormal. Until he spends a night in The Waiting Room.

The Waiting Room

A brilliant new thriller, combining old evil and modern terror, by the author of THE HOUSE OF LOST SOULS.

Dark Echo

Sebastian Faulks meets Robert Harris in a wonderfully evocative and thrilling first novel about a firefighter in London at the height of the Blitz. Autumn, 1940, and the Luftwaffe is firebombing London, a city rendered virtually defenceless by a legacy of appeasement and governmental incompetence. Jack Finlay, a young man already notorious for his capacity to fight fires, and men, is hauled reluctantly back from his artillery unit on the African front to mastermind the firefighting in a crucial area of the City, looking after five rather mysterious buildings in particular. Finlay's Liverpool past is murky but London needs him now. He finds himself a pawn in an Intelligence game, and in British Intelligence's attempt to feed false intelligence to the Germans at a crucial point in the war. He falls in love with a young woman who's the curator of one of the buildings which was built by her disgraced German architect father - she too is being manipulated and the crisis comes when she is caught in the burning building. With a cynical eye and a tender heart, this taut, well-written novel tracks a dangerous intelligence game, and spotlights the indiscriminate path of war and fire through ordinary lives.

The Fire Fighter

Autumn 1940. London is being firebombed, unable to strike back as the Luftwaffe drones overhead. Jack Finlay, a young man notorious for his ability to fight fires, is given the task of preventing five buildings vital to Britain's war effort from being engulfed by the flames. But resources are scarce and the mood is bleak, and Finlay himself suspicious about the real motive for his mission. And then he falls in love with a woman as unorthodox as he is: a wartime liaison as improbable as it is intense, dangerous because it makes him as vulnerable as the flames and plots twist around him.

Every year, three million single women in America move into an apartment for the first time. Few of them change the locks . . . Juliet Devereau can't believe her luck: after weeks of looking for a place to live, she's found a beautiful, spacious apartment overlooking Brooklyn Bridge. It almost seems to good to be true. It is. Over the weeks, Juliet is haunted by a chilling sense of being watched. Strange sounds wake her in the night, the mirror in the bathroom trembles, and doors she thought were shut are open. Then the silhouette of a man standing in her living room makes her realize that she's not alone in there. But what's haunting her is far more terrifying than a malevolent spirit; it's alive, strong, and obsessed. Suddenly Juliet is caught up in a deadly game of cat and mouse, and there's no guarantee that she'll come out alive.

The Resident

First published in 2006, this is the story of Polish war exile Julia Smollen who has escaped the horrors of Nazi labour camp to forge a new life in California with her daughter, Natasha. It's an exciting time to be in America. With Sinatra and the ratpack dominating a golden Hollywood and the young Jack Kennedy emerging on the political scene, it's a time of optimism and opportunity. Under the protection of her former lover's great friend, Bill, Julia and her daughter thrive. Yet Natasha remains unaware of her true identity. She knows nothing of her father, the courageous German officer Martin Hamer, fatally wounded helping the then-pregnant Julia flee her occupied homeland. Julia cannot keep the truth hidden from her daughter forever. A sinister figure from the past has tracked them down, with his own dark, vengeful agenda...

A Shadow on the Sun

They were just like the beaches at Normandy, Slapton Sand. That's why they trained them there - an army of invasion secluded in sleepy south Devon. But fifteen hundred soldiers perished at Slapton Sands, and no one seems to want to know why. Thirty-two years later, in the long hot summer of '76, Alice Bourne, an American Student, arrives determined to discover the true story of their tragic sacrifice. But her presence is unwelcome. Disturbing incidents occur. Alice believes she's being haunted, targeted by a malevolent individual with his own dark reasons for preventing her from finding out what really happened. A poignant love story and a chilling tale of suspense, Francis Cottam's mesmerizing novel peels back the layers of both past and present to examine the harrowing detail of a tragic wartime mystery.

Francis Cottam

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