Exclusive Look: The Pit
Where Lies Begin Her knight in shining armor had just ridden in and she didn’t even know it. All around them, the other in-patients were scattered with their visitors. On overstuffed sofas layered over with plastic to prevent the worst of the stains, mommies and daddies were giving their little girls and boys cuddles, but…
Exclusive Look: Angel of Death
Medical Mysteries There was something wrong with the charts or there was something wrong with their diagnosis. Something was not adding up. Dilated pupils, photophobia, hallucinatory rambling. This particular constellation of symptoms would not typically be expected with the infection that the patient was being treated for. And the fever? The patient was hot to…
Exclusive Look: The Hunt
Wicked Games Her face felt cold. Wet. Not unfamiliar, given her line of work, but this, this was different. It was a sharp cold, cutting, sending jagged little shots into her head, into her bones. She felt groggy, not like a couple of beers and a couple of smokes groggy but more like ‘Did you…
Exclusive Look: The Baby Farm Murders
Terms, £10 Evelina Marmon had made a mistake. It was not an uncommon mistake for a woman to make. Women had been making that same mistake over and over since the dawn of time, which was somewhat lucky, given that it was the kind of mistake that meant that the human race kept on existing.…
Exclusive Look: Smile
Ready, Set, Flirt The lights were blinding. It was something that they always said about being on stage or a film set, but you never really understood just how intensely the bulbs burned until they were focused on you. Cheryl found herself blinking hard just from walking out onto the soundstage, and they hadn’t even…
Exclusive Look: The Monster Within
Everyday Heroes The waters rushed by, setting their log raft rocking gently as they drifted downriver. The sunlight sparkled on every little wave, tiny silver fish flitted underneath, and everything was bright and warm and alive. The three boys were laughing among themselves, rocking the raft as it went, safe in the knowledge that it…
Exclusive Look Inside: Seeking Hearts
True Romance It was not the easiest time to find a date. The Great War had taken so many of the men, and those that had come home were survivors, they were changed, harsh and broken, all the romance in their hearts burned away by the whistling shells and the blood they had shed. Looking…
Exclusive Look Inside: Outback Outlaw
Outlaw of the Outback The world blurred sideways in the dark of the night. Neon and stars spun in a great kaleidoscope of colours. Liquor and beer churned in his stomach, and though deep inside of him he was still as sane and rational a man as he always had been, the only sound he…
Exclusive Look Inside: Butcher, Biter, Spy
Boom Town Across the globe men, women, and children of every free nation rejoiced. The war was at an end. Surely that would be the end of all war. Nobody could conceive of unleashing such nightmares again. There was an entire generation for whom the faintest scent of turned soil or chlorine cleaner was enough to reduce…
Exclusive Look Inside: Drop Dead Dangerous
Quick Draw The Georgia freeway was swallowed up beneath Paul’s tyres, the endless stretch of black up ahead being gobbled down and turned into history behind him. He never looked back, never needed to, never wanted to. Forward was where the excitement was—forward, just about anything could happen. He could be anybody, do whatever he…