Andrea Camilleri
The Terracotta Dog

A mysterious tete-a-tete with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist and some dying words lead Inspector Montalbano to a secret grotto in a mountain cave where two young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, are watched over by a life-size terracotta dog. Montalbano's passion to solve this old crime takes him on a journey into a family's dark heart amid the horrors of World War II.

About the author
Andrea Camilleri was born in 1925 in Porto Empedocle, in Agrigento Province, in Sicily. He worked as a script editor, a theatre and TV producer, before taking up writing. The Terracotta Dog is his second novel featuring Montalbano, the first of which, The Shape of Water, is also published by Oakhill.The series has been adapted for Italian television and translated into many languages. He lives in Rome.

Acclaim for Andrea Camilleri
'Montalbano is a cross between Columbo and Chandler's Philip Marlowe with the added culinary idiosyncrasies of an Italian Maigret' - Guardian

Frank Gardner
Blood and Sand: Life, Death and Survival in an Age of Global Terror

On 6th June 2004, in a quiet suburb of Riyadh, BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were filming a report on AI-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia when they were ambushed by Islamist gunmen. Simon was killed outright. Frank was shot and as he lay pleading for his life a figure pumped four more bullets into his body at point blank range. Against all odds he survived, and this is his remarkable account of his agonising, life-shattering journey from being left for dead in a dusty street to where he is today: partly paralysed, but alive.

About the author
Frank Gardner is the BBC's full-time Security Correspondent. A fluent Arabist, with a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, he was previously the BBC's Middle East Correspondent in Cairo and previously Dubai. He has written for the Economist, Sunday Times, Telegraph and Time OutAwarded the OBE in 2005 for services to journalism, he is married with two children and lives in London.

Acclaim for Blood and Sand
'Shot and left for dead in Saudi Arabia ... his terrible experience only makes his analysis all the more telling' - Evening Standard

LA Times reporter Eve Diamond has been looking forward to a romantic date with her new love, Silvio Aguilar: an opening night at the theatre, cocktails and the night ahead ... But when the play's unstable leading lady CatarinaVelosi fails to appear, Eve learns that she and Silvio share a complicated past Despatched to Catarina's home, Silvio finds a messy scene suggesting abduction - or worse. Stifling her feelings of betrayal, Eve must fight to clear Silvio's name. She knows he is innocent ... or does she?

About the author
Denise Hamilton is a Los Angeles-based writer, journalist and author of the Eve Diamond novels Last Lullaby (a Los Angles Times Best Book of 2004), Sugar Skull, and The Jasmine Trade (nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Willa Awards and the Creasey Memorial Dagger). She lives in Southern California with her husband and two young children.

Acclaim for Savage Garden
'Like Raymond Chandler, Hamilton describes California in gritty, lyrical prose; like Sue Grafton, she shows a tough-skinned, tenderhearted heroine breaking a few rules, if not a few bones' - Publishers Weekly