A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

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A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy and is known as @agatharoza on Wattpad.

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A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
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A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

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A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

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A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

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A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

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A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children. Angelica is also the author of Hunt A Killer, a PERFECT SCORE novel, under the pen name A.M. Ellis, which she wrote as an IP for Scholastic in the US.

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A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

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A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

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Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

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Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

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Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

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Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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Dick Francis

DICK FRANCIS was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys and author of forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), the biography of Lester Piggott and his own autobiography (The Sport of Queens). He was rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest thriller writers in the world. 
 
 Since his death, his son FELIX FRANCIS has taken over the literary reigns from his father and Dick's legacy lives on through the Dick Francis novels. The Francis flair is clear for all to see in these national treasure thrillers, and readers will appreciate the sporadic reappearance of beloved series characters Sid Halley and Jeff Hinkley.

When Kelly Hughes rides the favourite into second place, he gets penalized for his trouble. Not only has he lost the race, but also his licence, as the Jockey Club suspends him - believing he threw the race. 
 
Knowing that the problem lay with the horse's performance, not his own, Kelly suspects he was framed and sets about finding out who has set him up. 
 
But the closer he gets to the perpetrators, the more danger he finds himself in. Now there's more than his reputation and career at stake. 
 
There's also his life . . .

Enquiry

Amateur jockey Lord Henry Grey decides on a whim to join the bloodstock market, transporting racehorses around the world. And when he meets the glamorous Gabriella in Italy, he is sure he's hit the good life. 
 
That is, until a horse unexpectedly dies in transit and a colleague vanishes. 
 
Then Grey discovers that both his predecessors also went missing in curious cirmcumstances - and begins to doubt the wisdom of his career change. 
 
Either he turns detective or his own disappearance could be next . . .

Flying Finish

Jonah Dereham is a bloodstock agent who buys and sells horses for his clients. As an ex-jockey, it's the ideal quiet life - until Jonah is attacked by thugs out to sabotage his business. 
 
Unfortunately for them, Jonah's a man with a steely resolve. He's determined to find out who is trying to ruin him, and why. 
 
But staying honest is more dangerous than Jonah could have imagined. 
 
And with his horses, his business and his own life on the line, Jonah must hit back - before he's taken down for good . . .

Knock Down

Rob Finn's winning streak made him one of the most sought-after steeplechase jockeys. But his subsequent collapse in form surprised no one more than himself. 
 
As word spreads that Finn has lost his nerve, he discovers a well-managed campaign to discredit certain jockeys; in his own case, a plan assisted by horse doping. 
 
But to find the culprits behind it, Finn will have to use all his cunning and racing know-how . . .

Nerve

Cheltenham Races, New Year's Eve. Gerard Logan witnesses the death of his friend, jockey Martin Stukely, after a fall from his horse. In the aftermath, Gerard is left to pick up the pieces - including a mysterious unmarked videotape that Martin secretly left him. 
 
But before Gerard gets to watch it, the videotape is stolen. 
 
And soon further crimes start to occur. What was on the missing videotape? And why are the attacks continuing? 
 
Gerard needs to keep one step ahead of his enemies and uncover the truth - before his livelihood and everything he loves is shattered for good.

Shattered

Felix Francis

When Mark Shillingford commentates on a race in which his twin sister Clare, a successful jockey, comes in third, he can't help but be suspicious. He knows she should have won. Did she lose on purpose? Was the race fixed? Why would she do something so out of character? 
 
That night, Mark confronts Clare with his suspicions, but she storms off after an explosive argument. It's the last time Mark sees her alive. Hours later, Clare jumps to her death from the balcony of a London hotel . . . or so it seems. 
 
Devastated by her death, and overcome with guilt, Mark goes in search of answers. What led Clare to take her own life? 
 
Or was it not suicide at all . . .?

Bloodline

Nick Foxton once won the Grand National, but a terrible accident cut his racing career short. Years later, he is returning to Aintree - as a spectator - when he once more finds himself the centre of attention. 
 
Minutes before the big race, Nick's colleague, financial adviser Herb Kovak, is shot dead and the gunman vanishes into the crowd. The police want answers but Nick can't explain why anyone would want Herb dead. 
 
Yet when he finds a threatening message crumpled in Herb's coat, Nick begins questioning all he knows about his friend. And on learning that he is the benefactor of Herb's will, Nick is certain that something is not right. 
 
A fact confirmed when Nick discovers he's next in the killer's firing line.

Gamble

A beautiful Italian girl driving home in an open top sports car, a little boy playing on a south Coast beach and the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club on his way to a press reception in Baltimore. One after the other they suffer the same nightmare ordeal - kidnapping. But there is one thing connecting these particular cases. For the Italian girl is a jockey and the little boy an only son of a race horse owner. A picture of the person behind this interanational chain of crime starts to emerge - a lover of Verdi, a man with a cool and calculating brain and an aficionado of the racing world. Andrew Doublas, brought in to advise and help the vicitms and their families, proceeds with all his customary diplomacy and courage. Only to find himeself playing a dangerous part: the role usually reserved for his clients...

The Danger

Captain Thomas Forsyth's tour of Afghanistan is cut brutally short when he is badly wounded by a roadside bomb. 
 
Returning home, to his mother - a racehorse trainer and the 'First Lady' of racing - Tom discovers the training business is on the edge, and facing a threat far more dangerous than a run of bad form. 
 
Tom finds himself on a very different, but just as deadly, battlefield where his military skills are tested . . . kill or be killed?

Crossfire

Royal Ascot's first day, and bookmaker Ned Talbot watches helplessly as a string of favourites come in. With the punters totting up their winnings, he counts his losses. Then an old man steps forward with a very different claim. The father Ned never knew - long ago believed killed in a car crash - is standing before him. 
 
Barely an hour later, Ned's newly-found father is dying in Ascot's car park. Stabbed by an unknown assailant, he warns Ned 'be very careful'. But of whom? Of what? 
 
Ned races to discover the truth behind his father's disappearance and sudden reappearance. It's not just money on the line now. It's lives.

Even Money

"Julian Trent, you have been found guilty by this court of perpetrating a violent and unprovoked attack on an innocent family including a charge of attempted murder. You have shown little or no remorse for your actions and I consider you a danger to society." 
 
When defence barrister Geoffrey Mason hears the judge's verdict, he quietly hopes that a long and arduous custodial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason expect that he'll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than he'd ever imagined. 
 
Setting aside his barrister's wig, Mason heads to Sandown to don his racing silks. An amateur jockey, his true passion is to be found in the saddle on a Thoroughbred, pounding the turf in the heat of a steeplechase. But when a fellow rider is brutally murdered - a pitchfork driven through his chest - Mason's racing life soon becomes all too close to his working life. The prime suspect is one of their brethren, champion jockey Steve Mitchell; the evidence is overwhelming. 
 
Mason is reluctant to heed Mitchell's pleas for legal advice - but soon he finds himself at the centre of a sinister web of threat and intimidation. Mason is left fighting a battle of right and wrong, and more immediately, a battle of life and death... his own.

Silks

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Dick and Felix Francis's searing and intrue-fillied thriller, Dead Heat. Read by Martin Jarvis. 
 
'I wondered if I was dying. I wasn't afraid to die but, such was the pain in my gut, I wished it would happen soon.' 
 
The night before the Two Thousand Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a prestigious black-tie Gala dinner. It is a fitting testament to the glamour of the occasion that Max Moreton is cooking the evening's meal. 
 
Max is something of a celebrity in Newmarket circles. He is the chef and founder of the racing town's favourite Michelin-starred restaurant, the Hay Net. However, spending the night in the throes of agony with chronic food poisoning is the last thing Max expects - such things simply aren't becoming of a professional chef. And the last thing he needs is to hear that his food is suspected of putting twenty-four of the guests in hospital. 
 
Within hours, Max's restaurant is being forcibly closed, his reputation is teetering on the brink of ruin, and a court case seems to be looming. But the day is far from over, and soon Max Moreton finds himself desperately fighting for more than just his livelihood...

Dead Heat

&lsquo;I wondered if I was dying. I wasn&rsquo;t afraid to die but, such was the pain in my gut, I wished it would happen soon.&rsquo; 
 
The night before the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a prestigious black-tie Gala dinner. It is a fitting testament to the glamour of the occasion that top chef Max Moreton is cooking the evening&rsquo;s meal. 
 
Max is something of a celebrity in Newmarket circles. He is founder of the racing town&rsquo;s favourite Michelin-starred restaurant, the Hay Net. However, spending the night retching in the throes of agony is the last thing Max expects. But much worse is to come...his food is suspected of putting twenty-four of the dinner guests in hospital. Max&rsquo;s pride and professionalism tells him all is not as it seems. 
 
Within hours, Max&rsquo;s restaurant is forcibly closed, his reputation teeters on the brink of ruin, and a court case looms. But the day is far from over, and soon Max Moreton finds himself desperately fighting for more than just his livelihood... 
 
Dead Heat is the latest searing, intrigue-filled blockbuster from the Grand Master of thriller writing.

Perry Stuart, TV meteorologist, chiefly predicts periods of English drizzle, with bursts of heavier rain and sunshine to follow. His life calm and ordered, his face familiar to every British household, Stuart&rsquo;s profound weather knowledge and accuracy have given him high status among forecasters, but no physical baptism by storm. 
 
Not, that is, until a fellow forecaster offers him a Caribbean hurricane-chasing ride in a small aeroplane as a holiday diversion. By frightening accident, Stuart learns more secrets from the flight than wind speeds &ndash; and back home in England he faces threats and danger as deadly as anything that nature can evolve. 
 
&lsquo;Second Wind&rsquo; is a twisting spiralling hurricane of a thriller that will defy anyone to treat the weather as an everyday topic of conversation.

Second Wind

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Dick Francis's thriller, Under Orders, read by Martin Jarvis. 
 
"Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon. However, three in one afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than an eyebrow." 
 
It's the third death that really troubles former champion jump-jockey Sid Halley. He knows the perils of racing all too well - but in his day, jockeys didn't usually reach the finishing line with three .38 rounds in the chest. But this is precisely how he finds Huw Walker - the new winner of the Triumph Hurdle and Halley's friend. Now former friend. 
 
Walker was riding one of Lord Enstone's horses in the Hurdle and it was the inimitable owner who invited Halley in the first place. His brief: to make discrete enquiries into alleged race fixing. Are results being rigged? Are bookies taking a cut? And if so, are trainers and jockeys playing a dangerous game with stakes far higher than they realise ... 
 
Halley's quest for answers draws him ever deeper into the darker side of the race game, in a life-or-death power-play that will push him to his very limits - both professionally and personally. 
 
"A New Dick Francis is always a cause for celebration" - Mail on Sunday.

Under Orders

&lsquo;Sadly, death at the races is not uncommon. However, three in a single afternoon was sufficiently unusual to raise more than an eyebrow.&rsquo; 
 
It&rsquo;s the third death on Cheltenham Gold Cup Day that really troubles super-sleuth Sid Halley. Former champion jockey Halley knows the perils of racing all too well &ndash; but in his day, jockeys didn&rsquo;t usually reach the finishing line with three .38 rounds in the chest. But this is precisely how he finds jockey Huw Walker &ndash; who, only a few hours earlier, had won the coveted Triumph Hurdle. 
 
Just moments before the gruesome discovery, Halley had been called upon by Lord Enstone to make discrete enquiries into why his horses appeared to be on a permanent losing streak. Are races being fixed? Are bookies taking a cut? And if so, are trainers and jockeys playing a dangerous game with stakes far higher than they realise? 
 
Halley&rsquo;s quest for answers draws him ever deeper into the darker side of the race game, in a life-or-death power play that will push him to his very limits &ndash; both professionally and personally. 
 
In his first new novel for six years, Dick Francis returns to prove once again that he is the Grand Master of thriller writing.

Tor Kelsey, an undercover agent for the Jockey Club's security service is involved in the attempt to rid racing of one of its most notorious villains, Julius Apollo Filmer. The court however, does not go along with their beliefs, but Tor knows that to let Julius even suspect the service are still on his tail would mean certain death for a number of witnesses. Meanwhile, several racehorse owners have planned a luxurious train trip across Canada, with race meetings fixed for every major city. Julius Apollo Filmer and Tor are on the passenger list. The beautiful journey through the Rockies gets uglier by the minute and Tor finds himself pushed to dangerous limits to defeat Filmer's wily scheming.

The Edge

Valentine, a blind, confused and dying old man, seeking his peace with God, makes his last confession to a visiting friend, Thoms Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. Thomas, in Newmarket to research for a new film, is placed in a moral dilemma. Wild horses wouldn't drag from a priest the secrets of the confessional - but then Thomas is not a priest. Should he tell what he knows from the confession, or not? He discovers that the solution to his quandary could mean the difference between life and death. WILD HORSES is a masterly mix of convincing characters, fine writing and an inscrutable and ingenious plot.

Wild Horses

Free choice? There's no such thing, according to Lee Morris. Choice is pre-ordained by your personality. Stratton Park racecourse faces ruin in the hands of a squabbling family. Lee is slowly sucked into the turmoil, unwillingly on the surface but half-understanding the deep compulsions that influence his decisions. One road leads to safety, another to death. How do you know which is which? Lee's choices and their consequences bring deadly results, but the road out of the quicksand is there, if he can find it. Horses and racing are familiar ingredients, but this time there are also children, houses, roots and decisions. Danger? Naturally. Stratton Park racecourse is worth multi-millions, and all of the Stratton family are playing to win.

Decider

This is a brilliant collection of thirteen short stories, written by the Master of Crime. Although some of the stories have been published before, all but one of them have had a very limited circulation and the vast majority of Dick Francis fans will be reading them for the first time. Ranging from the National Hunt Festival at Cheltenham to Churchill Downs in America, each of the stories contains an array of five-star Dick Francis characters, a brilliant plot to marvel over and an ingenious sting in the tail to gasp over.

Field of Thirteen

Short Stories

Derek Franklin, injured steeplechase jockey, is at end of his career when he is thrust into chaos following the accidental death of his brother Greville who was an importer of semi-precious stones.

Straight

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

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Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

Aidan Waits

Air Ministry Survival Guide

Alan Partridge on the BBC

Aldrin Adams Adventure

Alec Devlin

Alex Craft

Alex Cross

Alex Delaware

Alex vs Axel

Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar

Alfie

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