Books published by publisher Quercus Publishing Childrens

Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now, a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Covered in blood and drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer. Stride's raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents' case - and his personal guilt associated with it - still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing without as much as a second thought. However, Stride's partner Maggie Bei is not convinced. She doubts the sincerity of this beautiful young streetwalker who has so easily won Stride's trust, and now sleeps in his house with a butcher's knife under her pillow. As Stride continues to care for Cat, Maggie's suspicions solidify, and a single question occupies the void between them: should Stride be afraid for, or of, this terribly damaged girl?

A nail-biting psychological drama for fans of the Richard & Judy bestseller THE LAST THING SHE TOLD MEOne, two, three . . . Lisa Dale shuts her eyes and counts to one hundred during a game of hide-and-seek. When she opens them, her four-year-old daughter Ella is gone. Disappeared without a trace. The police, the media and Lisa's family all think they know who snatched Ella. But what if the person who took her isn't a stranger? What if they are convinced they are doing the right thing? And what if Lisa's little girl is in danger of disappearing forever?***Linda's next emotional page-turner, THE SECOND TIME WE MET, is now available to pre-order!!

'From the very first page I was drawn in, hook, line and sinker' Amazon reviewerThe bestselling noir thriller about the lengths a mother will go to protect her child. Perfect for fans of While My Eyes Were Closed and The Widow.The loss of her mother has left Kali McKenzie with too many unanswered questions. But while clearing out Elena's art studio, she finds a drawer packed with postcards, each bearing an identical one-line message from a Canadian gallery owner called Susannah Gillespie: thinking of you. Who is this woman and what does she know about Elena's hidden past? Desperate to find out, Kali travels with her toddler, Finn, to Susannah's isolated home on a remote British Columbian island, a place of killer whales and storms. But as bad weather closes in, Kali quickly realises she has made a big mistake. The enigmatic Susannah refuses to talk about the past, and as Kali struggles to piece together what happened back in the 1970s, Susannah's behaviour grows more and more erratic. Most worrying of all, Susannah is becoming increasingly preoccupied with little Finn . . .**Enjoyed The Missing One? The new novel from the inimitable Lucy Atkins, The Night Visitor, is available now!**

When Marie moves from her family's waxwork museum into the palace of Versailles, her whole life is set to change... When Marie Tussaud learns the exciting news the royal family will be visiting her famed wax museum, the Salon de Cire, she never dreams that the king's sister will request her presence at Versailles: as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. As Marie familiarizes herself with Princess Elisabeth and begins to know Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, she witnesses the glamorous life of court, a very different world from her home on the Boulevard du Temple of Paris where bread can only be had on the black market and men sell their teeth to put food on the their tables. The year is 1788 and men like Desmoulins, Marat, and Robespierre are meeting in the salons of Paris speaking against the monarchy; there's whispered talk of revolution. Spanning five years from budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax moulding saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished king.

One of the most remarkable stories in the history of Special Forces' operations - Daily ExpressIn the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death. Churchill's Secret Warriors tells the story of the daring victories for this small force of 'freelance pirates', undertaking devastatingly effective missions against the Nazis, often dressed in enemy uniforms and with enemy kit, breaking all previously held rules of warfare. Master storyteller Damien Lewis brings the adventures of the secret unit to life, weaving together the stories of the soldiers' brotherhood in this compelling narrative, from the unit's earliest missions to the death of their leader just weeks before the end of the war.

From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane's cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close. Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe's seasoned pilots. And sometimes Fighter Command, with its obsolete tactics and stiff doctrines, is the real menace. As with all Robinson's novels, the raw dialogue, rich black humour and brilliantly rendered, adrenalin-packed dogfights bring the Battle of Britain, and the brave few who fought it, to life.

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, and with his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. The other refugees in the detention centre are unsure how to help the old man; his caseworkers are compassionate, but overworked. Monsieur Linh struggles beneath the weight of his sorrow, and becomes increasingly bewildered and isolated in this unfamiliar, fast-moving town. And then he encounters Monsieur Bark. They do not speak each other's language, but Monsieur Bark is sympathetic to the foreigner's need to care for the child. Recently widowed and equally alone, he is eager to talk, and Monsieur Linh knows how to listen. The two men share their solitude, and find friendship in an unlikely dialogue between two very different cultures. Monsieur Linh and His Child is a remarkable novel with an extraordinary twist, a subtle portrait of friendship and a dialogue between two cultures.