“ Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. ” ― Rumi
When Rilke, a dissolute and promiscuous auctioneer, comes across a collection of highly disturbing photographs during a house clearance he feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them.Driven to discover whether the images repr
London, 1593. A city on edge. Under threat from plague and war, strangers are unwelcome, suspicion is wholesale, severed heads grin from the spikes on Tower Bridge. Playwright, poet, and spy Christopher Marlowe walks the city's mean streets with just thre
When conjurer William Wilson gets booked for a string of cabaret gigs in Berlin, he's hoping his luck's on the turn - there were certain spectators from his last show who he'd rather forget. But secrets have a habit of catching up with him, and the line b
It doesn't look like murder in a city full of death. A pandemic called 'The Sweats' is sweeping the globe. London is a city in crisis. Hospitals begin to fill with the dead and dying, but Stevie Flint is convinced that the sudden death of her boyfriend Dr
Jane Logan is a stranger to Berlin and she finds the city alive and echoing with the ghosts of its turbulent past. At six months pregnant, she's instructed by her partner Petra to rest and enjoy her new life in Germany. But while Petra is out at work, Jan
For 2014, Oxfam and Profile have turned to crime in order to raise a further £200,000 for Oxfam's work. OxCrimes is introduced by Ian Rankin and has been curated by Peter Florence, director of Hay Festival, where it will be launched in May. The stellar c
Professor Murray Watson is rather a sad sack. His family, his career, his affair...not even drinking offers much joy. All his energies are now focused on his research into Archie Lunan, a minor poet who drowned 30 years ago off a remote stretch of Scottis
