In the chilling opening to Birdman, the bodies of five women are found, ritualistically mutilated and dumped on wasteland in Greenwich, England. When post-mortem examinations reveal a single, horrific signature linking the victims - a tiny bird sewn into each chest - the police realize they are on the trail of a serial killer with a terrifying mind. Detective Inspector Jack Caffery, young,driven, unshockable, finds himself facing both hostilities within the force and his own memory of a lethal failure, as he struggles to unravel the most macabre murders he's ever seen. Now, as he employs every weapon science can offer, he knows he has little time before the sadistic killer strikes again. But he has so little evidence. All he has are five mutilated corpses and five dead little birds. Mo Hayder - with a keen psychological insight, brilliant forensic and procedural detail, and a psychically wounded but charismatic lead investigator - has written a first novel of raw intensity and deep understanding that will thrill the hearts of the most demanding readers of crime fiction. From the Paperback edition.

A family's beloved country home becomes a nightmarish prison in the brilliant, terrifying seventh novel in internationally bestselling author Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery series A young girl comes across an injured dog in a park but doesn't tell anyone what the battered scrap of paper attached to its collar says: "Help us." Oliver Anchor-Ferrers is recovering from heart surgery at his grand country home when his wife discovers something horrifying in the garden, a grisly sight all too reminiscent of the tragedy that traumatized the family fifteen years ago and haunts them still. It's impossible: how could they have let that man out of prison? Meanwhile, detective Jack Caffery resolves to finally discover the true circumstances of his brother's disappearance and demands help from the one person he knows can lead him in the right direction. But that help will come at a price. Full of mind-bending twists and turns and Hayder's signature...

Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed. DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared. Their search for him — and for his abductor — lead them into the darkest recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks; an evil that feeds off the blood — and flesh — of others …

'There is an act, a very particular form of torture, which anthropologists and historians occasionally ruminate over. It is an act still reported from time to time from far-flung war zones around the world. What is unusual is that in spite of the oral evidence it has never been captured on film. But if film did exist, some people say, the most likely place it would come from, the place that was always whispered, the place that first comes to mind, is Nanking.' Student Grey Hutchins comes to Tokyo seeking a rare piece of film showing the notorious Nanking Massacre in which, in one city, the Imperial Japanese Army butchered up to 300,000 civilians. Only one man can help her, a survivor of the massacre, and now a visiting professor at the prestigious University of Todai in Tokyo; a man who is rumoured to possess documentary evidence of Nanking.But first Grey must gain his trust. Desperate and alone, she accepts a job as a hostess in an upmarket nightspot catering for Japanese businessmen and wealthy gangsters. One gangster dominates – an old man in a wheelchair guarded by a terrifying entourage – who is said to rely on a powerful elixir for his continued wealth and well-being. It is an elixir that others want for themselves – at any price. With its focus on the Tokyo underworld and China in the late 1930s, and a woman who has a lot to prove and even more to hide, this is a literary thriller of the highest order.

With the redolent atmosphere of Ian Rankin and the spine-chilling characters of Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder's The Devil of Nanking, takes the reader on an electrifying literary ride from the palatial apartments of yakuza kingpins to deep inside the secret history of one of the twentieth century's most brutal events: the Nanking Massacre.A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage of the notorious 1937 Nanking Massacre, footage some say never existed. Only one man can help Grey. A survivor of the massacre, he is now a visiting professor at a university in Tokyo. But he will have nothing to do with her.So Grey accepts a job in an upmarket nightspot, where a certain gangster may be the key to gaining the professor's trust. An old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage, the gangster is rumored to rely on a mysterious elixir for his continued health. Taut, gritty, sexy, and harrowing, The...

Mo Hayder has for years been a master of chilling, seamlessly-plotted thrillers that keep the reader glued to the page long after lights out, and fresh off of winning the Edgar Award for Best Novel for Gone , Hayder is at the top of her game. Her latest novel, Poppet , is Hayder at her most terrifying: a gripping novel about the search for a dangerous mental patient on the loose. Everything goes according to procedure when a patient, Isaac, is released into the community from a high security mental health ward. But when the staff realize that he was connected to a series of unexplained episodes of self-harm amongst the ward's patients, and furthermore that he was released in error, they call on Detective Jack Caffery to investigate, and to track Isaac down before he can kill again. Will the terrifying little effigies Isaac made explain the incidents around the ward, or provide the clue Caffery needs to predict what he's got planned? Mo Hayder is renowned for conjuring nightmares that sink under the skin, and in Poppet she has delivered a taut, unbearably suspenseful novel that will not let readers go.

Greenwich, south-east London. The Met's crack murder squad, AMIP, is called out by nervous CID detectives to a grim discovery. Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered and dumped on wasteland near the Dome. As each post-mortem reveals a singular, horrific signature linking the victims, officers realize that they are on the trail of that most dangerous offender: a sexual serial killer. Detective Inspector Jack Caffery — young, driven, unshockable — finds himself facing both hostility within the force and echoes of his past in this, his first case with AMIP. Haunted by the memory of a death long ago, he employs every weapon forensic science can offer for he knows it is only a matter of time before this chaotic, sadistic killer strikes again.

November in the West Country. Evening is closing in as murder detective Jack Caffery arrives to interview the victim of a car-jacking. He's dealt with routine car-thefts before, but this one is different. This car was taken by force. And on the back seat was a passenger. An eleven-year-old girl. Who is still missing. Before long the jacker starts to communicate with the police: 'It's started,' he tells them. 'And it ain't going to stop just sudden, is it?' And Caffery knows that he's going to do it again. Soon the jacker will choose another car with another child on the back seat. Caffery's a good and instinctive cop; the best in the business, some say. But this time he knows something's badly wrong. Because the jacker seems to be ahead of the police - every step of the way...