OVER 40 NEW STORIES FROM BRITAIN’S LEADING CRIME WRITERS Leading editor and reviewer Maxim Jakubowski has compiled another beguiling collection of the year’s best new short crime fiction from the UK. Ian Rankin’s perennially popular Edinburgh cop, Inspector Rebus, makes an unexpected comeback in a short, but intriguing story, ‘The Very Last Drop’, and the collection closes with another Rankin story, ‘Driven’. Making their first appearance in the series are many luminaries such as Kate Atkinson, Louise Welsh, Stephen Booth, Christopher Brookmyre, Colin Bateman, A. L. Kennedy, Sheila Quigley, Lin Anderson, Simon Kernick and David Hewson. Also represented are exciting up-and-coming...

Incarcerated in a home for young offenders, Wee Danny Gibson has learned how to act in front of his teachers, his educational psychologist and the institute's supervisors. And if he continues to keep his nose clean, he could be rewarded with a day-trip to Castle Ward. But good behaviour is no easy task when his fellow inmates are determined to get in his face. Then there's Conan 'The Barbarian' Quinlan, a gentle giant who Danny feels compelled to look out for. Friend or liability? Danny can't be sure, but he knows he needs to stay focussed on that little taste of freedom.

Wee Rockets does for Belfast what Irvine Welsh did for Edinburgh. A gang of fourteen-year-old hoods rampage through West Belfast, indulging in violent street crime and mugging pensioners to pay for cider, cigarettes and sweets. Branded scum by a shocked community and pursued by a dogged local vigilante, the young gangsters' antisocial behaviour soon escalates into something much worse. "The Wire? This is Barbed Wire. A cheeky slice of urban noir, a drink-soaked, drug-addled journey into the violent underbelly of one of Europe's most notorious ghettos, Wee Rockets makes The Outsiders look like the Teletubbies" - Colin Bateman For fans of A Clockwork Orange, Kidulthood, The Wire,...

Paul Morgan is a bad influence on his brother, Brian. When Paul crosses one thug too many, the cider-fuelled duo flee Belfast for Warrenpoint, the sleepy seaside resort of their childhood memories. For Brian a new life in The Point means going straight and falling in love with Rachel while Paul graduates from carjacking by unusual means to low-level racketeering. Brian can't help being dragged into his brother's bungling schemes, but Rachel can be violently persuasive herself . . . and she isn't the only one who wants to see an end to Paul's criminal career. THE POINT is a 27,000-word novella by the author of WEE ROCKETS.