P. M. Hubbard – författare

Peter Grant, sailing his boat in unfamiliar waters, is forced ashore on an island connected with the mainland by a causeway uncovered only at low tide. There is a house on the opposite shore lived in by two secretive people.His involvement in their affairs, begun by his sea-chance, becomes deeper and more dangerous as the tides ebb and flow over the causeway, until he finds himself face-to-face first with love - and then with terror and violent death.''A sensitive, absorbing tale'' Sunday Times

Gifford knows that he must get away. London, his office job, his suburban home and his older wife have become unendurable. Then comes the answer in Callender, whom he meets in a pub and who offers him the job of handyman on a remote island. But once there doubts began to creep in. What has become of his predecessor, Mackie? Why has all the furniture been moved out of Mackie''s cottage and into the one he now occupies? What secret lies inside the power house, which he has been forbidden to enter?There is some dreadful mystery behind the isolated community on the island, and he realises that his own safety depends on remaining ignorant of the truth: that Mackie disappeared because he knew too much ...

By the time Jim Gilruth returns to Pakistan, twenty years after he served as a law officer in a small village near Lahore, colonial rule has given way to Pakistani officialdom. His strange and enigmatic mission is painfully involved in the brutal clash of the old and the new - but why has he been chosen as the instrument of coercion?Then the details of a half-forgotten murder that he had long ago adjudicated begin to come back in all their bewildering nuances, and Gilruth, in an eerie repetition of the circumstances of a generation ago, is powerless to save the life of a good man, or bring a murderer to justice.

Mark Hawkins is an engineer and a loner, who has always resented his adventurer-archaeologist brother, Dick. But when Dick vanishes, allegedly dead in a climbing accident, Mark starts investigating the site his brother was excavating, a Cistercian monastery, and meets three strange souls who were the last to see his brother alive.Among them is Dr Merrion, a specialist in medieval archaeology. As Mark pokes around the woods surrounding Merrion''s home, he begins to feel that sinister forces are at play in Dick''s death.''Beautifully put together with an atmosphere that literally chills you'' San Francisco Chronicle

A vanishing corpse; a mistrustful policeman; a celebrated archaeologist and TV personality involved in the macabre rites of a primitive religious sect - these are just some of the dark ingredients of a novel whose every page is vibrant with menace.P. M. Hubbard has a disturbing talent for evoking terror in the most unlikely settings: in this case, a sleepy English village is shown to conceal a pit of horror, a terrifying nightmare world that destroys all who would uncover its secrets.

Ainslie meets Mary Allison in an ancient Highland graveyard. It is a tantalising meeting that raises more questions than it answers. Later encounters with Mary and with other local people gradually involve him in a mystery that, as a newcomer to the glen, he is not equipped to solve. While the mystery deepens, Ainslie is employed for the winter by one of the local lairds to cull the surplus hinds from the red deer herds. Against the backdrop of the harsh and empty world of the Highlands, this strange and necessary rite will have an explosive climax.

Curtis had killed a man, and he had paid the price. Now free from prison and moving his way across England searching for a place to begin a new life, Curtis slowly realises he is being shadowed by mysterious pursuers and is entering a very dangerous, stealthy game of hide-and-seek. Curtis finds himself in a desolate seaside village where a beautiful woman and a deserted house will be crucial in the desperate - and murderous - drama about to be played out on the English Coast. ''The novel is written with power'' New York Times Book Review ''A smooth elaboration of mounting horror and danger'' Library Journal

Johnnie Slade harbours an obsessive love for fine glass objects, so his interest is piqued when he sees photographs of the fabulous Verzelini tazza in a magazine. He follows its trail and finds that someone may already have committed murder to get their hands on it. If, indeed, it ever existed. And what is the relevance of the entry in the dead man''s diary that reads ''Dunstreet''?Johnnie finds out what it means - and he also finds Claudia. But his pursuit of both the tazza and the girl are complicated not only by Claudia''s blind and autocratic Aunt Elizabeth, but also by the dawning realisation that he is not alone in his quest. And death, of course, is just around the corner.

While hunting in the English countryside, Ben Selby stumbles upon the murdered body of Peter Gaston, a friend of some twenty years earlier. As they had both been agents in a clandestine organisation, he is convinced that Peter was killed to prevent their meeting and sets out to question his widow. What she tells him is the beginning of a perilous and exasperating search for something buried long ago on a remote island headland.

Millie Trent, the toast - or scandal, according to some - of a West Country sailing resort, is found drowned. The verdict is accidental death, although no one seems to know when or why she ended up in the sea.Paul Mycroft, despite his determination not to let the affair spoil his family holiday, finds himself drawn into an enquiry that begins by providing a startling diversity of views on Millie''s character and ends by involving him in unexpected danger.

Steve and Helen Anderson move from their London flat into an isolated old house near the Lod River. Both are strangely drawn to the river, though stories circulate about its dangerously weak banks and powerful undertow. Helen is also drawn to neighbor Matthew Summers, the forbidding village squire and Casanova.They have moved from urbanity and movement to a silent and brooding landscape dominated by the almost invisible river that runs through it. It is this change that provides the catalyst to an inherently unstable relationship, and a final catastrophe ...''He has the ability to achieve a mounting kind of tension that rivets the reader'' New York Times Book Review

Mike Hurst, tormented by events that happened five years ago, returns to the cottage he still owns and the location of past revelations. The place hasn''t changed, but the people have, and he finds himself involved in a fresh net of personal discoveries, all rooted in the past and bedevilled by it, but all making it more difficult for him to find the solution he has come back to seek ...''This is a haunting novel for the thoughtful reader by one of Britain''s most gifted storytellers'' Chicago Tribune

Ian MacKellar seeks out Julia. He discovers her on a farm she runs, where she maintains her younger brother and sister. But his obsessive pursuit of Julia becomes stymied by members of her dysfunctional family. The action unfolds in a West Country English village by a dark pond in the secluded woods near Julia''s family home. And it is below the surface of that pond that tragedy awaits ...

From the church of St Udan''s rises The Tower, threatening collapse unless a large sum can be raised to repair it. In its shadow, the brooding, macabre figure of Old Liberty, fire-and-brimstone vicar, rages against robust and clever George Hardcastle, humanist and self-styled ''antichrist'', while between them wavers diminutive enchanting Mary Garstin, wearing her wealth and position uneasilyHappening upon this tiny hamlet where nothing is quite what it seems, John Smith is held in thrall by the elusive charm of Cynthia Hardcastle - who plays Shakespearean games with her father, and crouches on tree stumps in the dark of night - and by a premonition of disaster.

When Kate forsakes London to join her husband in the North of Scotland, it is more than a journey to an unfamiliar land. The spirit of the Highland village, invested with ancient clan warfare, works its magic on her; and the foundations of her matter-of-fact marriage, and of her being, shift eerily. Kate soon finds herself enmeshed in the tangle of desires, jealousies and darker emotions that run riot beneath the deceptively calm surface of the ingrown little town. Passions rise in the hills; guilty secrets are laid bare in the valleys; and a lonely and ironic death on a mountainside rights old wrongs.''One of the most haunting, with a marvellously romantic Highland setting ... eminently satisfying and inevitable'' Publishers Weekly