Robert Goddard Series by Robert Goddard
Robert Goddard #1
Past Caring - Retail
Robert Goddard
At a lush villa on the sun-soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What’s more, Martin is being offered a job—to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family. Martin is intrigued by Strafford’ s story, by the man’s overwhelming love for a beautiful suffragette, by her inexplicable rejection of him and their love affair’s political repercussions. But as he retraces Strafford’s ruination, Martin realizes that Strafford did not fall by chance; he was pushed. Suddenly Martin, who has not cared for many people in his life, cares desperately—about a man’s mysterious death and a family’s terrible secret, about a love beyond reckoning and betrayal beyond imagining. Most of all Martin cares because the story he is uncovering is not yet over—and among the men and women still caught in its web, Martin himself may be the most vulnerable of all….
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Robert Goddard #2
In Pale Battalions - Retail
Robert Goddard
Six months after her husband's sudden death, Leonora Galloway sets off for a holiday in Paris with her daughter Penelope. At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin... Their journey starts with an unscheduled stop at the imposing Thiepval Memorial to the dead of the Battle of the Somme near Amiens. Amongst those commemorated is Leonora's father. The date of his death is recorded as 30th April, 1916. But Leonora wasn't born until 14th March 1917. Penelope at once supposes a simple wartime illegitimacy as the clue to her mother's unhappy childhood and the family's sundered connections with her aristocratic heritage, about which she has always known so little. But nothing could have prepared her, or the reader, for the extraordinary story that is about to unfold.
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Robert Goddard #3
Painting The Darkness - Retail
Robert Goddard
When Henry was a child, something terrible happened in the woods behind
his home, something so shocking he could only express his grief by
drawing pictures of what he had witnessed. Eventually Henry's mind
blocked out the bad memories, but he continued to draw, often at night
by the light of the moon.Twenty years later, Henry makes his
living by painting his disturbing works of art. He loves his wife and
his son and life couldn't be better... except there's something not
quite right about the old stone farmhouse his family now calls home.
There's something strange living in the cramped cellar, in the maze of
pipes that feed the ancient steam boiler. A winter storm is
brewing and soon Henry will learn the true nature of the monster waiting
for him down in the darkness. He will battle this demon and, in the
process, he may discover what really happened when he was a child and
why, in times of trouble, he thinks: I paint against the darkness. But
will Henry learn the truth in time to avoid the terrible fate awaiting
him... or will the thing in the cellar get him and his family first?
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Robert Goddard #4
Take No Farewell - Retail
Robert Goddard
Geoffrey Staddon had never forgotten the house called Clouds Frome, his
first important commission and the best thing he had ever done as an
architect. Twelve years before the day in September 1923 when a
paragraph in the newspaper made his blood run cold, he had turned his
back on it for the last time, turned his back on the woman he loved, and
who loved him. But when he read that Consuela Caswell had been charged
with murder by poisoning he knew, with a certainty that defied the great
divide of all those years, that she could not be guilty. As the
remorse and shame of his own betrayal of her came flooding back, he
knew too that he could not let matters rest. And when she sent her own
daughter to him, pleading for help, he knew that he must return at last
to Clouds Frome and to the dark secret that it held.
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Robert Goddard #5
Hand In Glove - Retail
Robert Goddard
Goddard weaves a compelling tale of murder, family mystery, literary scandal, and hazardous romance...,Robbery seems to be the motive for the death of dowager Beatrix Abberly; shady antiques dealer Colin Fairfax is quickly arrested and charged with her murder. Colin, however, maintains his innocence, and asks his timid brother, Derek, to clear his name. Charlotte Ladram, Beatrix's loyal godchild and heir, has doubts abouth everything, including the motive for the crime. Her godmother was the sister of the great English poet Tristram Abberley, who died fifty years earlier in the Spanish Civil War. When long-lost letters he wrote to Beatrix are unearthed, they reveal shocking secrets about Tristram's work - secrets any number of people would kill to possess. Drawn together by their passionate desire to find the answers, Charlotte and Derek follow a labyrinthine trail of clues across rural England to Wales, New York, Paris, and Spain - only to discover that no one and nothing are what they seem. A pattern of evil is surfacing that will change forever their sense of the world... and lead them on a quest even more intriguing than the Chinese box of mysteries they've opened in the aftermath of an old woman's cruel murder...
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Robert Goddard #8
Beyond Recall
Robert Goddard
Estranged from his family for most of his adult life,
Chris Napier is persuaded to return home for his niece's wedding. At the
reception, he is shocked to recognise a dishevelled intruder as his
childhood friend Nicky Lanyon, whose presence is a chilling reminder of a
murder and subsequent trial that Chris has tried hard to forget.
When Nicky hangs himself, Chris is compelled to revisit the tragic
events of 34 years ago, and the apparent justice that was served. But as
present day mysteries begin to shadow his footsteps into the past, his
search for the truth soon becomes a desperate struggle for his own
survival.
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Robert Goddard #10
Robert Goddard #13
Days Without Number
Robert Goddard
Nick Paleologus is summoned to the unyielding bosom of his family to
help resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters
against their aged and irascible father. Michael Paleologus, retired
archaeologist and supposed descendant of the last Emperors of Byzantium,
lives alone at Trennor, a remote and rambling house on the Cornish bank
of the Tamar. A ridiculously generous offer has been made for the
house, but he refuses to sell despite the urgings of his children, for
whom the proceeds would solve a variety of problems. Nick
accomplishes little in the role of mediator, but the stalemate is soon
tragically broken. Only then do Nick and his siblings discover why their
father was bound at all costs to reject the offer and what may really
be the motives of the prospective buyer. Their increasingly
desperate efforts to conceal the truth drag them into a deadly conflict
with an unseen and unknown enemy, who seems as determined to force them
into a confrontation with their family's past as he is to conceal his
own identity. Late in the day, perhaps too late, Nick realizes
that the only way to escape from the trap their persecutor has set for
them is to hunt him down, wherever - and whoever - he may be. But the
hunt involves excavating a terrible secret from their father's
archaeological career. And once that secret is known, nothing will ever
be the same again.
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Robert Goddard #17
Found Wanting - v5 or retail
Robert Goddard
It begins with an innocent request. One unremarkable winter morning, civil servant Richard Eusden is on his way to work in London when he is intercepted by his ex-wife, Gemma. She has sad news of his old friend, her other ex-husband, Marty Hewitson. Marty is dying, but needs one last favour done for him – now, today, at once. Eusden reluctantly agrees. But what should be a simple errand soon it turns into a race for life – his and Marty's.It takes him across Belgium, Germany and Denmark and on into the Nordic heart of a mystery that somehow connects Marty's long dead grandfather, Clem Hewitson, an Isle of Wight police officer, with the tragic fate of the Russian Royal Family, murdered ninety years earlier. To his dismay, Eusden discovers that he can trust no one, not even his old, dying friend, in his battle with those who are determined to steal the secret they believe he and Marty hold, and who will kill for it if they have to. Every move Eusden makes threatens to be a step closer to disaster. But move he must if he is to escape the clutches of history. It is his only hope. Eusden's pursuit of the truth takes him, and the reader, on a lightning tour of Europe while harking back to the savage and terrifying events which have cast a blight on the continent's future for so long. From its opening page to its dramatic conclusion, Found Wanting is Robert Goddard at his spellbinding best.
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Robert Goddard #18
Long Time Coming - Retail
Robert Goddard
Eldritch Swan is a dead man. Or at least that is what his nephew Stephen has always been told. Until one day Eldritch walks back into his life after 36 years in an Irish prison. He won't reveal any of the details of his incarceration, insisting only that he is innocent of any crime.His return should be of interest to no-one. But the visit of a solicitor with a mysterious request will take Eldritch and his sceptical nephew fromsleepy seaside Paignton to London, where an exhibition of Picasso paintings from the prestigious Brownlow collection proves to be the starting point on a journey that will transport them back to the Second World War and the mystery behind Eldritch's imprisonment.In 1940, he was personal assistant to a wealthy diamond dealer in Antwerp, whose collection of modern art was the envy of many. The subsequent disappearance of those paintings began a trail of murder and intrigue which was to have a catastrophic effect on Eldritch's life. But untangling the web of murky secrets, family ties and old betrayals that conceals the truth will prove to be a dangerous pursuit for Eldritch and Stephen. Before long, a mysterious enemy is doing everything possible to stop the truth emerging - at whatever cost...
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Robert Goddard #20
Fault Line - Retail
Robert Goddard
The new race-against-the-clock thriller from the master of the triple cross.Not
all scars are visible. Jonathan Kellaway needs no reminding of that on
the verge of his retirement from china clay conglomerate
Intercontinental Kaolins. The company has left its mark in pits and
spoil heaps around the world. But it has also left a no less enduring
mark on some of those who have worked for it, Kellaway included. Its
past, as well as its future, is a treacherous place.So Kellaway
is surprised when IK's founder and former chairman, Greville Lashley,
sets him a final task before he quits. The academic hired by the board
to write the company's history has discovered a gap covering several
years in the records of the small Cornish china clay outfit Lashley
started with and where Kellaway also began his career. He is despatched
to Cornwall to learn what has become of the missing documents.But
the search is a voyage into dangerous waters. A dead friend, a lost
lover and a clutch of mysteries from Kellaway's youth in Cornwall and
Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him -- and to tempt him with
the hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies and
misfortunes that blighted those years. It is a truth that has claimed
several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may
only add himself to the list.But pursue it he must. Because the
truth, he belatedly realizes, is the secret that has consumed his life.
This time -- this last time -- he will not stop. Until he has found it.
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