There is a new drug on the mean streets of Manchester which promises the most intense week of your life, and then you are dead--and after he watches a pop star die on stage, Adam thinks that his own life is so miserable that he might just as well try it.

Aidan Waits is back on the night shift, the Manchester PD dumping ground for those too screwed-up for more glamorous work. But the monotony of petty crimes and lonesome nights is shattered when he and his partner are called to investigate a break-in at The Palace, an immense, empty hotel in the center of the city. There they find the body of a man. He is dead. The tags have been cut from his clothes, his teeth have been filed down, and even his fingertips...

"1895. Former Scotland Yard detective Daniel Wilson, made famous from his days working the Jack the Ripper case, and his archaeologist sidekick Abigail Fenton are summoned to investigate the murder of a young woman at the Manchester Museum. Though staff remember the woman as a recent and regular visitor, no one appears to know who she is and she has no possessions from which identify her. Seeking help from a local journalist, Daniel hopes to unravel...

"The rebels will be hanged at dawn, and their brotherhood is already plotting revenge. Stephen Doyle, an Irish-American veteran of the Civil War, arrives in Manchester from New York with a thirst for blood. He has joined the Fenians, a secret society intent on ending British rule in Ireland by any means necessary. Head Constable James O'Connor has fled grief and drink in Dublin for a sober start in Manchester, and connections with his fellow Irishmen...

It's October half-term, and Dylan Kershaw's dreams of a reunion with Leo, the gorgeous boy he met over the summer, are dashed when his sports-mad dad whisks him off to football camp in Manchester instead. What's worse, dancer Leo seems to be too busy practicing his pirouettes to care. At least Dylan's best friend Kayla is along for the trip, on a quest to win exclusive tickets to see her favourite band, the Deathsplash Nightmares. It all looks set...

"When the badly decomposed remains of a young woman are discovered in an isolated wooded area just outside Birmingham, the victim is quickly identified as Amy Peters, a Manchester University student who disappeared three years earlier. She is one of five young women who vanished from the streets of Manchester within a two-year period. Called in to assist the police investigation, criminologist Will Traynor believes they are looking for an intelligent,...