When an adopted baby is snatched from her crib, suspicion initially falls on the birth mother, who may be having second thoughts about giving up her child. But after a ransom demand turns out to be blackmail, Gently turns his attentions closer to home.

A bank armed robbery interrupts Christmas Eve celebrations at the station and sets Gently, Bacchus, and Coles on the trail of a gang of local skinheads.

When the body of a cash-strapped property developer is found beneath Newcastle's Tyne Bridge, Gently again suspects a murder dressed up as a suicide. The death followed a fight with two childhood friends, one a union organizer, the other a restaurateur.

Cormoran Strike is a war veteran turned private detective operating out of a tiny office in London's Denmark Street. Though he's wounded both physically and psychologically, Strike's unique insight and his background as an SIB Investigator prove crucial in solving complex cases that elude the police.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...