Tony Parsons Books in Order

In a small Cornish village, seafood restaurateur Tom is captivated by Clementine, a young woman who arrives alone on the beach to start a new life. As her violent past refuses to stay buried, the villagers close ranks, terrible choices are made and everyone learns how hard it is to escape who you were.

Lana and Roman Wade flee painful memories in London for a picture-perfect house in an Oxfordshire close known as the Gardens. Their new neighbours are charming, but as Lana learns more about the family who died in her home, she becomes convinced that someone nearby is hiding something deadly.

Tara Carver has a loving husband, a young daughter and a booming tech business, until a lonely work trip to Japan leads to one disastrous one-night stand. Back in London, her lover turns stalker and Tara and her husband find themselves trapped in a spiral of obsession, secrets and murder.

Kidnappers snatch a woman from a car in Hampstead, leaving her small son behind, believing she is the mistress of a powerful London gangster. As DC Max Wolfe hunts the missing woman, he uncovers old grudges, dangerous desires and a kidnap plot that hits far too close to home.

Convalescing after the events of The Murder Bag, Max Wolfe agrees to help a childhood sweetheart whose abusive ex has turned stalker. At the same time he keeps seeing the terrorist he once killed, forcing him to question whether medication, guilt or something darker is closing in.

When a drone attack brings down a helicopter onto a crowded West London shopping centre, DC Max Wolfe is thrown into a city on edge. Chasing a tech-savvy terror cell and a ruthless avenger, he also risks losing the daughter who anchors his life.

At dawn a refrigerated lorry is discovered in London’s Chinatown, packed with the frozen bodies of twelve young women. When DC Max Wolfe finds thirteen passports in the cab, he is pulled into the brutal world of modern human trafficking and a frantic search for the missing survivor.

An organised band of vigilantes is abducting men they believe escaped justice and hanging them live on the internet. As London boils with anger and admiration, DC Max Wolfe must stop the killings while facing painful questions about punishment, revenge and the failures of the courts.

In this Max Wolfe short story, the battered body of an old man on Hampstead Heath pulls Max into the lingering world of East End gang legends. As he digs into links to the Krays and the Richardsons, he uncovers a fresh gang war that could touch his own doorstep.

On New Year’s Day a wealthy family is found executed in their gated north London home and their youngest child is missing. The cattle gun used points DC Max Wolfe toward a notorious old killer, but the hunt for the boy leads into a new nightmare of secrets and copycats.

Set between The Murder Bag and The Slaughter Man, this short DC Max Wolfe story opens with Max watching two masked men drag a half-naked victim from a van on Boxing Day. When the killing becomes personal, he goes after a decapitation gang with nothing left to lose.

Newly assigned to London’s West End Central, DC Max Wolfe investigates a series of savage murders tied to a clique of privileged schoolboys from twenty years earlier. Following the trail through backstreets and boardrooms, he learns the killer’s revenge could reach the people he loves.

This collection of essays sees Tony Parsons tackle modern life from a male point of view, from sex, marriage and midlife mistakes to grief, children and the small frustrations of everyday life, in the blunt, funny voice readers know from his novels.

London cab driver Tom Finn uproots his family to a beach town in Phuket, hoping sunshine will erase the shame of a vigilante headline back home. Instead he finds crooked bosses, hostile police and a fragile new life that will demand more courage than he ever expected.

This swashbuckling retelling of the Mutiny on the Bounty follows Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers from the moment they cast Captain Bligh adrift to their uneasy paradise in Tahiti, where jealousy, murder and fear turn a dream of freedom into a curse.

Based on a stint as writer in residence at Heathrow, Departures gathers seven linked stories about the people who work and pass through the airport, from air-traffic controllers and firefighters to nervous travellers whose lives quietly change between check-in and boarding.

In his forties with a second marriage, a baby daughter and ageing friends, Harry Silver is no longer the charming screw-up of old. As he bonds with a veteran who knew his late father and watches his peers struggle, he confronts what growing up as a man really means.

Life, Death and Breakfast collects Tony Parsons’ outspoken essays on modern manhood, from junk sex, fatherhood and ageing parents to football, fake breasts and airport security. Candid, funny and often tender, it reads like an unfiltered conversation about what keeps men up at night.

At forty-two, George Bailey survives a massive heart attack thanks to a transplant from a nineteen-year-old donor. Flooded with restless new energy, he starts behaving like a teenager again, risking his marriage and children before realising what truly needs changing in his life.

Ambitious lawyer Bill Holden moves his wife and young daughter to boom-time Shanghai, where luxury apartments and corrupt deals sit side by side. When he falls for JinJin, a lonely second wife in his building, his double life threatens to destroy both families he cares about.

Set on the August night Elvis Presley dies, Stories We Could Tell follows three young music writers racing around late-seventies London for deadlines, love and a sense of purpose, capturing the chaos of punk, youth culture and growing up in one long, sleepless shift.

After the sudden death of his wife in Hong Kong, English teacher Alfie Budd limps back to London, heartbroken and adrift. Drifting through casual affairs, family upheaval and tai chi lessons, he gradually faces his grief and the possibility of starting over with someone new.

Three very different sisters find their lives revolving around the question of children: Jessica is desperate to conceive, Megan faces an unexpected pregnancy and Cat insists she never wants to be a mother. As partners, parents and friends weigh in, the family has to rethink what makes a good life.

Now remarried to energetic Cyd and juggling a blended family, Harry Silver is stretched between his son Pat, stepdaughter Peggy, demanding in-laws and a mother fighting cancer. When temptation returns and Gina plans a move abroad, he has to decide what kind of man, and father, he wants to be.

Television producer Harry Silver seems to have it all at thirty, until one reckless night destroys his marriage. With his wife in Japan and his career in ruins, he is left raising four-year-old Pat and facing his own father’s illness, discovering what family really costs.

A collection of Tony Parsons’ punchiest journalism, Big Mouth Strikes Again gathers two decades of columns on subjects ranging from celebrity and politics to love, grief and popular culture, written with his usual mix of blunt humour and bruised honesty.

An early Tony Parsons novel, Limelight Blues explores tangled relationships, bad decisions and the hangover that comes after success, already showing his interest in how work, love and loyalty collide when people chase more than they can handle.

An epic, behind-the-scenes novel of the record business, Platinum Logic follows ruthless label boss Nathan Chasen, his family and his stars as they build a music empire. Fame, money, drugs and betrayal collide as the cost of hit records slowly comes due.

This short, sharp book of music writing sees Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill fire a broadside at bloated 1970s rock while championing the raw energy of punk, mixing savage put-downs with a fan’s eye view of a scene in revolt.