Charlie Fox Series by Zoe Sharp (#1-9+)

Killer Instinct (#1):
Charlie Fox makes a living teaching self-defense to women in a quiet northern English city. It makes best use of the deadly skills she picked up after being kicked out of army Special Forces training for reasons she prefers not to go into. So, when Susie Hollins is found dead hours after she foolishly takes on Charlie at the New Adelphi Club, Charlie knows it’s only a matter of time before the police come calling. What they don’t tell her is that Hollins is the latest victim of a homicidal rapist stalking the local area. Charlie finds herself drawn closer to the crime when the New Adelphi’s enigmatic owner, Marc Quinn, offers her a job working security at the club. Viewed as an outsider by the existing all-male team, her suspicion that there’s a link between the club and a serial killer doesn’t exactly endear her to anyone. Charlie has always taught her students that it’s better to run than to stand and fight, but when the killer starts taking a very personal interest, it’s clear he isn’t going to give her that option.

Riot Act (#2):
A self-defense expert with a motorbike and an attitude, Charlie Fox doesn’t need to go looking for trouble. It generally finds her. House-sitting for a friend seems like an easy favour at first but the house in question is in the Lavender Gardens estate. Teenage gangs are running riot and Charlie’s desperate neighbors have been forced to employ an expensive - and ruthless - security firm to apply rough justice where the legal kind has failed. The situation gets even uglier when a young Asian boy is fatally wounded in what appears to be a racially motivated shooting. Caught in the middle of an urban battlefield, Charlie’s more than able to take care of herself but then she comes face to face with a spectre from her army past. As the tensions rise, lives will depend on Charlie working out just who she can really trust.

Hard Knocks (#3):
Charlie Fox is in Germany, fighting for her life. Charlie really didn't care who shot dead her traitorous ex-army comrade Kirk Salter during a bodyguard training course in Germany. But when old flame Sean Meyer asks her to go undercover at an elite school and find out what happened to Kirk, she just can't bring herself to refuse.

First Drop (#4):
It should have been an easy introduction to Charlie Fox's new career as a bodyguard, working for the personal protection agency run by her ex-lover, Sean Meyer. Their trip to Florida together should have been a working holiday--and a chance to build on the fresh start they promised to make when they last worked together. All Charlie has to do is baby-sit Trey Pelzner, the gawky fifteen-year-old son of a rich computer programmer in Fort Lauderdale. The last thing anyone expected was a determined attempt to snatch the boy, or that Trey's father and their entire bodyguard team--including Sean--would disappear off the face of the earth at the same time. Now somebody out there wants the boy badly and they're prepared to kill anyone who gets in their way. Evading them, alone in unknown territory, takes all the skill and courage Charlie possesses. As hair-raising as a roller-coaster ride, First Drop skyrockets Zoë Sharp to the top of that exclusive list of suspense writers who are going places fast.

Road Kill (#5):
Still bearing the emotional scars from her traumatic first bodyguarding job in the States, Charlie Fox returns to her former home to try and work out both her personal and professional future. Instead of the peace for which she's been hoping, Charlie is immediately caught up in the aftermath of a fatal bike crash involving one of her closest friends.

Second Shot (#6):
When the latest assignment for ex--Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox, ends in a bloody shootout in a frozen forest of New Hampshire, she's left fighting for her life, with her client dead. Simone Kerse had just become a lottery millionaire but never lived long enough to enjoy her riches. Charlie was supposed to keep Simone's troublesome ex-boyfriend at bay and accompany her on a trip to track down the father Simone had never really known---a relatively low-risk job. But Simone's father has secrets in his past that are about to come back and haunt him, and the arrival of his long-lost daughter may be the catalyst that blows his whole world apart. But the closer Charlie gets to the truth, the bigger threat she becomes. Only this time she's in no fit state to protect anyone, least of all herself.

Third Strike (#7):
I was running when I saw my father kill himself. Not that he jumped off a tall building or stepped in front of a truck but professionally, personally what I watched him do was suicide. The last person that professional bodyguard, Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox, ever expected to self-destruct was her own father, an eminent surgeon. But when Charlie unexpectedly sees him admitting to gross professional misconduct on a New York news program, she can't just stand by and watch his downfall. That's not easy when Richard Foxcroft, always cold towards his daughter, rejects her help at every turn. The good doctor has never made any secret of his disapproval of Charlie's choice of career; or her relationship with her boss, Sean Meyer. And now, just as Charlie and Sean are settling in to their new life in the States, Foxcroft seems determined to go down in a blazing lack of glory, and take Charlie and everyone she cares about down with him. But he has not bargained on Charlie's own ruthless streak. And when the game turns deadly, Charlie will need to stake her life and her father's against a formidable foe.

Fourth Day (#8):
The cult calling itself Fourth Day is well funded and highly jealous of its privacy. Five years ago, Thomas Witney went in to try to get the evidence that the cult's charismatic leader was responsible for the death of Witney's son, Liam. Witney never came out. Now, Charlie Fox and her partner, Sean Meyer, have been assigned to get Witney out, willing or not. But planning and executing a clean, surgical snatch is only the beginning. Five years is a long time to be on the inside, and the man who comes out has changed beyond all recognition.

Fifth Victim (#9):
The only thing more terrifying than fighting for your life is fighting for someone else’s. Bodyguard and ex-Special Forces soldier, Charlie Fox, would do anything to take her mind off her partner; shot, left for dead and now lying in a coma. So concentrating on a new assignment seemed like the perfect way to escape the pain, and her own empty apartment. The job looked simple: to protect the naive daughter of an investment banker from a ruthless gang of kidnappers. But when her instincts lead Charlie to suspect an inside job, she finds out that not everyone who mingles with the jet-set is what they seem – and the idle rich can be as ruthless as any criminal. An electrifying tale of cross and double-cross, Fifth Victim will keep you firmly on the edge of your seat.

Fox Five (Charlie Fox Short Story Collection):
FOX FIVE is a collection of stories by the highly acclaimed crime thriller writer, Zoë Sharp. All feature her ex-Special Forces soldier turned self-defense expert and bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox.

Zoe Sharp was born in Nottinghamshire but spent her formative years living aboard a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. She opted out of formal education at the age of twelve and wrote her first novel at fifteen. She started writing her crime thriller series featuring her no-nonsense ex-Special Forces turned bodyguard heroine, Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox, after receiving death-threats in the course of her work as a freelance photojournalist. Zoe lives in the English Lake District where she and her husband Andy, who is a non-fiction writer, have self-built their own house.