Darina Lisle is accompanying her recently widowed mother for a reviving stay at the Conifers Spa health farm, hoping it will enable her to lose some of the weight gained since her honeymoon in the south of France. Weight is not the only challenge being faced by an entertaining and varied...Read more
Istanbul: the sight that greets Inspector Cetin Ikmen is horrific. The girl was burnt alive in her own bedroom. Was it suicide or murder? When her father shows no emotion at the death of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ikmen starts to dig deeper.
Alongside his troubled...Read more
It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby's spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled on human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds.
Twenty-two years ago, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure in the hunt for a brutal...Read more
A man's body, virtually decapitated, is found by the Bosphorus. His identity card names him as Rifat Berisha, an Albanian. The family is impenetrable but when Inspector Cetin Ikmen, whose mother was Albanian, consults his cousin, Samsun, he's left in little doubt that Berisha's death is...Read more
Twelve-year-old Tammy Franklin has learned too much about death, too quickly. Two years ago she lost her mother to a long, lingering illness and now the body of the woman her father married in an attempt to replace his wife has been found on a railway embankment close to the Franklin farm....Read more
When Meredith Mitchell picks up a hitchhiker on a lonely road outside Bamford one evening she is left feeling distinctly uneasy. What business can this confident, yet secretive, young woman have at Tudor Lodge, the beautiful old home of Brussels-based lawyer Andrew Penhallow, where she asks...Read more
Inspector Alan Markby and his long-time friend Meredith Mitchell have taken a cottage in the country for a much needed holiday. But so sooner are they relaxing with a neighbor over a glass of blackberry wine, when Markby is being badgered for an "off the record" opinion about a somewhat...Read more
When Sally Caswell persuaded her scientist husband Liam to move from London to the quiet of rural Oxfordshire it was in the hope of a more peaceful existence. But so far the move has led to nothing but discord. Liam's sabbatical book project is not going well so, frustrated and isolated, he...Read more
When Amy Grassick dies in a gas explosion, Tam Buchanan wishes he were anywhere but in Edinburgh. His law firm is executor of Amy's will and this case is promising serious trouble. Amy's husband, Lawrence, is probably the most influential advocate in the city - a man whose opinion could...Read more
Charlie Leathers was not the most popular man in the charming English village of Ferne Basset, but few people seemed to hate him enough to murder him. Still, that was his fate one night, and it brings Inspector Barnaby to the scene to investigate. What Barnaby doesn't know is that before...Read more
In the heart of the leafy Cotswolds a body is found. A teenage girl, probably local, somebody's daughter who went out one evening and didn't come back. It is not long before she is identified: fifteen-year-old Lynne Wills who habitually drank underage in 'The Silver Bells' pub and, on the...Read more
When Meredith Mitchell bumps into her old schoolfriend Rachel Hunter at the Chelsea Flower Show it doesn't take Meredith long to realise that she and the effortlessly self-confident blonde have even less in common now than they had as teenagers. Apart from one thing - Meredith's companion,...Read more
Cookery expert Darina Lisle and her Detective Inspector husband, William Pigram, are honeymooning in the south of France. Entertained to lunch by another cookery expert, Helen Mansard, her partner, Bernard Barrington Smythe a retired Lloyd’s member and agent, shows them the olive oil mill...Read more
Maurice Appleton, vicar of Bamford, was dying when he discovered traces of some strange ritual in his church. Exhausted by his illness and disinclined for any bother, he asked witnesses to say nothing about the black-swathed candle and the anonymous flowers placed on the altar, and for...Read more
When ambitious hotelier Eric Schucmacher announces he is to turn Springwood Hall, near the market town of Bamford, into a smart Cotswold country-house hotel, the news is greeted by a chorus of local disapproval, led by the redoubtable Hope Mapple. So the gala opening, to which all the...Read more
When one of Cassie Swann’s bridge partners, Naomi Harris, dies from an overdose, she is shocked but not suspicious. But things look rather different with the appearance of a young woman claiming to be Naomi’s daughter, given up for adoption twenty years earlier, and a secret lover who...Read more
When one of the better known drug barons in Edinburgh, Chick Mathieson, is killed, lawyer Tam Buchanan finds himself wading through the dodgy dealings of the underworld. Freddie McAuslan, the young man arrested for Mathieson's murder, is an ex-client of Buchanan's father, and has recently...Read more
When Darina Lisle is asked to write a cookery book sponsored by Finer Foods, a firm that imports exotic gourmet delicacies, she sees it as an exciting challenge. But Darina soon discovers that Finer Foods' profits are plummeting and the finances are in a shambles. To add to all of this, she...Read more
An elderly tourist is found dead in his hotel bath. No-one suspects foul play, until his sister discovers that the painting he recently bought is missing. The senior police officer is reluctant to start a serious investigation. But Fizz is intrigued and ropes in Tam Buchanan to find the...Read more
The third novel in the fantastic Detective 'Kubu' Bengu crime series is set in the southern Kalahari area of Botswana - a place full of buried lost cities, incredible hidden wealth, ancient gods and, for thousands of years, home to the nomadic Bushmen.When a fractious ranger named Monzo is...Read more
When a death at the big house is announced to the village of Compton Dando, few people are surprised, as "The Golden Windhorse" is home to some new-age oddballs. When the coroner deems the death an accident, it is something of a disappointment. But then another death is reported.Read more
To Meredith Mitchell, marooned in a dusty London flat, the Cotswolds seem like a haven of peace and tranquillity. But Chief Inspector Markby has a rather different view of his native area, as he witnesses the bulldozing of one of his favourite boyhood haunts to make way for yet another...Read more
When Darina Lisle agrees to help out in her old schoolfriend's rapidly expanding catering company, The Wooden Spoon, she expects to be kept frantically busy, with cookery demonstrations, cocktail parties and elaborate private dinners. But she doesn't expect to be involved in death ......Read more
How can a man die twice? That's the question facing Detective 'Kubu' Bengu when a mutilated body is found at a tourist camp in northern Botswana. The corpse of Goodluck Tinubu displays the classic signs of a revenge killing. But when his fingerprints are analysed Kubu makes a shocking...Read more
The second novel in our addictive Canadian crime series featuring the irresistible Chief Inspector Gamache...
The falling snow brings a hush to Three Pines - until a scream pierces the air. A spectator at the annual Boxing Day curling match has been fatally electrocuted. Heading...Read more
While in hospital, ex-Inspector John Reynolds meets a fellow patient, Mrs Sparks who is recovering from a fall down a mine shaft. Also found at the bottom of the shaft was a skeleton. This is the beginning of another case for Reynolds.Read more
Dawn on a cold February morning and a mist hangs over Oxford, shrouding spires and domes. Feisty novelist Kate Ivory enjoys her early morning run with the (mainly) women's jogging group. It gets her away from her word processor and she hears all the local gossip on the hoof. This morning,...Read more
A dark, juicy, deliciously unsettling, read-it-in-one-sitting psychological drama.
Rose has it all - the gorgeous children, the husband, the beautiful home. But then her best friend Polly comes to stay. Very soon, Rose's cosy world starts to fall apart at the seams - her baby...Read more
Chris and Saul were orphans - raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot. He visited them and brought them sweets. He treated them like sons. He trained them to be assassins.
Now he is trying to have them killed....Read more
