When Tessa Crichton goes down to the rotunda theatre in Dorset, she is not only looking forward to acting in one of the most successful repetory companies in the country but also to meeting it's inspiring owner, Elfrieda Henshaw, who is confined to a wheelchair. She finds, however, that the...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
Troy Alleyn, Inspector Roderick Alleyn's beautiful young wife, is engaged to paint a portrait of Sir Henry Ancred, famed Shakespearean actor and family patriarch, but she senses all is not well in the dreary castle of Ancreton. When old Hnery is found dead after a suspicious dinner and an...Read more
High in the Mid-Yorkshire dales stand the pretty village of Enscombe, proud survivor of all that history has thrown at it. But now market forces mass at the gates and the old way of life seems to be changing fast. The Law can do little to stop the ever-growing crimes against tradition, but...Read more
Mary Stokes was walking through Dead Man's Copse one evening when she saw, in the beam of a torch, the corpse of a young woman dressed in a black coat, black gloves, no hat and an eternity ring set with diamonds in her ear. But when she and Detective Sergeant Frank Abbott went back to the...Read more
It's 1996. Detective Sergeant Tom Thorne is a haunted man. Haunted by the moment he ignored his instinct about a suspect, by the horrific crime that followed and by the memories that come day and night, in sunshine and shadow.
So when seven-year-old Kieron Coyne goes missing...Read more
Everyone blamed Emily Arundell’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs at her home in Market Basing by her frisky terrier, Bob. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her.
So, on April 17th she...Read more
Into thin air...
Three little girls, one by one, had vanished from the farming village of Dendale. And Superintendent Andy Dalziel, a young detective in those days, never found their bodies--or the person who snatched them. Then the valley where Dendale stood was flooded to...Read more
One morning in March, on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, a woman named Karen Drew is found in her wheelchair with her throat slit. Back in Eastvale on that same morning, in a tangle of narrow alleys behind a market square, the body of Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled....Read more
At nine, Tiffany Aching defeated the cruel Queen of Fairyland. At 11, she banished an ancient body-stealing evil. At 13, Tiffany faces a new challenge: a boy. And boys can be a bit of a problem when you're 13.
But the Wintersmith isn't exactly a boy. He is winter itself: snow,...Read more
As ex-drug baron Bazza Mackenzie runs for parliament, ex-cop Paul Winter knows that his time with Bazza must, at whatever cost, come to an end, in the 12th in this highly acclaimed series of police procedurals
DI Faraday is gone and the police are left reeling...Read more
One phone call from a concerned neighbor has inadvertently led police to Terence Payne, the elusive serial killer known only as "Chameleon." Now the fiend is in custody, perhaps dying, and a long nightmare appears to be over at last. But is it? In Acting Detective Superintendent Alan Banks'...Read more
Detective Inspector Charlie Priest is sitting in the monthly superintendent’s briefing doodling idly on his notepad when Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Swainby, one of the ugliest men ever to don a uniform, announces he is leaving the force. He adds that certain allegations are going...Read more
Why would a sniper shoot suburban physiotherapist Rachel James as she sips her morning coffee? Inspector Morse's hunt for answers kicks off with a tabloid journalist, winds through the strip clubs of Soho, then returns to Oxford, where two senior dons and their wives battle for a plum...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 John Rawlings is asked to investigate a secret club and some shady goings-on, he is intrigued. The disreputable Sir Francis Dashwood might be involved, as well as some illustrious members of the British aristocracy. In disguise and accompanied by the ungainly Sam Swann, John befriends...Read more
In Flaxborough’s posh neighbouring village, Mumblesbury, the local solicitor, Richard Daspard Loughbury, has suddenly died.
Natural causes it appears, but DI Purbright and the ever-helpful Miss Lucy Teatime are taken aback by the quality of...Read more
In the year 2010 a French astronaut, one of an international space team from the Federated States of Europe, becomes the first man to be murdered on the moon. Retired Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe are required to investigate.Read more
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand's North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel. It was a horrible death -- Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far...Read more
There is a saboteur hiding in plain sight at the publishing house of Wenham & Geraldine. An incendiary, and wildly libellous, passage has been slipped into a book somewhere between the final check and the printing press… a seemingly impossible task. Desperate to avoid a scandal, the...Read more
The dons of Harriet Vane's alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford, have invited her back to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious acts including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti and wanton vandalism....Read more
From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers on the short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No. 13, sat a countess with a poorly concealed cocaine habit...Read more
It's Valentine’s Day, and a dispute between rival gangs leaves a teenage girl dead.
Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, nearing retirement, is hauled back to the front line to help deal with the fallout. But when the dead girl’s father seeks to lay the blame on Resnick’s partner...Read more
Hennessey and Yellich are looking for a Mr Big
A corpse is discovered in the middle of the city of York. Male; no identification. Shot. And tortured before his murder. A professional hit, by the look of it. Gradually people talk; hints are dropped; and trails appear ? all leading...Read more
On the East Anglian seacoast, a small theological college hangs precariously on an eroding shoreline and an equally precarious future. When the body of a student is found buried in the sand, the boy’s influential father demands that Scotland Yard investigate. Enter Adam Dalgliesh, a...Read more
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has reached a turning point. With his wife now living with another man in London and his career in the doldrums thanks to Chief Constable Riddle, it is time to ring the changes. Perhaps a move to the National Crime Squad? Perhaps a second chance with...Read more
The party's over when murder makes an entrance...
With the notion of bringing together the most bitter of enemies for his own amusement, a bored, mischievous millionaire throws a house party. As a brutal snowstorm strands the unhappy guests, the party receives a most unwelcome...Read more
A car accident during a holiday in the Middle East lands Faraday in a hospital packed with the maimed from Gaza, where he embarks on a wild scheme to adopt a horribly burned Palestinian girl. Back in England, crimelord Bazza McKenzie is watching his empire fall apart under the pressures of...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
Sir Manuel Camargue, yesterday one of the most celebrated musicians of his time, today floats face down in the lake near his sprawling English country house. The consensus is accidental death -- but Inspector Wexford knows the stench of murder most foul when he smells it. Particularly in...Read more