When a colleague extends his summer vacation, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is forced to stay in Vigata and endure the August heat. Montalbano's long-suffering girlfriend, Livia, joins him with a friend husband and young son in tow to keep her company during these dog days of summer. But when...Read more
It begins, dramatically enough, with a trial for murder. The distinguished criminal lawyer Venetia Aldridge is defending Garry Ashe on charges of having brutally killed his aunt. For Aldridge the trial is mainly a test of her courtroom skills, one more opportunity to succeed--and she does....Read more
One mild summer evening Lily and her husband are enjoying a meal while their baby daughter sleeps peacefully in her pram beneath a maple tree. But when Lily steps outside she is paralysed with terror. The child is bathed in blood.
Inspector Sejer is called to the hospital to meet...Read more
Miss Jane Marple has checked into Bertram's Hotel in London for a much-needed vacation. The last thing she expects is that this elegant establishment, known for its service and old-world charm, could be embroiled in scandal. But after a series of strange events—including the disappearance...Read more
Sergeant Logan McRae is in trouble…
His missing-persons investigation has just turned up a body in the woods – naked, hands tied behind its back, and a bin bag duct-taped over its head. The Major Investigation Team charges up from Aberdeen, under the beady eye of Logan’s ex-boss...Read more
Politician Peter January is having trouble staying alive so he hires Cliff Hardy to help him. Hardy dislikes the role of politician's 'security consultant' but he dislikes bombers, hit men and hatemailers even more. Protecting January leads to protecting his assistant, Trudi Bell, which is...Read more
A case for Varg Veum . . . Bergen, Norway. Young teenage girls are being drawn into prostitution, partly for kicks, but also to earn money for drugs and clothes. Matters take a turn for the worse when the local magistrate is discovered in a luxury hotel, clad only in women_s lingerie_and...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 a fortune teller from a previous case informs Agatha Raisin that her destiny--and true love--lies in Norfolk, she promptly rents a cottage in the quaint village of Fryfam. No sooner does she arrive than strange things start happening. Random objects go missing from people's homes, and...Read more
Phryne Fisher is on holiday. She means to take the train to Sydney (where the harbour bridge is being built), go to a few cricket matches, dine with the Chancellor of the university, and perhaps go to the Arts Ball with that young modernist, Chas Nutall. She has the costume of a lifetime,...Read more
In fear for his life, American millionaire Daniel Cartwright changes his will, appointing his old friend Rowland Sinclair as his executor.
Soon murder proves that fear well founded.
When Rowland receives word of Cartwright's death, he sets out immediately for...Read more
Years ago, young Tracey Pedley disappeared in the woods around Burrthorpe. The close-knit mining village had its own ideas about what happened, but the police pinned it on a known child-killer who subsequently committed suicide.
Now Burrthorpe comes to police attention again. A...Read more
Detective Sigurdur Oli is in trouble.
After a school reunion exposes the chasm between his life and those of his much more successful contemporaries, leaving him bitter and resentful, one of his old friends asks him to pay an unofficial visit to a couple of blackmailers. He...Read more
The middle-aged woman lying on the footpath is biggish and unattractive. Yet even in death her eyes hold a defiant look. Everyone in this Kingsmarkham neighborhood knew her name was Rhoda Comfrey and that she was down from London visiting her invalid father. But when Inspector Wexford looks...Read more
Will the Archbishop of York's final days be spent in peace? As the race to be his successor gathers pace, Owen must catch a determined killer who dwells among the archbishop's guests at Bishopthorpe Palace.
York, 1373: While the...Read more
The murder of two clam fishermen off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia. When the boss' secretary...Read more
When Marion Summers - red-haired, beautiful and mysterious - collapses and dies in the rarefied surrounds of the London Library, DI Kathy Kolla and DCI David Brock are sent to head the investigation. Kathy finds a reluctant kinship with the fiesty Marion, who had, like Kathy, left a...Read more
Ngaio Marsh's most popular novel begins when a young New Zealander's first contact with the English gentry is the body of Lord Wutherford -- with a meat skewer through the eye...The Lampreys had plenty of charm -- but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar -- and rather gloried in it....Read more
A peculiar pornographic movie has been wowing viewers in the Gulf.
One of the more scurrilous English Sunday papers gets a tip-off that this exotic blue production stars respected residents of the coastal town of Flaxborough, and a team led by the well-known...Read more
When local solicitor Will Rockne is found in his car by his wife - shot through the head - it seems a baffling and motiveless murder. However, Scobie Malone, newly assigned to the case, has his suspicions. Despite his daughter Claire's shy romance with young Jason Rockne, Scobie and his...Read more
Crushed cranial vault. Visible extrusions of brain tissue through multiple scalp lacerations.
She tried to keep up, tried to focus on the fat grey threads of jelly that laced what remained of this man's head. Memories, she told herself. Intelligence.
The very...Read more
