Sorted on book title (not in series order)
The village of South Mardian likes the old ways. The very old ways. This may be 1957, but South Mardian still features a blacksmith, a village idiot, and an elaborate fertility ritual performed at the winter solstice. There’s squabbling, of course, and worse—like when one of the ritual’s...Read more
Janet Byfield has everything Wendy Appleyard lacks: she's beautiful; she has a handsome husband, a clergyman on the verge of promotion; and most of all she has an adorable little daughter, Rosie. So when Wendy's life falls apart, it's to her oldest friend, Janet, that she turns.
...Read more
Its a morning like any other, when seventy-four-year-old Mr Gurdial Singh, former chief engineer of the India National railroad (the largest transportation company in the world), goes on his newspaper round. He is looking forward to his daily exchange with Kevin Brace, popular radio talk...Read more
It’s the early 1980s: the heady days of excess, dirty secrets and personal favours. Former detective Frank Swann is still in disgrace, working as a low-rent PI. But when he’s offered a security job by the premier’s fixer, it soon becomes clear that someone is bugging the premier’s phone –...Read more
When David Audley, that most subtle of Intelligence chiefs, sends his insubordinate protege Paul Mitchell off to investigate a KGB operation by researching a long-forgotten naval engagement off France in 1812, it doesn't look to Mitchell as if it will lead anywhere. But the fate of the crew...Read more
Yearning for her former life as an archaeologist, Australian librarian Dr. Elizabeth Pimms is struggling with a job she doesn’t want, a family she both loves and resents, and enforced separation from her boyfriend.
A royal Olmec cemetery is discovered deep in the Mexican jungle...Read more
The Pope's health is failing and the Cardinal Secretary of State, the ruthless Lorenzo Petroni, has the Keys to St Peter within his grasp. Three things threaten to destroy him: Cardinal Giovanni Donelli has started an investigation into the Vatican Bank; journalist Tom Schweiker is looking...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
When a young boy and girl are brutally murdered within days of each other, DI Handford and Sergeant Ali uncover not only the desperate plight of children trapped in Bradford’s harsh criminal underworld, but murderous corruption and twisted minds in the most respected sections of the...Read more
Australia is not short on stories of murder and mysterious deaths --all chilling, many unresolved, and most still screaming with unanswered What impels a man to open fire on a cafe full of tourists? How could a young girl stab her school friend 47 times in the neck, spraying the ceiling and...Read more
Murder is messy, chilling and explosive. It raises questions and arouses fear. It tests our legal system and our faith in human nature. How does a picnic turn into a shoot-out? How does a psychopath slip through the legal system? How can a small town look away when a baby is tortured and...Read more
In the fourteenth novel in the British mystery series from the Silver Dagger award-winning author Dorothy Simpson, “a modern-day version of Agatha Christie” (Booklist), Inspector Luke Thanet has a both murder and a wedding on his hands.
Newspaper reporter Jessica Manifest’s...Read more
There are only two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles, and getting his hands on his mother-in-law's money.
For twenty years, nearly all his adult life, the puzzles have been his only pleasure; his mother-in-law's...Read more
In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden into a battlefield of passions, deceptions, and death. Not far from the safety of the abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal...Read more
The occasion: high school reunion.
The place: an oil rig converted into a tourist resort.
The outcome: carnage.
Gavin is creating a unique ‘holiday experience’; every facility any tourist who hates abroad will ever want will all be available on a converted...Read more
Now-retired Scotland Yard superintendent James Pibble isn’t about to go quietly into the night—not when there’s a murder case or two (or three) to solve
At Flycatchers, a well-to-do nursing home watched over by no-nonsense nurse Jenny, one-time detective James...Read more
On a beautiful summer day, crowds lined up outside a theater witness a sudden act of extreme road rage: a tap on a fender triggers a nearly homicidal attack. Jackson Brodie, ex-cop, ex-private detective, new millionaire, is among the bystanders.
The event thrusts Jackson into the...Read more
Around the ancient cave system in Derbyshire are thronging tourists, a medieval castle, and the thriving town of Castleton. With its underground tunnels and caverns, it’s the perfect place for a man to hide—or vanish. Detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry are looking for such a man, one who...Read more
With old-world charm and a military air, Mortimer Rothermere makes a most convincing conman.
Just now he is employed by the Cultox corporation, to ensure that no breath of scandal taints the reputation of their successful pet food company near Flaxborough, as...Read more
On Midsummer’s Eve, three friends gather in a secluded meadow in Sweden. In the still-sun-lit northern night, they don costumes and begin to role play. But an uninvited guest soon brings their performance to a gruesome conclusion. His approach is careful; his aim is perfect. Three bullets,...Read more
A man has been chained inside a tunnel and then dismembered and scattered along the railroad tracks. This is the beginning of Detective Inspector Joe Faraday's most gruesome case yet. But is it a bizarre suicide, or the cruelest of murders? Checking the list of missing persons as the police...Read more
Hercule Poirot disliked his dentist ...
But one of his patients liked Mr Morley even less - and shot him just after Poirot left his office.
Was it the mysterious, unpleasant Greek? The wild young American who looked like a murderer? The rich banker? Or...Read more
When a four-year-old child is abducted from an Essex kindergarten, Detective Inspector Dog Cicero soon realizes that this is to be no routine investigation. Something about the child's mother troubles him. Maybe it's just the fact that she comes from Derry, and Cicero's Northern Ireland...Read more
A small mining town. A brutal double murder. A killer among them.
DS Lucas Walker is off duty. He's supposed to be showing his little sister Grace the Australian outback, on her visit from Boston, but instead they're headed out...Read more
Matrimony, money ...and murder! Aaron Norman, the miserable-looking bookseller with but a single, melancholy eye, lay stone-cold upon the floor -- with his mouth tightly closed beneath what seemed to be a glittering jewel.
As the housekeeper bent down in fascinated horror, she...Read more
Cliff Hardy, with his PI license cancelled and his career in Sydney at an end, is preparing for a trip overseas. Cleaning out his office, he comes across an open filean unresolved case from the 1980s. As he starts reading he’s thrown back to his investigation of the disappearance of Justin...Read more
During her career in MI5, which lasted from 1969 to 1996, Stella Rimington worked in all the main fields of the Service's responsibilities—counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism—and became successively Director of all three branches. She was appointed Director-General...Read more
A London actor was dying for a star billing...
From the leading lady's liaison to the harassment of an aging juvenile lead-there's never a dull moment, darling, at the Vulcan Theatre. But vanity and hysterics, suspicion and superstition, brandy and jealousy, are upstaged by a...Read more
"You could look back after a long time and ask, who wanted what from whom?" A man confronts death after an operation, a devout Christian encounters a man who hurt her long ago, a secretary uncovers her boss's secret shame. And in a house in Auckland an elderly woman is writing the last book...Read more
Inspector Bill Slider - middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road - is never going to make it to Scotland Yard. He's spent most of his working life at Shepherd's Bush nick, and stopped minding long ago about being passed over for promotion.But then the unidentifiable body of a woman...Read more