It's the waning days of the summer of 1805 and Jane Austen is off to

Canterbury Races, where the chattering classes go to gamble away their fortunes and risk their reputations. But she is unprepared for the shocking drama that ensues when the corpse of a raven-haired beauty is found in a shabby chaise less than a hundred feet from where she is sitting...

'The dramatic opening is kept up by the fast pace of the exciting thriller. One can see...this whodunnit...following in the footsteps of Wycliffe' Western Evening Herald
'This enjoyable mystery has a lot of convincing local colour and some well-realised local characters' Western Morning News

It's an ordinary Thursday evening In July when Shelley Lunt, wife of a merchant banker, is found hanging from a light fitting in a flat off Liverpool's Sefton Park. Unfortunately for Johnny Ace - local DJ turned Private Eye - the flat happens to belong to him.
Although everything points to suicide, Shelley's sister Linda is convinced that she would never have taken her life. Determined to learn more of the mysterious circumstances surrounding Shelley's death, Linda hires Johnny to investigate.
But Johnny barely gets started before he encounters major problems of his own. He is suddenly woken one morning by six policemen smashing their way into his fat. They are looking for stolen goods - and they find them. Out on bail, Johnny is determined to find out who has framed him and why. And whether it's connected with Shelley's death...
But one by one, Johnny's witnesses are found dead. Reluctantly sucked into the city's gang wars, he follows a trail to the Pennines, Wales and London, trying to find evidence to save himself. But Liverpool is the place for the final showdown - where he must fight to save his life in a vicious battle against desperate odds.

It’s every punter’s dream to beat the bookmakers and Toby Brown is doing it regularly. The son of a top trainer, Toby has a telephone tipping service that is slowly bringing the old enemy to its knees.
A plea from the bookmakers prompts a Jockey Club investigation which uncovers a plot of murder and jealousy where the stakes being played for mean more than just money - and where one horse, Better By Far, lives up to its name. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Ex-National Hunt Champion Jockey John Francome is a broadcaster on racing for Channel 4. He lives in Berkshire

Emer Gillespie's first novel Virtual Stranger (published 1998) received some great reviews:
'Gillespie's writing is brutally compelling and the mystery convincing and tightly plotted' The Times
'Gillespie is definitely a name to watch' Daily Telegraph

A dilapidated, out-of-season holiday camp makes an odd setting for the Church's Millennium convention, and Deacon Theodora Braithwaite, lured from her beloved South London parish to be one of the speakers, wonders what beside discontent with their surroundings might unite church and laity. Clearly not the Millennium Message, the conference's theme. An unusual speaker, a Fool, who calls himself Josh the Jester and is licensed by the Church to mirror back truths it would rather forget, might possibly provoke some degree of consensus. But then he is found dead in a laundrette washing machine...
With her acerbic, pithy but essentially affectionate portrait of ecclesiastical life, D.M.Greenwood has made the clerical crime market her own.

In Cornwall, two children disappear from their beds and are later found drowned. When a woman is found murdered nearby, the police begin searching for a connection between the deaths. Melrose Plant, renting the children's empty homes, is caught up in the enquiry and soon Richard Jury arrives to investigate.

When the grave of the legendary King Arthur is discovered in the West Country Nick Madrid and his trusty companion Bridget Frost, the 'Bitch of the Broadsheets', can't resist going in search of Camelot themselves.
But instead of chivalrous knights they find rival Heritage Industry marketing men willing to go to any lengths to make money from the discovery.
Cue Camelot casinos, Avalon theme parks, medieval Excaliburger banquets and a frenzy of feuding archaeologists as the South West Tourism and Heritage industry go loopy for Lancelot and co.
When Nick does some digging of his own, it's not relies he finds but murder victims. Is there a Camelot-crazy serial killer on the loose? And what about King Arthur himself, who promised to return if his country needed him? If the bones in the West Country grave are his, who is that bloke on the white horse riding out of the mists of time...?

'Wacky... hilarious... a great read ' Minette Waiters

It's 1321 and Lady Elizabeth of Topsham, prioress of St.Mary's, is struggling to retain her position in the face of implacable opposition. Not only is St.Mary's in the worst possible state of disrepair due to lack of funds, but Sister Margherita, her treasurer, has accused her of lascivious disregard, claiming that, instead of paying for a new roof, Elizabeth has given money to the new vicar, a man she often sees alone at night. Many of the nuns are convinced that Margherita would make a better prioress.
And one of the young nuns has been murdered in the infirmary, after being bled for a migraine....
Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keeper of the King's Peace, together with his old friend Bailiff Simon Puttock, are summoned immediately by the Bishop of Stapledon representative to investigate. There is no doubt that the nuns' vows are being broken with alarming regularity. When a second nun is murdered they fact their most difficult puzzle yet.

Henry Beaumont, constable of Warwick Castle, keeps a renowned pack of fox-hounds: quick, brave and ruthless at the kill, just like their master. Yet one December hunt turns up a very different fox, when, to the horror of the riders, the dogs uncover a corpse in the woodlands - the crushed estate of the old Saxon thane, Thorkell, and a former member of Beaumont's own household. Enraged, Henry swears to find the killer.
By chance, justice is already on the way, in the form of Domesday commissioners Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret, sent to adjudicate land disputes in the Warwick area. To their minds, the man Henry has arrested seems an unlikely villain; Boio, Thorkell's blacksmith. is bear-like but gentle. With no evidence, how can Henry be so adamant about Boio's guilt? And is Reynard's death linked to his forthcoming evidence in the land disputes? With dissent already brewing between their two new commissioners, haughty Philippe de Trouville and wise Archdeacon Theobald, and with Beaumont baying for blood, Ralph and Gervase have little time to save Boio's neck...

Blackburn on a Friday night at the beginning of summer is always a policing headache. But for the officers of Blackburn police station it's about to become a nightmare.
When three police cars explode in quick succession in the station car park, it seems as if a threatened terrorist campaign is underway. But as Blackburn's finest get ready to do battle with the IRA, the real action is going down elsewhere - a building society heist that is about to go badly wrong, and which will have devastating consequences for the whole force.
The Last Big Job, is another brilliantly authentic crime novel from the author of One Dead Witness.

William Monk is not in the habit of taking matrimonial cases, which he considers to be private matters. However, recently returned from his own honeymoon, he is touched by the plight of Lucius Stourbridge whose fiancée has mysteriously disappeared. Monk soon discovers that this is not simply a case of cold feet and begins to suspect that something altogether is taking place....

'Beautifully crafted' Cosmopolitan
`A complex plot supported by superb storytelling' Scotland on Sunday

October 2690 and Sane Ichiro, the shogun's most Honourable investigator, is marrying Lady Reiko in Edo Castle. The ceremony is disrupted as women rush screaming from the harem, where the shogun's favourite concubine has been found dying in agony.
Sane soon realises that she was poisoned. This news sends shivers through the residents of the castle, who fear a bloody purge of culprits. Can Sane himself survive in the atmosphere of heightened tension?
For the sake of the shogun's survival - and for his own honour - Sane must resist the temptation to arrest the most obvious suspect. And his enemies are watching his every move, waiting for him to make one mistake...

Nominated for the Saitire Scottish Book of the Year, 2000

'Stronger than Death propels Manda Scott into the front rank of British crime writers.' The Times

Stronger than Death is Manda Scott's third novel. It was published as a paperback original last November, drawing critical acclaim across the British press. Further testament to Manda's skill was the announcement last week that Stronger than Death has been nominated for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. Even in May 1999, when Manda was still writing it, Stronger than Death was given the Arts Council award for a work in progress. Judged by a panel of three which included Michele Roberts and Marina Warner, Manda joined, the ranks of Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt and Ben Okri, some of its previous winners.
Manda Scott's first novel, Hen's Teeth, was the only British one to be short-listed for the Orange Prize in 1997. Her second, Night Mares, was published in 1998 to critical acclaim.

Set in and around Glasgow, Stronger than Death delves into the physical and emotional lives of Kellen and Lee, friends and climbers who, on a daring and hitherto unmapped climb come face to face with the body of Eric, himself an expert climber and man they both relied on and loved. Both know it couldn't have been an accident, but in the medical world where they work nobody wants to get involved or uncover the past. Just as she did in Hen's Teeth and Night Mares, Manda Scott uses the world that she herself has worked in and her experience of love to write Stronger than Death.

It is October 1477 and Roger the Chapman, newly married and still enjoying wedded bliss, sets off for Plymouth along the ancient ridge road that dissect Dartmouth. He accepts a lift from a carter who is going to visit his daughter in the oldest part of the city. She tells the story of her neighbour, Master Capstick, who was brutally beaten to death. The chief suspect is Capstick's great-nephew, Beric, who was observed leaving the house, his tunic stained with blood. But Berie seems to have vanished into thin air...
The local people blame the Saint John's fern which, if eaten, can make a man invisible. Roger suspects that a more human agency is at work...

Joyce Fielding is missing. She walked out into the streets of Oxford and disappeared. And now Kate Ivory has been hired to find her. Joyce is a respectable grandmother and there is nothing to explain her disappearance, so Kate consults her own mother, the irrepressible Roz. Joyce has walked into danger and the hunt for her is a race against time....

When Sister Fidelma sets out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of St James in the late autumn of AD 666, her main preoccupation is to reflect on her commitment to the religious life and her relationship with the Saxon monk, Eadulf, whom she has left behind. The arrival, among the small band of pilgrims, of her first love, a man who had deserted her, complicates matters, stirring up memories she would rather forget. But there are more complications to come.
During the first night out, with the ship tossed about by a tempestuous sea, one of the pilgrims disappears, apparently washed overboard. The discovery of their blood-stained robe raises questions: was the pilgrim-murded and thrown into the sea?
With the blessing of the captain, Fidelma finds herself having to overcome her emotional ties and focus all her abilities on solving the mystery. But death dogs the tiny band of pilgrims in the close confines of the ship.
Fidelma finds herself not only battling against the antagonism of her fellow pilgrims but struggling to survive the turbulent elements of the storm-tossed sea, as she attempts to solve a perplexing puzzle. It is not until the Holy Shrine is almost reached - and time is running out - that the amazing truth is uncovered...

Praise for previous Sister Fidelma novels includes:
'A brilliant and beguiling heroine. Immensely appealing... difficult to put down' Publishers Weekly
'The background detail is marvellous' Evening Standard
'Sister Fidelma is fast becoming a world ambassador for ancient Irish culture' The Irish Post