Showing results by narrator "Jane McDowell" in All Categories

Can Lord Peter Wimsey prove that Harriet Vane is not guilty of murder - or find the real poisoner in time to save her from the gallows? Impossible, it seems. The Crown's case is watertight. The police are adamant that the right person is on trial. The judge's summing-up is also clear. Harriet Vane is guilty of the killing her lover. And Harriet Vane shall hang. But the jury disagrees.

The forgotten children of London are going missing, apparently being sold by their own families. Can she save them before it's too late... Flora Maguire's life is perfect - a beautiful home in Belgravia teeming with servants, a loving husband, and new baby Arthur to enjoy. But when she is invited to tour St Philomena's Children's Hospital in deprived Southwark, she gets a harsh insight into the darker side of Edwardian London. Shocked by the conditions people are living in, she soon uncovers a scandal with a dark heart.

Flora has trodden the path of amateur sleuth before, but with so much at stake, this time it's personal. 1905 London is a heady mix of unimaginable wealth and simmering political tensions, and with war looming Flora Maguire wants to keep her family safe. So when her beloved charge Viscount Edward Trent is accused of murder, she's determined not to leave the investigation to the police. Slowly the body of the victim found stabbed on a train bound for Paddington starts giving up its secrets, and Flora and her husband Bunny become mired in a murky world of spies, communists and fraudsters.

It is Halloween in King's Lynn, and forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway is attending a strange event at the local history museum - the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But then Ruth finds the body of the museum's curator lying beside the coffin. Soon the museum's wealthy owner lies dead in his stables too. These two deaths could be from natural causes but DCI Harry Nelson isn't convinced, and it is only a matter of time before Ruth and Nelson cross paths once more.

When builders renovating a café in King's Lynn find a human skeleton behind a wall, they call for DCI Harry Nelson and Dr Ruth Galloway. Ruth is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with Nelson. However, she agrees to look at the case. Ruth sees at once that the bones are modern. They are identified as the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in the 1990s. Emily attended a course run by her Cambridge tutor. Suspicion falls on him and also on another course member - Ruth's friend Cathbad.

Kate Palmer is stunned when she wakes up one morning to discover the body of a man in the beautiful garden of Lavender Cottage. She’s spent the last few years renovating her cozy clifftop cottage with its gorgeous views of the sparkling Cornish Sea. And a death right under her nose is more than a little unsettling....

What has happened to Cornelia Blackwood? She has a loving marriage. But she has no friends. Everyone knows her name. But no one will speak it. Why? Cornelia Blackwood is about to do something very wrong, for reasons she believes to be right. A paperback best seller with her debut novel, The Things We Never Said, and nominated for an RNA Award in 2014, Susan Elliot Wright’s novels are perfect for fans of Maggie O’Farrell and Anne Tyler.

In this dark psychological thriller, a wealthy husband turns up dead, and his abused wife is charged with the crime. She calls Riley for help - and yet it seems clear she is guilty. But when another wealthy, abusive husband turns up dead, the FBI is called in, and FBI special agent Riley Paige wonders: Is this all a coincidence? Or could this be the work of a serial killer?

All that was left of the garage was a heap of charred and smouldering beams. In the driving seat of the burnt-out car were the remains of a body.... An accident, said the police. An accident, said the widow. She had been warning her husband about the danger of the car for months. Murder, said the famous detective Lord Peter Wimsey - and proceeded to track down the killer.

Escape to Italy with this sumptuous story of secrets and friendships under Mediterranean skies. A recipe for life should be a simple thing: love and happiness, family, friends and a little food. But life is rarely straightforward.... Alice wants to make the most of life - after all, she knows how fragile it can be - and knows she never feels more alive than when she's cooking. Babetta has spent a lifetime tending the garden of her tiny house on the Italian coast, supplying food to feed a family now grown and gone.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. He made his fifth appearance in this brilliant collection of ingenious short stories. The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey.

When 12-year-old Katherine Howard comes to live in the Duchess of Norfolk's household, poor relation Cat Tilney is deeply suspicious of her. The two girls couldn't be more different: Cat, watchful and ambitious; Katherine, interested only in clothes and boys. Their companions are in thrall to Katherine, but it's Cat in whom Katherine confides. Summoned to court at 17, Katherine leaves Cat in the company of her ex-lover, Francis, and the two begin their own, much more serious love affair.

My heart is less than 1% of my body, it weighs hardly anything; it's only a tiny piece of me, yet it's the part Helen finds most interesting. Once it was inside her body, a tiny piece of the son she gave birth to. Now her boy is gone and his heart is keeping me alive. Born with a heart defect, Vivienne Clark's life was saved by a transplant. Now a journalist, she doesn't allow herself to think about the donor, the boy who died so she could live; she can't bear to.

It was the body of a tall stout man. On his dead face, a handsome pair of gold pince-nez mocked death with grotesque elegance. The body wore nothing else.Lord Peter Wimsey knew immediately what the corpse was supposed to be. His problem was to find out whose body had found its way into Mr Alfred Thipps' Battersea bathroom.

Marianne was 17 when she fled her home in Nusstead - leaving behind her family, her boyfriend, Jesse, and the body they buried. Now, 30 years later, forced to return to in order to help care for her sick mother, she can feel the past closing around her. And Jesse, who never forgave her for leaving in the first place, is finally threatening to expose the truth. Marianne will do anything to protect the life she's built, the husband and daughter who must never know what happened all those years ago. Even if it means turning to her worst enemy for help....

The Night Hawks, a group of metal detectorists, are searching for buried treasure when they find a body on the beach in North Norfolk. At first Nelson thinks that the dead man might be an asylum seeker but he turns out to be a local boy, Jem Taylor, recently released from prison. Ruth is more interested in the treasure, a hoard of Bronze Age weapons. Nelson at first thinks that Taylor's death is accidental drowning, but a second death suggests murder.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His eighth appearance takes him to an artists' colony (based on a real one) in Scotland during the 1920s. Lord Peter Wimsey could imagine the artist stepping back, the stagger, the fall down to where the pointed rocks grinned like teeth.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. This book of short stories is his ninth appearance and introduces another detective, Montague Egg. Poisoned port, pet cats in peril, purloined pearls... Lord Peter Wimsey solves the mysteries of the man who was blown into the fourth dimension and the murder in fancy dress.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. In his tenth appearance, he takes a job as an advertising copywriter to expose a ruthless killer. Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions....

Ruth is in London clearing out her mother's belongings when she makes a surprising discovery: a photograph of her Norfolk cottage taken before Ruth lived there. Her mother always hated the cottage, so why does she have a picture of the place? The only clue is written on the back of the photo: dawn, 1963. Ruth returns to Norfolk determined to solve the mystery, but then COVID rears its ugly head. Ruth and her daughter are locked down in their cottage, attempting to continue with work and home-schooling.