Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

A rare week off with his family is rudely interrupted when Slider is called in to investigate the murder of an elderly man, bashed on the head with a bronze statuette, in what Doc Cameron describes as 'our old friend the Frenzied Attack'. Lionel Bygod, retired solicitor, was an old-fashioned gentleman, a pillar of society, who gave advice and help to all, from the highest to the lowest. But as Slider and his team investigate, they discover dark secrets...

"'It's quiet out there,' says DS Atherton, at Bill Slider's office window. 'Too quiet.' Right on cue, the phone rings. 'Now look what you've done, ' says Slider. It's a homicide. The post-Christmas lull is officially over. The deceased is antiques expert Rowland Egerton, the darling of daytime TV, stabbed to death in his luxurious West London home. The press are going to be all over this one like a nasty rash: the pressure's on Slider for a result,...

Felicity Holland is missing. She left her handsome West London house to go to her weekly pottery class and didn't come back. She's a mature, sensible woman with a stable home life and a happy marriage--no reason to abscond. Her distraught husband is convinced she must have been snatched. DCI Bill Slider and his team know that when a woman goes missing, you have to move fast if there's to be a hope of finding her alive. But with no evidence of foul...

"In 1914, Britain faces a new kind of war. For Edward and Beatrice Hunter, their children, servants and neighbours, life will never be the same again. For David, the eldest, war means a chance to do something noble; but enlisting will break his mother's heart. His sister Diana, nineteen and beautiful, longs for marriage. She has her heart set on Charles Wroughton, son of Earl Wroughton, but Charles will never be allowed to marry a banker's daughter....

England, 1903. Giles, the new Earl of Stainton, is struggling to bring his family's estate back to order after the death of his father, and he has little time to spare for his young pregnant wife, Kitty. She lives in fear of her mother-in-law, who won't give up the reins of the household. Will she ever truly be mistress of Ashmore Castle? Perhaps if her coming child is a boy, that will change the balance of power... Meanwhile, the Earl's younger sisters...