Charlotte Pitt's mother, Caroline, has traveled with husband Joshua Fielding and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, the Yorkshire fishing village where Dracula first touched English soil in the sensational novel. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of the book, but the project is a disaster. Then a black-cloaked stranger emerges from a snowstorm who turns out to be a theatrical genius. But at the same time, a brooding evil makes itself...

In this gripping child-in-danger story, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers and her partner, Inspector Thomas Lynley, investigate the kidnapping of a friend's little girl from an Italian marketplace. With both her job and the life of a little girl on the line, Barbara must decide what matters most, and how far she's willing to go to protect it.

The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn are agog with curiosity when the Gazette advertises "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m." A childish practical joke? Or a spiteful hoax? Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, the locals arrive at Little Paddocks at the appointed time. Without warning, the lights go out and a door swings open revealing a man with a gun who demands "Stick 'em up."...

"The man's body is found in the early morning light by a local dog walker in the park outside Rosebank, a home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed up. DI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate the death, with her only clue being the disappearance of one of the home's residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence. Vera can't bring herself...

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles onto him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern, twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. They...

Natalka and Edwin are perfect if improbable partners in a detective agency. At eighty-four, Edwin regularly claims that he's the oldest detective in England. He is a master at surveillance, deploying his age as a cloak of invisibility. Natalka, Ukrainian-born and more than fifty years his junior, is a math whiz who takes any cases concerning fraud or deception. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated. She loves a murder, as she's...

For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before...

Even the unflappable Miss Marple is astounded as she reads the letter addressed to her on instructions from the recently deceased tycoon Mr. Jason Rafiel, whom she had met on holiday in the West Indies (A Caribbean Mystery). Recognizing in her a natural flair for justice and a genius for crime-solving, Mr. Rafiel has bequeathed to Miss Marple a £20,000 legacy -- and a legacy of an entirely different sort. For he has asked Miss Marple to investigate...his...

Bodies that won't stay buried-is it a practical joke? Or murder?   Lord Fitzroy-Hammond of Resurrection Row has been dead and buried three weeks when he turns up sitting atop a hansom cab. Grave robbing, though a crime, isn't Inspector Thomas Pitt's usual fare. But when the macabre joke is repeated, and the man's corpse is found sitting in the family pew the Sunday following his second interment, Pitt begins to wonder if perhaps there's some message...

"On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets off for her home in the hills. Though the road is familiar, she misses a turning and soon becomes lost and disorientated. A car has skidded off the narrow road in front of her, its door left open, and she stops to help. There is no driver to be seen, so Vera assumes that the owner has gone to find help. But a cry calls her back: a toddler is strapped in the back seat. Vera...