Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: a genuine gumshoe, committed to door-stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry. So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no one willing to identify her, no marks, and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit.

A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower's blade. A singer's costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician's box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along?

Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers' Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class amongst the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning his victims to death, and Bob becomes a suspect.

More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction. On the occasion of his hundredth short story, Peter Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection, 18 yarns of mystery, melancholy, and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery, and the book-publishing industry.

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

The king's coronation brings hope. Until a murderer strikes. Spring 1661: After years of civil war followed by Oliver Cromwell's joyless rule as Lord Protector, England awaits the coronation of King Charles II. The mood in London is one of relief and hope for a better future. But when two respectable gentlemen are found in a foul lane with their throats cut, it becomes apparent that England's enemies are using the newly re-established post office for their own ends.

Detective Sergeant Chris Waters got the call at 05.29 that July morning. This is it, said DCI Reeve, you'll be first there, it's all yours, you're the crime scene manager. Suddenly, after months of waiting and wondering, Waters finds himself in at the deep end, and alone at the scene of a puzzling murder. As the investigation proceeds, the detectives at Kings Lake Central find themselves visiting familiar places and talking to some familiar faces, while old enmities reappear in the incident room. Before this is over, Chris Waters will need to make a career-changing decision.

The village of Badger's Drift is the essence of tranquillity. But when resident and well-loved spinster Miss Simpson takes a stroll in the nearby woods, she stumbles across something she was never meant to see, and there's only one way to keep her quiet. Miss Simpson's death is not suspicious, say the villagers. But Miss Lucy Bellringer refuses to rest: her friend has been murdered. She is sure of it.

Get three absolutely gripping crime thrillers set on the UK's atmospheric north Norfolk coast from number one best-selling British author J M Dalgliesh in this great value collection.

The Dark Yorkshire Series - fast-paced crime fiction stories featuring DI Nathaniel Caslin. The first three full-length books in this best-selling series are brought together for the first time in this great value set.

Judith Potts is 77 years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper. One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar.

D.I. Duncan McAdam is dispatched home to the Misty Isle. A body has been found buried in a remote location on the Waternish peninsula. Well-preserved in the peat, Isla Matheson—missing for the better part of two decades—is revealed to a shocked island community. A teenage runaway is dead...and no one is talking.

Detective Chief Inspector Harry Grimm is forced to take leave from Bristol’s Major Investigations Team when his boss, tired of Harry chasing the ghost of his murderous father, sends him north on secondment. Used to city life and high stress, Harry fears his life will now be spent handing out speeding tickets, finding lost sheep, and directing tourists. But when a local teenager runs away, Harry finds himself pulled into an investigation much worse than anyone could have ever expected.

The Josephine Tey Collection includes unabridged recordings of Tey's 8 major novels in one audiobook, including all 6 of the novels in the Inspector Alan Grant series.

Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after years fighting in the First World War. Unknown to his colleagues he is still suffering from shell shock, and is burdened with the guilt of having had executed a young soldier on the battlefield for refusing to fight. A jealous colleague has learned of his secret and has managed to have Rutledge assigned to a difficult case which could spell disaster for Rutledge whatever the outcome. A retired officer has been murdered, and Rutledge goes to investigate.

In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The young victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?

London, 1882. Alec Lonsdale, a young reporter on the Pall Mall Gazette, is working on a story about a fatal house fire. But the postmortem on the victim produces shocking results: Patrick Donovan's death was no accident. But why would someone murder a humble shop assistant and steal part of his brain? When a second body is discovered, its throat cut, and then a third, Lonsdale and his spirited female colleague, Hulda Friederichs, begin to uncover evidence of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest echelons of Victorian society.

Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive nineteenth-century London.

The fiction world of today needs a “Saint” more than it ever did. For years now that scene has been dominated by the “anti-heroes"—those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hyper-gadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas.

In Victorian England, orphan Mary Quinn lives on the edge. Sentenced as a thief at the age of 12, she’s rescued from the gallows by a woman posing as a prison warden. In her new home, Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls, Mary acquires a singular education, fine manners, and a surprising opportunity. The school is a cover for the Agency — an elite, top secret corps of female investigators with a reputation for results — and at 17, Mary’s about to join their ranks.

In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England's industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive?

Bridgestead is a peaceful spot: a babbling brook, rolling hills, and a working mill at its heart. Pretty and remote, nothing exceptional happens...until the day that Master of the Mill Joshua Braithwaite goes missing under dramatic circumstances, never to be heard of again. Now Joshua's daughter is getting married and wants to make one last attempt at finding her father. Kate Shackleton has always loved solving puzzles. So who better to get to the bottom of Joshua's mysterious disappearance?

The king's coronation brings hope. Until a murderer strikes. Spring 1661: After years of civil war followed by Oliver Cromwell's joyless rule as Lord Protector, England awaits the coronation of King Charles II. The mood in London is one of relief and hope for a better future. But when two respectable gentlemen are found in a foul lane with their throats cut, it becomes apparent that England's enemies are using the newly re-established post office for their own ends.

"Love Among the Chickens" is a comedic novel by British master of the genre, P. G. Wodehouse. The novel is narrated by Jeremy Garnet, an author and old friend of Ukridge. Seeing Ukridge for the first time in years, with a new wife in tow, Garnet finds himself dragged along on holiday to Ukridge's new chicken farm in Dorset. The novel intertwines Garnet's difficult wooing of a girl living nearby with the struggles of the farm, which are exacerbated by Ukridge's bizarre business ideas and methods.

Deep in the trenches of Flanders Fields, men are dying in the thousands every day. So one more death shouldn't be a surprise. But then a body turns up with bizarre injuries, and Sherlock Holmes' former sidekick, Dr. John Watson - unable to fight for his country due to injury but able to serve it through his medical expertise - finds his suspicions raised.

A modern woman in 1907, Lady Dunbridge is not about to let a little thing like the death of her husband ruin her social life. She's ready to take the dazzling world of Gilded Age Manhattan by storm. From the decadence of high society balls to the underbelly of Belmont horse racing, romance, murder, and scandals abound. Someone simply must do something. And Lady Dunbridge is happy to oblige.

Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; excitement essential. When Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC placed that advertisement, he was looking for adventure. What he finds is an international plot headed by the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.

The never-before-told story behind the legend of Count Dracula! The story of the Count’s greatest love, Mina Harker, and the bloodthirsty vampire hunters whose cruel pursuit drove the master of the night to actions ever more ruthless. The Count Dracula sets the record straight.…

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

In the sleepy Bavarian town of Gesternstadt, gossip was viewed by many as a local sport, a popular hobby, a harmless pastime that showed only the depth and enduring nature of the interest of one neighbour for another. In Gretel’s opinion, however, tittle-tattle sowed the seeds of malice among the fertile soil of jealousy, often watered by the tears of its victims. So it was that upon hearing from brother Hans of the whispers concerning a young woman, a married man and a thwarted lover, Gretel is compelled to rise from her beloved day bed to set things to rights.

Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: a genuine gumshoe, committed to door-stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry. So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no one willing to identify her, no marks, and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit.

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower's blade. A singer's costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician's box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along?

Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers' Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class amongst the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning his victims to death, and Bob becomes a suspect.

More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction. On the occasion of his hundredth short story, Peter Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection, 18 yarns of mystery, melancholy, and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery, and the book-publishing industry.