The third title in the Inspector Ramsay crime series. Dorothea Cassidy, the Vicar's wife is found dead in the park's flower bed. The list of suspects include old Mrs Bowman, Clive Stringer, a disturbed adolescent, and Theresa Stringer, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and even members of her own family.

The first crime novel featuring Inspector Ramsay, whose reputation hangs in the balance as he investigates the murder of a headmaster in a close-knit Northumbrian pit village.

Shetland Detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to the Fair Isles to introduce his fiancee, Fran, to his parents. It's a community where everyone knows each other, and strangers, while welcomed, are still viewed with a degree of mistrust. Challenging to live on at the best of times, with the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped, tension is high and tempers become frayed. Enough to drive someone to murder…When a woman's body is discovered at the renowned Fair Isles bird observatory, with feathers threaded through her hair, the islanders react with fear and anger. With no support from the mainland and only Fran to help him – Jimmy has to investigate the old-fashioned way. He soon realizes that this is no crime of passion – but a murder of cold and calculated intention. With no way off the island until the storms abate – Jimmy knows he has to work quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the opportunity to strike again…

For Lizzie Bartholomew, a holiday in Morocco will change life forever. But not in the way she had hoped… Lizzie had planned her trip to Marrakech as the perfect escape from her life – and her nightmares – in Northumberland. Abandoned as a baby, and having spent her childhood moving between foster homes, Lizzie certainly has much to escape from. And for Lizzie, Morocco is the exotic paradise that she had imagined. Especially when she finds herself on a bus sitting next to a fellow tourist, who is also travelling to fulfil his dreams. After a brief affair, Lizzie returns to England. In the days that follow, she is distracted by thoughts of her mysterious lover, hoping against hope that Philip might come and find her. But suddenly she receives a letter from a firm of solicitors. Philip Samson has died. In his will, he has left Lizzie a gift of [pound]15,000. But there are conditions attached to this unexpected legacy. Conditions that will alter the course of Lizzie's life forever.

Cold Earth is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series – a major BBC One drama starring Douglas Henshall.In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the main Lerwick-Sumburgh road and sweeps down to the sea.At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and peaty water smash through a croft house in its path. Everyone thinks the croft is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. In his mind, she shares his Mediterranean ancestry and soon he becomes obsessed with tracing her identity.Then it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit the house. Perez knows he must find out who she was, and how she died.Also available in the Shetland series are Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, Blue Lightning, Dead Water and Thin Air.

Dead Water is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series – which is now the major BBC1 drama starring Douglas Henshall, SHETLAND. When the body of journalist Jerry Markham is found in a traditional Shetland boat, outside the house of the Fiscal, down at the Marina, young Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted in to head up the investigation. Since the death of his fiancée, Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his interest in this new case is stirred and he decides to help the inquiry. Markham – originally a Shetlander but who had made a name for himself in London – had left the islands years before. In his wake, he left a scandal involving a young girl, Evie Watt, who is now engaged to a seaman. He had few friends in Shetland, so why was he back? Willow and Jimmy are led to Sullum Voe, the heart of Shetland's North Sea oil and gas industry. It soon emerges from their investigation that Markham was chasing a story in his final days. One that must have been significant enough to warrant his death… Also available in the Shetland series are Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones and Blue Lightning. Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series (ITV television drama VERA) contains five titles, of which The Glass Room is the most recent.

Harbour Street is the next spellbinding installment in Ann Cleeves' series of crime novels about Vera Stanhope, played in the TV detective drama VERA by Brenda Blethyn.As the snow falls thickly on Newcastle, the shouts and laughter of Christmas revelers break the muffled silence. Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along in the jostling crowd onto the Metro.But when the train is stopped due to the bad weather, and the other passengers fade into the swirling snow, Jessie notices that one lady hasn't left the train: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed.Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday festivities. As she stands on the silent, snow-covered station platform, Vera feels a familiar buzz of anticipation, sensing that this will be a complex and unusual case.Then, just days later, a second woman is murdered. Vera knows that to find the key to this new killing she needs to understand what had been troubling Margaret so deeply before she died – before another life is lost. She can feel in her bones that there's a link. Retracing Margaret's final steps, Vera finds herself searching deep into the hidden past of this seemingly innocent neighborhood, led by clues that keep revolving around one street…Why are the residents of Harbour Street so reluctant to speak?Told with piercing prose and a forensic eye, Ann Cleeves' gripping new novel explores what happens when a community closes ranks to protect their own-and at what point silent witnesses become complicit.

A hot summer on the Northumberland coast, and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water, and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued. But then a second bodythat of beautiful young teacher Lily Marshis discovered laid out in a rock pool, the water strewn with flowers. Now Vera must work quickly to find this dramatist, this killer who is making art out of death. Clues are slow to emerge from those who had known Luke and Lily, but Vera soon finds herself drawn towards the curious group of friends who discovered Lilys body. What unites these four men and one woman? Are they really the close-knit, trustworthy unit they claim to be? As local residents are forced to share their private lives and those of their loved ones, sinister secrets are slowly unearthed. And, all the while, the killer remains in their midst, waiting for an opportunity to prepare another beautiful, watery grave

The fourth book in the successful Stephen Ramsay mystery series. Self-confident, ruthless, overbearing actress Gabriella Paston has many enemies-at least one with a mind to murder. As rehearsals begin for the local show in which she was to star, Inspector Ramsay attempts to find her killer.

In this second Inspector Ramsay novel, Ramsay faces a murder investigation on his own doorstep following his impulsive decision to buy a cottage in the Northumberland village of Heppleburn.

Dagger AwardsIt is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunters eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour Catherine Ross. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one manloner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when police insist on opening the investigation a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherines neighbours nervously lock their doors, whilst a killer lives on in their midst. Raven Black is a haunting, beautifully crafted crime story, and establishes Ann Cleeves as a rising talent in psychological crime writing.

Spring: a time of rebirth and celebration. And a time of death…for April is the cruelest month. When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Lerwick discovers a set of human remains – the island community is intrigued. Is it an ancient find – or a more contemporary mystery? Then an elderly is shot on her land in a tragic accident and Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson – his own colleague Sandy Wilson. He finds two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness has divided the surrounding community. With Fran in London, and surrounded by people he doesn't know and a community he has no links with – Jimmy finds himself out of depth. Then another woman dies and as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists the two deaths remain shrouded in mystery.

When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals ligature marks around the victim's throat – death is never that simple…Doing what she does best, Vera pulls her team together and sets them interviewing staff and those connected to the victim, while she and colleague, Sergeant Joe Ashworth, work to find a motive. While Joe struggles to reconcile his home life with the demands made on him by the job; Vera revels being back in charge of an investigation again. Death has never made her feel so alive…And when they discover that the victim had worked in social services, and had been involved in a shocking case involving a young child, then it appears obvious that the two are somehow connected. Though things are never as they seem…

The residents of an East Yorkshire village are revisited with eth nightmare of a murder that happened 10 years before. there was some doubt about the guilty verdict passed on Jeanie Long and now it would seem that the killer is still at large. Inspector Vera Stanhope builds up a picture of a community afraid of itself and of outsiders.

When fifteen-year-old Marilyn Howe turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay's doorstep he has little choice but to invite her in. Marilyn and her mother, Kathleen, are a familiar sight around Heppleburn, a strangely inseparable couple. But Kathleen has unaccountably failed to return home that evening, and Marilyn is fearful for her mother's safety. Ramsay takes the young girl home, to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes' dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more. And for the second time he is drawn into the strange relationships of the families living on the lonely Headland. Then a woman's body is washed up on the beach…

An ingenious psychological suspense novel. At the isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, three very different women come together. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal… For team leader Rachael the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide… When Rachael arrives at the cottage, however, she is horrified to discover the body of her friend Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide – a verdict Rachael finds impossible to accept. Only when the next death occurs does a fourth woman enter the picture – the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope…

DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation so she has more tolerance for them than most. When one of them goes missing she feels duty-bound to find out what happened. But her path leads her to more than a missing friend… It's an easy job to track the young woman down to the Writer's House, a country retreat where aspiring authors gather to workshop and work through their novels. It gets complicated when a body is discovered and Vera's neighbour is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over to someone else. She's too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting and she's never been one to follow the rules. There seems to be no motive. No meaning to the crime. Then another body is found, and Vera suspects that someone is playing games with her. Somewhere there is a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real…

An Inspector Ramsay murder mystery. Farmer Ernie Bowles is found lying strangled on his kitchen floor. A second strangulation follows and then a third suspicious death which provides a link and leads Inspector Ramsay to the Alternative Therapy Clinic. Could one of the healers be a killer?

Thirty-five short stories from the top names in British crime fiction, by the likes of Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Jake Arnott, Val McDermid, and more.