The fourth anniversary of the transfer of Saint Winifred's bones to the Abbey at Shrewsbury is a time of celebration for the 12th-century pilgrims gathering from far and wide. In distant Winchester, however, a knight has been murdered. Could it be because he was a supporter of the Empress Maud, one of numerous pretenders to the throne? It's up to herbalist, sleuth, and Benedictine monk Brother Cadfael to track down the killer in the pious throng.

Sabina Carpenter and John Quinncannon are no stranger to mysteries. In the five years since they opened Carpenter and Quinncannon, Professional Detective Services, they have solved dozens, but one has eluded even them: Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the madman claiming his identity, who keeps showing up with a frustrating (though admittedly useful) knack for solving difficult cases.Roland W. Fairchild, recently arrived from Chicago, claims Holmes is his first cousin, Charles P. Fairchild III. Now, with his father dead, Charles stands to inherit an estate of over three million dollars-if Sabina can find him, and if he can be proved sane. Sabina is uncertain of Roland’s motives, but agrees to take the case.John, meanwhile, has been hired by the owner of the Golden State brewery to investigate the “accidental” death of the head brewmaster, who drowned in a vat of his own beer. When a second murder occurs, and the murderer escapes from under his nose, John finds himself on the trail not just of the criminals, but of his reputation for catching them.But while John is certain he can catch his quarry, Sabina is less certain she wants to catch hers. Holmes has been frustrating, but useful, even kind. She is quite certain he is mad, and quite uncertain what will happen when he is confronted with the truth. Does every mystery need to be solved?

Roger the Chapman Mystery #2Find the killer. Solve the case. Save yourself.Roger the Chapman has been royally commanded to escort a King's messenger, Philip Underdown, who is carrying a vital despatch aboard his ship in Plymouth.When the messenger is murdered with Roger's own cudgel – a Plymouth cloak – he is appalled to find himself the chief suspect in a world of double-dealing, sin and political chicanery.Discovering Underdown's shady past of slave dealing, however, Roger quickly learns that the messenger had no shortage of enemies waiting patiently to exact revenge…A truly gripping medieval mystery, with twists and turns to keep you completely hooked, perfect for fans of S. J. Parris, Graham Brack and S. W. Perry.

MATTHEW PEARL'S second novel is based on what he calls "one of literary history's most persistent gaps." Edgar Allan Poe died, Pearl tells us, "at the age of 40 in a Baltimore hospital on Oct. 7, 1849, four days after being found in distress at Ryan's inn and tavern." The stubbornly unexplained gap occurred in the five days preceding his appearance at the tavern.Poe was supposed to be almost anywhere other than Baltimore: he was traveling from Richmond to New York with a planned stop in Philadelphia, not Baltimore. No one knows how he came to be in the city – or, for that matter, how he ended up at the tavern. For some of us, this pretty much describes a really great Saturday night, but when it happens to the master of darkness, just days before his untimely death, it has the makings of a mystery.Pearl takes us back to those few lost days through the inquiries of Quentin Clark, a Poe-mad young Baltimorean who is dismayed not just by the writer's death but by the press's apathetic reponse to the news. Clark takes it upon himself to look into matters and rectify this slight to his hero. The trouble is, Clark is a stock character from the world of commercial thrillers: a man with a lot to lose, imperiled by his own obsession. Engaged to a beautiful young woman, the son of wealthy and very proper parents and pursuing a career as a lawyer, he may sacrifice them all to his devotion to Poe.Clark haunts the writer's grave, visits the hospital where he lay dying and tracks down the Poe cousins. But wherever he turns, he's met with indifference or outright obstruction. Finally, in desperation, he turns to another source of information: the pages of a book. Clark has always admired Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and the other mysteries featuring C. Auguste Dupin, the brilliant Frenchman who solves crimes too baffling for the Paris police. "Dupin's reasoning followed a method Poe called ratiocination," Clark reminds himself, "employing one's imagination to achieve analysis, and one's analysis to climb the heights of imagination."When Clark stumbles on a newspaper item suggesting that Dupin was based on a real Frenchman, he promptly takes off for the Continent. Of course, there turns out to be more than one candidate for this honor, and soon a couple of testy Frenchmen are racing back to America, eager to snatch whatever glory they might from Poe's death.Baroquely orchestrated complications ensue, up to and including a threat to the future of the French republic. As he demonstrated in his serial-killers-and-philosophers best seller, "The Dante Club," Pearl is a fine scene-setter and a resolute, if not always inspired, plotter. "The Poe Shadow" is thick with intrigue and thicker still with carefully researched (and ostentatiously displayed) details.Pearl, who taught literature at Harvard before embarking on his literary career, sometimes displays a wonderfully knowing tone, and enjoys playing with 19th-century lingo. When a Baltimore police officer asks Clark if he has a wife and is told that he has a fiancée, the officer warns: "You should have much to occupy yourself without needing to think of this unhappy affair, then. Or your sweetheart might give you the mitten." Sadly, Pearl's plot is not all sweethearts and mittens.With its bewildered narrator and its attempt to marry the rational and the spooky, "The Poe Shadow" seems to be modeled on Poe's own writing, but it's missing a crucial element: brevity. Although Pearl has a real affinity for 19th-century America, he overwhelms the strengths of his book with a hurricane of ersatz Victorian prose. He doesn't just disinter Poe's story; he disinters the language of Poe's time. After a while, you feel like you're trapped in a sepia-toned faux-daguerrotype. Pearl has created a museum rather than a world. And no one lives in a museum.

1915. German guns are on their way to Ireland. The British government faces its worst nightmare: insurrection at home while it struggles with bloody stalemate on the Western Front. A British spy, Sebastian Wolff of the new Secret Service Bureau, is given the task of hunting down its enemies: one a traitor reviled by the society that honoured him as a national hero; the other a German American doctor who, instead of healing the sick, is developing a terrifying new weapon that he will use in the country of his birth.Wolff’s mission will take him undercover into the corridors of power in Berlin — where he must win the confidence of the German spymaster who controls both men — then across the Atlantic in a race against time to prevent the destruction of the ships and supplies Britain so desperately needs to stave off defeat.Moving from London to the Baltic coast, from Berlin to New York, The Poison Tide is set against a war like none before, in which men die in their thousands every day. And there are those on both sides who will use any weapon, who accept no limits, no morality except victory

A Crowner John Mystery #2

Coroner Sir John investigates a series of attacks on wealthy women in this tense, pacey instalment in the Crowner John medieval mystery series, set in twelfth-century England.

1194. The well-born ladies of Exeter are under attack. First, Christina Rifford, the daughter of a rich merchant, is raped. Then, just months before her marriage, Lady Adele de Courcy is found dead in one of the poorest areas of the city. The common factor is Godfrey Fitzosbern, the local silversmith.

Despite his own suspicions, county coroner Sir John de Wolfe is determined to protect Godfrey from the women’s vengeful families. Until, that is, he can find proof of the man’s guilt. Aided by his mistress Nesta, and hindered by his social-climbing wife Matilda and her power-hungry brother, Sheriff Richard de Revelle, John slowly begins to put the pieces together. But a final, brutal act of violence makes John question everything he’s discovered so far …

A perfectly rendered short novel of suspense about a painter driven to extremes.  An influential art critic in the early years of the twentieth century journeys from London to the rustic, remote island of Houat, off France's northwest coast, to sit for a portrait painted by an old friend, a gifted but tormented artist living in self-imposed exile. Over the course of the sitting, the painter recalls their years of friendship, the double-edged gift of the critic's patronage, the power he wielded over aspiring artists, and his apparent callousness in anointing the careers of some and devastating the lives of others. The balance of power between the two men shifts dramatically as the critic becomes a passive subject, while the painter struggles to capture the character of the man, as well as his image, on canvas.  Reminiscing with ease and familiarity one minute, with anger and menace the next, the painter eventually reveals why he has accepted the commission of this portrait, why he left London suddenly and mysteriously at the height of his success, and why now, with dark determination, he feels ready to return.  Set against the dramatic, untamed landscape of Brittany during one of the most explosive periods in art history, The Portrait is rich with atmosphere and suggestion, psychological complexity, and marvelous detail. It is a novel you will want to begin again immediately after turning the last chilling page, to read once more with a watchful eye and appreciate the hand of an ingenious storyteller at work.

In October of 1142, a local landlord gives the Potter's Field to the local clergy. The monks begin to plow it, and the blades turn up the long tresses of a young woman, dead over a year. Then the arrival of a novice who fled from an abbey ravaged by civil war in East Anglia complicates life even further for Brother Cadfael.

Roger the Chapman Mystery #151480. When Roger the Chapman discovers he has a hitherto unknown half-brother, he has mixed feelings about the matter. But when John Wedmore is accused of being the young page who, six years earlier, robbed his mistress and murdered a fellow servant, and is thrown into prison, Roger feels obliged to investigate the charge. His enquiries take him into Somerset, to the Manor House at Croxcombe, home of the Bellknapp family.But his search for the truth is complicated by the sudden and unexpected arrival of Anthony Bellknapp, the elder son – missing, presumed dead for the past eight years – to claim his inheritance. Anthony succeeds in antagonising almost all the Manor’s inhabitants; and when he is murdered, Roger finds himself with too many suspects from which to choose. But he is convinced that the past and present killings are linked; and if he can prove the connection, his half-brother’s name will be cleared.