Head Start

A head teacher's work is never done, especially if, like Jane Cowan, you're a victim of your own success. Her responsibilities are compounded by an influx of children, most of whom do not speak English, following their families supplying cheap labour. Jane can't turn a blind eye to the conditions in which many of these families are living, even more so when some children simply disappear. When everything points to the shadowy dealings of people smugglers in the area, she has her work cut out.

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.

Bracketts, an Elizabethan house near the town of Fethering, is about to be turned into a museum. Once the home of celebrated poet Esmund Chadleigh, it has been decided that it should now become a shrine to his life and poetry. But the transition from house to museum is running far from smoothly, and Carole soon begins to regret her decision to be on the Board as she witnesses bitter antagonism and rivalry amongst the other members. Then a sudden discovery is made.

Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold's in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women's Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max's training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play.

DS Wesley Peterson, newly arrived in the West Country town of Tradmouth, has his hands full when a child goes missing and a young woman is brutally murdered on a lonely cliff path. Then his old friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, unearths the skeletons of a strangled woman and a newborn baby in the cellar of an ancient merchant's house nearby. As the investigation continues, Wesley begins to suspect that these deaths, centuries apart, may be linked by age-old motives of jealousy, a sexual obsession and desperate longing.

Lady Amanda Golightly and her old friend Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump are off to the Caribbean. One of Lady A's old school-friends is having a school reunion and is also trying to sell the villas she has built on part of a privately-owned island. Some of the old girls already live there, others are crossing for the reunion by sea on the Seven Seas Floating Party Town. Life is eventful.

One evening as the sun is setting, Amelia Madison’s car slides into the sea off Mason’s Pier. Her body is never found. Two years later, Elena Langdon meets Nicholas Madison. She is grieving the loss of her mother, he is grieving for his wife. Together, they can help each other. Now, Elena is living with Nicholas. But Elena doesn’t really know him. She doesn’t know what he is capable of. And she doesn’t know what really happened to Amelia. Until the day she discovers the torn page of a letter and the words she reads chill her to the bone. 

Rose has it all - the gorgeous children, the husband, the beautiful home. But then her best friend, Polly, comes to stay. Very soon Rose's cosy world starts to fall apart at the seams - her baby falls dangerously ill, her husband is distracted.... Is Polly behind it all? It appears that once you invite Polly into your home, it's very difficult to get her out again.

Following a personal tragedy, florist Persimmon “Simmy” Brown has moved to the Lake District to be nearer her parents. But her peace is shattered when, at a wedding, the bride's brother is found brutally murdered. As the florist of the wedding and one of the last people to talk to Mark Baxter alive, Simmy gradually becomes involved with the relatives. When events take another sinister turn, Simmy finds herself at the heart of a murder investigation.

Maxwell’s Millennium is not quite like other people’s - for a start, it is a year later. After much quibbling with the maths department, everyone calls it an honourable draw and he celebrates as only he can: with his cat, his model soldiers and his Southern Comfort. A knock on the door could be Jacquie Carpenter, released from night shift earlier than expected, but instead of a warm girl Maxwell opens his door to find a very cold old lady, dead and naked.

When Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell takes his kids from Leighford High on an archaeological dig, they uncover a grave. But the corpse was not Saxon, and it wasn’t a king - this was an altogether more recent death. Then a policeman on the case is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell’s partner, Jacquie Carpenter, unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic backbiting and religious mania which can only end in murder.

There comes a time in every teacher's life when he must face his nemesis - the Ofsted Inspection. On the third day, with the atmosphere at Leighford High decidedly fraught, one of the Inspectors is found stabbed to death. Events move quickly, and the Head is arrested on suspicion of the murder. But Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form, cannot help but notice that Sally Meninger, the Ofsted Humanities expert, is not as distraught at her colleague's death as one might expect....

The murder of any journalist is bound to whip the media into a frenzy. So when ex-BBC correspondent Ed Stonax is found dead, the last thing Detective Inspector Bill Slider needs to complicate his life is the reappearance of an old enemy issuing death threats. Trevor Bates, aka The Needle, is on the loose and trying to kill him. Along with that and a high-profile murder to solve, he must try to find a spare moment to marry Joanna before their baby is born.

DCI Jim Daley is sent from the city to investigate a murder after the body of a woman is washed up on an idyllic beach on the West Coast of Scotland. Far away from urban resources, he finds himself a stranger in a close-knit community. Love, betrayal, fear and death stalk the small town, as Daley investigates a case that becomes more deadly than he could possibly imagine, in this compelling Scottish crime novel infused with intrigue and dark humour.

A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door stopping and deduction: he is the last detective. Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit.