North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder - Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases. Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved though to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband. Then another body is found - killed in a similar way. 

Detective Peter Porteous is called to Cranwell Lake, where the body of a teenager has been discovered. After trawling through the missing persons files, he deduces that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972. For country prison officer Hannah Morton, it is the shock of her life. Michael had been her boyfriend, and she had been with him the night he disappeared. The news report that a body has been found brings back dreaded and long-buried memories from her past.... 

Meg Morrissey will not believe that her husband, James, committed suicide. A famous naturalist, James was in high spirits because he'd finally completed his autobiography. He didn't leave a suicide note. But even more suspiciously, the record of his life's achievement, his magnum opus, has gone missing. Troubled, Meg calls in amateur sleuths George and Molly Palmer-Jones to investigate.

No one in Heppleburn has a bad word to say about Alice Parry. But here she is, murdered in her own backyard. And when detective Stephen Ramsay starts asking questions in the village, a more ambiguous picture begins to emerge. Yes, old Mrs Parry was loved by everyone, but sometimes her kindness had caused trouble. Yes, her two nephews were devoted to her, but they didn't really want her interfering in their personal lives.

Gus Lynch is directing the Youth Theatre through a rehearsal. The cast is in place, but the female lead, Gabriella Paston, is missing. Later that evening her body is discovered in the boot of Gus' car. Detective Inspector Stephen Ramsay and Sergeant Gordon Hunter are assigned to head the murder enquiry. Meanwhile, violence is escalating on the Starling Farm Estate as police battle to contain the latest outbreak of joyriding. Is the death of Gabriella connected to the events at Starling Farm?

Twenty-five-year-old Lizzie Bartholomew has had more than her fair share of struggles. Abandoned as a baby, she spent her childhood moving between foster homes. Now she is running away from her past.... A holiday in Morocco seems to be the perfect escape. Especially when she meets Philip, a fellow tourist who distracts her from her troubles. After a brief affair, Lizzie returns to England, to a solicitor's letter. Philip Samson has died. In his will, he has left Lizzie a gift of £15,000. But there are conditions attached to this unexpected legacy....

Driving home during a swirling blizzard, Vera Stanhope's only thought is to get there quickly. But the snow is so heavy that she becomes disorientated and loses her way. Ploughing on, she sees a car slewed off the road ahead of her. With the driver's door open, Vera assumes the driver has sought shelter, but when she inspects the car she is shocked to find a young toddler strapped in the back seat. Afraid they will freeze, Vera takes the child and drives on, arriving at Brockburn, a run-down stately home she immediately recognises as the house her father, Hector, grew up in. 

News of the murder first came to Inspector Stephen Ramsay early on Monday morning. They found the strangled body of farmer Ernie Bowles lying on his kitchen floor. The gruesome discovery had first been made by Lily Jackman, a new-age traveller who was living with her boyfriend in a caravan on Bowles' land. Then another person is strangled, a woman who, on the surface, had absolutely no connection with the dead farmer. Surely two such killings in the same locality are more than just chilling coincidence. 

Ever since the death of her husband, Ursula Ottway has lived alone in Back Rigg Cottage, high up on the fells. Her landlord, the ambitious politician Marcus Grenville, wants his property back. After months of harassment, Ursula discovers that the illegal use of poisoned bait on Grenville's land has killed not only a rare bird of prey but her two beloved cats. Outraged, Ursula storms up to the Grenvilles' house and denounces Marcus Grenville and threatens revenge.

For vicar's wife Dorothea Cassidy, Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other.... As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea's last hours.

On a bird-watching trip aboard the Jessie Ellen, George Palmer-Jones and the other avid crew members achieve every bird-watcher's dream when they sight a sea bird which has never before been recorded. In the subsequent excitement, however, no one notices the sudden absence of the most fanatical birder of them all.... Later, Greg Franks' corpse, the head bludgeoned, is found floating in the sea.

Shetland Detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to Fair Isle. It’s a community where strangers, while welcomed, are still viewed with a degree of mistrust. With the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Tempers among the trapped islanders become frayed. Enough to drive someone to murder? When a body is discovered, the islanders react with fear. With no support from the mainland, Jimmy has to investigate the old-fashioned way.

It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's 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. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man – loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when police insist on opening out the investigation a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbours nervously lock their doors, whilst a killer lives on in their midst.

Was it a case of murder by committee at The Gillibry Island Bird Obsevatory Trust? The members of the executive committee had gathered for an amiable weekend of serious bird-watching. They had hardly expected Charlie Todd, who owned the island, to announce that he planned to sell it. A sale would mean the end of the observatory.... When, the next morning, they found Charlie dead in a bird hide, their pleasant September weekend assumed a dangerous new face.

Drawn in by the reputation of the islands, a new English family move to the area, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny’s body is found hanging in the barn of their home, rumours of her affair with the husband begin to spread like wildfire. With suspicion raining down on the family, DI Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate, knowing that it will mean the return to the islands of his on-off lover and boss Willow Reeves, who will run the case.