Showing results by author "M. C." in All Categories

Mrs Gentle has fooled everyone into thinking she is as sweet as she sounds - Gentle by name and gentle by nature. But local constable Hamish Macbeth isn't fooled. He believes this little old lady is actually quite sly and vicious, but he's in a minority of one. Or is he? When Mrs Gentle dies...

An unexpected hike to the Other Side . . . After time away, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village of Carsely - and to her handsome neighbour, James Lacey. True, James seems less than thrilled to see her, but Agatha is soon distracted by a sensational murder. The victim, found in...

Inspector Betty Church - one of the few female officers on the force - has arrived from London to fill a vacancy at Sackwater police station. But Betty isn't new here. This is the place she grew up. Time ticks slowly in Sackwater. Having solved the case of the missing buttons, Betty's called to the train station to investigate a missing bench. But though there's no bench, there is a body. A smartly dressed man, murdered in broad daylight, with two distinctive puncture wounds in his throat. While the locals gossip about the Suffolk Vampire, Betty Church readies herself to hunt a dangerous killer.

Who was Friedrich Nietzsche? This lonely and chronically ill, yet passionate, daring, and complex man is perhaps the most mysterious and least understood of all contemporary philosophers. Why are his brilliant insights so relevant for today? How did he become the most misinterpreted and unfairly maligned intellectual figure of the last two centuries?

Violet “Vy” Finch is a vampire cursed, for the very blood she needs is poison to her. Suffering unquenchable hunger and shunned for being of mixed lineage, Vy searches desperately for her mother who disappeared over a decade ago—the one person who may be able to heal her. Unfortunately, a great sorceress prophesies that Vy will only get what she wants if Petra Malkovitch willingly works with her to find a magical relic with the power to change everything.

She couldn't paint to save her life - so someone's given her a lesson by taking it! Most newcomers don't stay long in remote Lochdubh - usually boredom, dampness and nosy locals drive them out. But it looks as if artist Effie Garrard has come to stay. When Hamish Macbeth calls on her he's amazed...

The first book in M.C. Beaton's charming A House for the Season series. Is Number 67 Clarges Steet the unluckiest house in Mayfair? Every Season the beaux mondes of the Regency would hire a house in the heart of London's fashionable West End at a disproportionately high rent for often inferior...

Fashionable society regards Sir Benjamin Wright with the utmost honour and respect. Yet Lady Emma knows that her husband is, in fact, a drunken jealous brute who delights in humiliating her both in and out of the bedroom. So, his unexpected murder is a blessing, she thinks - that is, until the...

During a hospital visit, Lady Violet Thorn overhears a young woman accusing a married couple of her parents' murder and stealing their home, Maccabee House. From body parts scattered around town igniting rumours about a cannibal to a sex worker found brutalised, macabre events soon unfold culminating in Violet receiving a mannequin, resembling herself, stabbed through the heart. With the town of Montford in meltdown, Violet knows that the answers wait at Maccabee House, which lies in the shadow of the old tannery. But with the killer's sights firmly on her, can she make it out alive?

When Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is sent to investigate reports that the wealthy new laird of the remote Naglar House has disappeared, north-west Scotland is hit by the worst storm in living memory. The road is washed away, phone lines are down, mobile reception is dead and his police radio is out...

Ignorance is bliss... especially when it comes to murder! Ever since the death of his father, Fellworth Dolphin has slaved away as a waiter to support his miserly, cold-hearted mother. So when she suddenly dies Fellworth is shocked to discover she has left him a fortune. Somewhat confused, Fell...

Allotment wars! Lord Bellington, Carsely's biggest landholder, has enraged locals by saying he is going to sell off their allotments to make way for a new housing development. So when he turns up dead, poisoned by antifreeze, nobody mourns his passing. On another fine summer's day Agatha visits...

Hiral must grow before a sky-island plummets. Fallen Reach is in danger, and only Hiral and his surviving teammates can save it. Gathering their strength after the loss of their friends, the Builder and Growers race across a hostile landscape to save their homes and obtain the power they need to battle their nigh-unstoppable enemies.

A dead witness. A forgotten crime. Hamish Macbeth never had it so hard as in this newest Highlands mystery! Morag Merrilea is working at the Shopmark Fashions factory during her summer holidays to earn some extra cash. But when the art student complains to Hamish about the theft of her...

I met fallen angel princes; I met a Savage Duke; I met a Cheshire Cat. And remember - how could you possibly forget - I'm the fabled Alice from the prophecy. Just a twisted, dark version of the girl in Lewis Carroll's old books. Except in those books, there was a happy ending. In those books, Alice wasn't dating nine very different, very beautiful men. But now that I've met the King of Hearts and the Mad Hatter, I'm not sure who the real bad guys are.

Lowell Hemming is stuck. Grounded from his job, this werewolf is pulling his hair out being back in his small hometown. The first Hemming to leave Cambric Creek, he's feeling the pressure from his mother to move back home, is chafed by his family name, and hasn't gotten laid in months. When he...

Home is where the horror is... Jilted thriller writer Lady Violet Thorn has withdrawn to the Suffolk market town of Montford with two servants and her leading character, the adventuress Ruby Gibson, for company. Violet’s peace is disturbed when a stranger asks her for help, claiming that a friend is being kept prisoner in her own home. Her visitor seems so afraid that Violet, despite her scepticism, is persuaded to investigate.

In 2006 Doug Beattie was awarded the Military Cross for his part in recapturing the southern Afghan town of Garmsir from the Taliban. He was due to retire from the British Army in 2007, when his CO made a desperate plea: stay on for one more tour. Torn between his love for his wife and children, and an overwhelming sense of duty towards his other family, the Royal Irish Regiment, in March 2008 he returned to Afghanistan. The story of what he endured there makes for gripping listening. If 2006 had been hellish, then 2008 was off the scale.

There’s one mistake you don’t make at Prescott High, not unless you want me to ruin you. Do not touch my beautifully broken Havoc Boys. Harbin, Fadler, Channing-Blackbird, Montauk, and Park. Death stalks the halls of Prescott High. Once upon a time, my best friend betrayed me. For over a year, I let that two-faced bitch go. But not anymore. This time, she’s stirred up the devil in me.

There are many ruined castles in Scotland. One such lies outside the village of Drim. Hamish begins to hear reports that this castle is haunted and lights have been seen there at night, but he assumes it's some children or maybe the local lads going there to smoke pot, or, worse, inject...