Showing results by narrator "Clare Wille" in All Categories

When Posie Parker, Private Detective, accidentally runs into an old family acquaintance in the Temple Church, London, she is persuaded to leave town immediately and return to the place of her childhood roots—the beautiful Norfolk coast—to investigate a closed-room murder mystery which local police believe has a foregone conclusion.

Posie Parker, Private Detective, has been called to her most baffling case yet. Amyas Lyle, London’s top young lawyer, has been found with his head in a box of poisoned saltwater. It’s the perfect murder. Who hated him enough to do such a thing? But Amyas Lyle, youngest ever King’s Counsel and soon-to-be Judge, turns out to have been more complicated than Posie could ever have imagined.

As England swelters during the hottest summer on record, Posie Parker, Private Detective, is summoned to Worton Hall Film Studios, where she steps into the heart of a sinister new mystery. Silvia Hanro, the blonde movie star du jour, has received death threats and a severed human finger alongside her morning coffee, and it’s all got too, too much.

The Serpent of Division features murder and mystery, a charming pirate, Oxford colleges and libraries, a buxom bookseller reminiscent of the Wife of Bath and a Persian physician with a fondness for Rumi. All have a part to play, as the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer fights for survival against her ruthless neighbour Sir Robert Harcourt and the machinations of Elizabeth Wydeville, descendant of the serpent fairy Melusine and queen of Edward IV. It is set during the politically rocky final years of the Wars of the Roses.

As her reputation steadily grows, Posie Parker is asked to accompany the utterly charming Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission of entrapment. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at the remote Maypole Manor in Kent, the cliff-top home of Lord Robin Glaysayer.

The first chapter of a manuscript arrives on Publisher Marina’s desk. She assumes it’s just another novel by another aspiring writer. As the chapters arrive one by one, Marina is convinced they are about her past. There’s only one person who can know everything about the scandal, the trial, and the trauma that nearly broke her. This is one story that should never be told, and Marina is so desperate she will do anything to stop it getting out.

Life in an English seaside town in the 1790s is harsh, and ‘captious, capricious’ Sylvia has a dilemma when the dashing harpooner to whom she is secretly engaged disappears, and her dull cousin Philip (who has more information about his rival than he lets on) offers her love and security.

Posie Parker, now London’s premier female Private Detective, is getting married, and with her wedding dress carefully packed, she’s bubbling over with excitement to arrive in Venice, the most romantic city on earth! But very quickly Posie finds she is walking into an utter nightmare: her lodgings on the Grand Canal have been consumed by fire; the fascist police are in control of the city; her famous fiancé, Alaric Boynton-Dale is moody and preoccupied, and most bizarrely of all, her hostess, the Countess Romagnoli, confesses she has a stalker and fears for her life.

When Margaret Hale moves with her father from the comfort of the south of England to the industrial north, she is at first repulsed by what she sees; and then when she discovers the conditions under which the workers are forced to live, she is outraged. But this throws her into direct conflict with the powerful young mill-owner, John Thornton. Using personal passions to explore deep social divisions, North and South is a great romance and one of Elizabeth Gaskell's finest works.

Posie Parker, Private Detective, has been summoned to Chelsea, to the House of Sinne, the London perfume house. Anouk Sinne, the most brilliant perfumier of her age, and famous for her spoiled bald cat, has been receiving blackmail demands, and she asks Posie to investigate. But is blackmail just the tip of the iceberg?

As snow falls silently outside, settling on the spires and turrets of the ancient Cambridge colleges and the dark streets, and the shop windows gleam temptingly with delectable Christmas treats, Posie Parker, Private Detective, has cleared a small space in her hectic schedule to unravel a tragedy which occurred in her very own family.

Posie Parker always dreamt of becoming a Private Detective. So with nothing to lose, and the tiniest scrap of an inheritance and her haughty cat, Mr Minks, in tow, she sets up her own Detective Agency in Bloomsbury. But clients are hard to come by, and all seems in vain, until Posie receives an urgent call from her childhood friend, Lord Rufus Cardigeon, who is up to his neck in bother. He’s been robbed of a family heirloom—the priceless Maharajah diamond—by his showgirl fiancée, Lucky Lucy Gibson.

Invited aboard the glamourous Night Train to Paris, and tasked with investigating the disappearance of her best friend, Dolly, Countess Cardigeon, Posie Parker suddenly finds herself right in the middle of a murder! Controversial society beauty, Lady Caroline Greenlow, is on her way to Paris Fashion Week. She always has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, but things take a dreadful turn when she is poisoned at dinner, and then another murder occurs soon after.

First appearing in 1782, Dangerous Liaisons is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The plot unfolds through a series of letters as the two main protagonists, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, attempt to bring about the seduction of a young woman. The epistolary nature of the novel gives a multi-faceted perspective of the action, which places the book firmly in the tradition of libertine literature.

In the quiet world of rural English clergy, lives are full of challenges, conflicts, desires and expectations. George Eliot’s first published work of fiction (1857) comprises three separate stories and has the hallmarks of her famous later works–her gentle wit and clever satire, her psychological insight, and her keen observation of human nature and frailty. These are beautifully written and poignant tales, set in and around the fictional Midlands town of Milby.

Posie Parker, London’s premier female Private Detective, is only just back in town when she receives an unexpected visitor. The mysterious magician, Count Olli Onneri, pupil of the legendary American magician Harry Houdini, invites Posie to take part in the opening night of his show at the nearby Holborn Empire, helping him with a ‘magic mirror’ trick, the like of which has never been seen before.

In the lush Shropshire countryside, free-spirited Hazel Woodus is torn between two men: the gentle parson Edward Marston and the passionate, fox-hunting squire Jack Reddin. Her wild side, deep connection to nature, and love of animals–especially Foxy, her pet fox–make for clear internal conflict: she wants to find contentment in her chaste marriage to Edward, but the allure of Reddin is inescapable....

Gone Astray is a tense psychological thriller from debut novelist Michelle Davies. When Lesley Kinnock buys a lottery ticket on a whim, it changes her life more than she could have imagined.... Lesley and her husband, Mack, are the sudden winners of a £15 million EuroMillions jackpot. They move with their 15-year-old daughter, Rosie, to an exclusive gated estate in Buckinghamshire, leaving behind their ordinary lives - and friends - as they are catapulted into wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

Pregnant, bored of London, and longing for an adventure, Posie Parker accepts a last-minute Wedding Invitation from a friend, the renowned clairvoyant Jacinta Glaysayer, who has set up a small Guesthouse in the gorgeous hilltop town of San Gimignano, Tuscany. Jacinta is getting married to the local owner of a Gelateria, ambitious young widower Lorenzo Rosario. Sounds like a dream!

It’s snowing heavily outside, but in the little white Swiss Church in central London, packed to the rafters with Posie Parker’s beautifully-dressed wedding guests, and half of Scotland Yard, everything is just right. All going to plan. Or is it?