Shortly before his unexpected coronation, King Richard passed a law letting all of England's prisoners go free.Shortly afterwards a young nun is found, gruesomely murdered. Richard swiftly employs an old military colleague of his, Josse d'Acquin, to unravel this hideous mystery. Who could have wanted to kill this innocent young novice, and, more worryingly, why?Josse goes to Hawkenlye Abbey to find out the answers to these questions. He is having little success until meets ...

A grove of huge oak trees in the Wealden forest is felled. And, as if some ancient curse is being brought alive, the man who wielded the axes meets with a violent end.The Sheriff claims the Forest People did it, but Abbess Helewise believes a supernatural solution is too easy an answer. She consults Josse d'Acquin, whose manor house in the Weald is now being renovated, and he, concerned about the safety of two girls from the abbey, enters the forest himself - to find something in th...

With Richard the Lionheart still being held hostage after his crusade, his people have been made paupers paying his ransom. The Abbess Helewise is struggling to keep her abbey going through a cold, brutal winter as she fends off starvation of her nuns and the local people.Then her son returns to her in desperate need of help after a seperation of nearly twenty years. He claims his wife is suffering mental torments and his son is mute. But when a man is found strangled, dangling fro...

In the Great Wealden Forest, power has fallen into the wrong hands.It is Midsummer 1195. A ruthlessly ambitious man has fallen deeply into debt, his desperate situation made even more difficult by the contribution he has had to pay towards King Richard's ransom. To make matters worse the beautiful wife he tricked into marriage has tired of him and her mother hates his guts.But then he makes an extraordinary discovery that dramatically changes his fortunes . . . until his li...

The serenity of Hawkenlye Abbey has been disturbed by the arrival of a new nun and her two young sisters. Recently orphaned, Alba has had to leave her convent at Ely to take her grieving sisters far away from the scene of their sorrow. However Abbess Helewise cannot quite believe in the selflessness of this gesture; Sister Alba is, everyone agrees, a mean-spirited and turbulent presence.The Abbess's anxieties grow when her old friend Josse d'Acquin is brought to Hawkenlye, half dead...

Josse D'Acquin and the Abbess Helewise are appalled by the views of the fanatical new priest, Father Micah, but are even more horrified when his body turns up by the side of the road. Whatever his methods he was a man of God. And, when it appears that a band of evangelical heretics, who Micah condemned to the stake, might be behind his death, the Abbess is torn by her compassion for their suffering and her duty to the church.When Josse realises that his desires to save the heretics...

An elderly pilgrim dies in Hawkenlye Vale. Nothing suspicious about that: he was gravely ill when he arrived. Meanwhile Josse d'Acquin has a visit from Prince John. Accompanied by his seer, the Prince urgently seeks news of a stranger, Galbertius Sidonius. Hurrying to Hawkenlye Abbey to enlist the Abbess Helewise's help, Josse finds that she has a problem of her own: a decomposing body has been discovered. Naked, and killed by an expert hand.Josse's brother, Yves, arrives; a visitor...

The young beautiful Galena and her husband, the much older Ambrose are trying for a child but to no avail. When Josse d'Acquin tells her of the healing waters of Hawkenlye she is overjoyed and sets off with her escort. But she arrives alone. A few days later her husband, befuddled and unwell, arrives and within hours she dies in agony on the infirmary floor. On examination it appears she has been poisoned and that she was pregnant after all. Josse and Helewise are determined to solve the r...

It is February 1194. A desperately ill man is making for Hawkenlye Abbey in the hope of a miracle cure. In his delirium he sees the Virgin Mary and, sinking to his knees, he begins to pray. She is the last person he will ever see.The winter cold intensifies and the Vale lake freezes over. It is only when the thaw sets in that a corpse is discovered in the icy waters, its skull crushed by a lethal blow. With no clues on the body but an apothecary's remedy, Abbess Helewise asks her t...

A man from London has taken over running the tavern on the main London to Hastings highway to the south of Tonbridge. He is not what he appears, and his arrival ushers in a sequence of apparently unrelated but disturbing events, whose escalating violence culminates in murder.

London, 1880. When accounts clerk Ernest Stibbins approaches the World's End investigation bureau with wild claims that his wife Albertina has been warned by her spirit guides that someone is out to harm her, the bureau's owner Lily Raynor and her new employee Felix Wilbraham are sceptical. How are the two private enquiry agents supposed to investigate threats from beyond the grave? But after she attends a seance at the Stibbins family home, Lily comes to realize that Albertina is in terri...

June 1604. When the emaciated body of a vagrant is found on the edge of the moor, physician Gabriel Taverner's verdict is death from natural causes. But is all as it seems? Who was the dead man, and why had he come to the small West Country village of Tavy St Luke's to die cold, sick and alone? Then a discovery found buried in a nearby field throws a strange new light on the case...and as they search for answers, Gabriel Taverner and Coroner Theophilus Davey unearth a series of shocking se...