Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan puzzles over an industrialist crushed under the rubble of a church tower in this crime novel by a CWA Diamond Dagger winner.On the hottest day in living memory, Richard Mallory Tindall, the owner of a patent firm, does not return home to Cleete village. When a man is found crushed to death, Tindall’s case goes from missing person to homicide.In the course of solving murder cases, Detective Inspector C. D. Sl...

When the Berebury Footpaths Society created their locally infamous motto, “Every walk a challenge,” they couldn’t have known just how apt it would be. Avid hikers Wendy Lamport and Gordon Briggs suffer from a good walk spoiled when, while reclaiming a public footpath from the greedy barbed-wire fences of encroaching farmers, a crow drops a severed human finger at their feet. And where there’s a finger, thinks Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, a body can’t be far behind.It would seem...

In this classic parlor mystery from CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan investigates a dinner party that ended in murder.Twelve friends sit down for supper at Strontfield Park, but only eleven survive the evening. After dinner, the host, William Fent, offers to drive one of his guests home, only to die behind the wheel in a violent accident. The autopsy shows that Fent ingested enough barbiturates to kill a horse.So begins a fresh tale ...

When a London businessman retires early and buys a Tudor mansion, he’s quite surprised—and perhaps even a little pleased (retirement being pretty boring)—to find a skeleton hidden in a secret room in the house. The skeleton appears to be more than 150 years old, so the local police leave it to the homeowner to solve the mystery. The police are much more interested in solving a local, modern murder. Somehow the two deaths are connected. First published in 1967, this is Aird’s only non-Inspe...

A deadly mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird: where there’s a will, there’s a way—for murderThat Miss Beatrice Wansdyke had died is not particularly surprising. A chemistry mistress at the Girls’ Grammar School in Berebury, she was a longtime sufferer of diabetes who managed to live her modest life to a ripe old age. But one thing is odd—Beatrice Wansdyke died a very wealthy woman. What was an old schoolteacher doing with a small fortune?Mea...

Will China rule the world or will its dream turn into a nightmare? George Magnus, the trusted economic commentator on China, provides a penetrating account of the threats to China’s continued rise.Over the past four decades, China’s remarkable transformation has garnered admiration but also sparked concern. Magnus draws on his intimate knowledge of this dynamic nation to uncover the origins of its ascent and show why the economic traps it faces at home, and the political challenges...

When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Since that time, the book has been translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold over one hundred thousand copies. Now, twenty-five years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue: “After Virtue after a Quarter ...

A spirited and thought-provoking history of the vast changes that transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span of the Middle AgesThe millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period—one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Eur...

Colonel Caversham, once prominent in the British colonial service, has died and left his large collection of artifacts to the local Calleshire museum. Included in those artifacts is a three-thousand-year-old Egyptain mummy and case, now the responsibility of one Mr. Fixby-Smith, curator of the Greatorex Museum.What should be a simple moving job, however, is complicated by the fact that the local coroner, Mr. Granville Locombe-Stableford, will allow no body—no matter how ancient—to ...

In this mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan investigates a case of medical malpractice that looks a bit too much like foul play.Muriel Ethel Galloway passed away at home, twitching and grasping at objects only she could see. Her family mourns, sad but unsurprised that an old woman suffering from heart disease should die suddenly. But when Mrs. Galloway’s son receives an anonymous call alerting him that his mother’s life was put in je...

In this C. D. Sloan Mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, a body is found in the river—but the victim didn’t drown.When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn’t have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river’s surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one.The strange thing is, the coroner...

A bizarre clause in an elderly woman’s will exposes a dirty secret—and a murder—in this “intricate, witty, and thoroughly delightful” mystery (Publishers Weekly).It was an odd request, but when Octavia Garamond passed away, she left explicit instructions in her will: The police must be present at her funeral, and the coroner should be exceptionally thorough when examining her body.Amelia Kennerley is perplexed to find herself the sole exec...