From Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger–winning crime writer . . .Kit Philipson has always felt like something of a stranger in his family. Growing up as the only child of professional parents in Glasgow, Scotland, he had every advantage. His mother was a teacher; his father, a journalist, escaped from Nazi Germany at the age of three on one of the 1939 Kindertransports. But on her deathbed, Kit’s mother tells him he was adopted and that his birth name was...

Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction been so extreme, however, for shortly after an undistinguished appearance at Drummondale University, the doddering old professor is found brutally murdered. As Police Inspector Royle (who had never actually had to solve a crime before) probes the possible motives of the motley crew of ...

In A City of Strangers, Barnard creates one of his most memorable characters ever; the dreadful Jack Phelan. Dirty, potbellied, vulgar, selfish, Jack is a man everyone loves to hate. And the rest of his family isn’t much better. The wife is slatternly, the teenaged children flirt with petty crime and prostitution, even the baby is unpleasant. Only twelve-year-old Michael Phelan seems to have escaped the family curse, and it may be just a question of time until he,...

Old church meets new with a vengeance when a monk is brutally murdered at St. Botolph’s.

What an honor, to become a trustee of one of England’s distinguished stately homes. Yorkshire cop Charlie Peace’s wife Felicity is at first thrilled when she’s asked to help oversee Walbrook Manor, a recent gift to the nation. It’s not long, though, before both she and Charlie smell trouble. Suspenseful, witty and, as always, superbly insightful, A Charitable Body shows Barnard at his scintillating best.

***Winner of the National Crime Short Story Prize***Robert Barnard's contribution 'Sins of Scarlet' won the National Crime Short Story Prize.Featuring:Michael Jecks, Bill Kirton, Peter Lovesey, Stuart Pawson, Christine Poulson, Zoe Sharp, Frank Tallis, Yvonne Eve Walus, Carla Banks, Tonino Benacquista, Robert Barnard, Natasha Cooper, Matt Coward, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Paul A Freeman, Edward D Hoch.A wom...

Radio Broadwich decides to do a documentary on the small village of Twytching for international broadcast, and the townspeople divide between those who seek the patronage of Mrs. Deborah Withins, arbiter of taste and morals, and those determined to displace her in the cutthroat contest for media recognition. When a rash of poison-pen letters and a murder coincide, quiet inspector George Parrish begins to uncover secrets the leading citizens of Twytching had thought, and fe...

Inspector Perry Trethowan reads in the obituaries that his estranged father has died under peculiar circumstances: he was fooling around with a form of self-torture called strappado. At the request of his supervisor, Peter returns to his ancestral home to determine if any of his cousins or siblings might have helped the old man to his bizarre end.

Lill Hodsden was a monster. She rode roughshod over her daughter, wiped her feet on her husband, blackmailed her lovers, and smothered her sons with a mother’s love that left them screaming out for freedom. Lill set the hackles rising all over Todmarsh, the little South Coast town she queened over. She was just asking to be done in. When Lill was found garrotted on Thursday, on the way home from one of her boyfriends’, the case was wide open, and half Todmarsh would have r...

Robert Barnard, one of the great contemporary masters of classic mystery, returns with a brilliant new tale of passion and deception.Well-known actress Caroline Fawley has given up a successful stage and television career for love and life in the country. International business titan Marius Fleetwood can't marry her. He already has a wife, though he claims they are "just friends." But Marius has done something very special for Caroline: he has "bought" her Alderley, an elegant count...

Master of mystery Robert Barnard, internationally acclaimed for his suspenseful, witty literary gems, cleverly mixes past and present in A Cry from the Dark, an intriguing tour de force sweeping from 1930s Australia to contemporary London.Bettina Whitelaw has come a long way from her childhood in the little outback town of Bundaroo, Australia. Many years have passed, a lifetime really, but she's never forgotten what happened there on the evening that chang...

Featuring:Robert Barnard, Martyn Bedford, Ann Cleeves, Bernie Crosthwaite, Carol Anne Davis, Martin Edwards, Jurgen Ehlers, Kate Ellies, Liz Evans, Paul A Freeman, Jim Gregson, Mick Herron, Sarah Hilary, Andre Marois, Amy Myers, Christine Poulson, Karline Smith, Douglas Stewart and Yvonne Eve Walus.A coroner reveals a body’s tell-tale clues to his students, as he unwittingly dissects his own relationship . . .A breakdown driver turns his roadside ro...