He promised to reveal the word hidden in his new book. He never got the chance.Dr Constance Larwood has agreed to sit on the crossword panel at the Wrayham Staithe Book Festival, as the parish magazine's setter and nothing grander. By four o'clock on Saturday the whole marquee knows she is Bittern, the setter half the country does at the weekend, and she would very much like to go home.The festival's star guest is Anselm Brightwell, Norfolk-born, back where...

A hundred years without a Lot 13. A room nobody has opened in four years. And the man who knew every secret, dead behind its door.Spring has come back to Wenhope, a black-and-white market town on the Welsh border, and Ashby's auction house is a hundred years old. To mark it, Delia Ashby is breaking the saleroom's oldest rule: the centenary sale will have a Lot 13, the first in its history, and it is the picture that has hung over her bed for forty-five years.

A country house full of treasures. An heir who has been quietly selling them. And a lake that keeps its secrets until morning.High summer has come to Wenhope, a black-and-white market town on the Welsh border, and Ashby's, its century-old auction house, has the sale of the year: three days in a marquee on the lawn at Tallowmere Court, where eighty-eight-year-old Honor Delahaye is selling the second-best of everything to mend her roof.Hattie Pryce, Ashby's v...

A village flower show. A tyrant who rules it. And a prize worth more than a rosette: worth killing for.Spring has come to Porthmellin, and with it the Spring Flower and Produce Show. But the show has a queen, and for forty years Hyacinth Pendray has ruled it by fear. Then, on judging morning, in a marquee full of bees and prize blooms, she drops dead.When DS Tom Pengelly follows the evidence it points at the one person Clem cannot bear to see accused, and clearing an innoce...

A mug with his name on it. A plant in her own garden. And the man who ruined her career, dead on Twelfth Night.Christmas has come to Wenhope, a black-and-white market town on the Welsh border, and Hattie Pryce, valuer at Ashby's auction house, has invited the one man she swore she would never see again. Piers Hallam, her old head of department at a grand London saleroom, let her take the blame for the forged watercolour that ended her career. Now another fake has s...

Carols by candlelight. Snow on the harbour. And a celebrity chef who won't live to see Christmas morning.When Porthmellin's most famous son comes home for the first time in thirty years, Clementine Hart is asked to cater the homecoming of the decade. Then, in front of the whole village, Lucas Tremaine raises a toast, drinks, and drops dead.The doctor says his heart. Clem can see it doesn't add up: two hundred people drank the same mulled wine, and only one of them fell. Whe...

A stranger enters the regatta. His name, read the right way round, is a confession. And somebody in the village has already solved it.Dr Constance Larwood has agreed to crew for Rafe Thurlow in the two-handed race, and to set a crossword for the regatta programme. She has not agreed to the anonymous card in her letterbox: a single cryptic clue in black capitals, which she solves in a morning and wishes she hadn't.Then Corwin Shale comes up the staithe at th...

An auctioneer who cannot say "gone". A cider farm in the full flood of harvest. And a good man missing for three days.Autumn has come to Wenhope, a black-and-white market town on the Welsh border, and three days before the Michaelmas Fine Sale the grand old lady of Ashby's auction house breaks her hip on her own rostrum steps. Hattie Pryce, Ashby's valuer, has not taken a sale since the London scandal that ended her career. Now she has to.She manages forty-...

The snow has closed the road. The man she dreaded has come up the dale. And someone at the Christmas lock-in poured him a measure he was never meant to wake from.Bea Calvert has kept the Old Dispensary open through a summer poisoning, an autumn of wrong prescriptions and an inspection that nearly shut her down. All she wants from December is a quiet Christmas, a working boiler and to get through the Harkerdale Christmas Dinner and Dance without meeting the one gues...

A grand house. A dead bookkeeper. And an account book that someone was willing to kill to keep from balancing.Clementine Hart came to Porthmellin to sell a tea room and ended up staying for good. Now a stranger walks dripping into The Whistling Kettle with a story she can't ignore: his sister Annie, the housekeeper who kept the books at faded, grand old Carnglaze, has been found dead at the foot of the cellar stairs. The verdict is misadventure.But Annie's last phone call s...

A whole dale that loved to fear him. A heart everyone knew would give out. And a village chemist who can see that the dose doesn't fit the death.When Bea Calvert comes home to the Yorkshire Dales to keep the only chemist's shop for fifteen miles from closing, she means to do her year, steady her hands after the city, and decide later whether she's staying for good. Then, at the height of the Harkerdale Show, the man who's ruled it for twenty-two years drops dead in...

A year ago the Harkerdale Show began with a death in the produce tent. This year it ends with one.It is late summer in the Yorkshire Dales, and Brackenbeck is ready for its biggest day: prize tups, Victoria sponges, a beer tent, a tug-of-war, and old Dr Hartley, ninety years old and the dale's doctor for forty-three of them, presenting the cup as the Show's President.Bea Calvert has a stall, a share offer and five weeks for the village to buy the Old Dispen...