Reginald Hill Books In Order

A Clubbable Woman

Mary Connon was a small town femme fatale, eager to test her allure on any man between 6 and 60. When she’s found dead in her own living room, her husband the one bloke to whom she never blew a kiss comes instantly under suspicion. But Andy Dalziel, the gloriously vulgar savant of the Mid Yorkshire police force, has some other ideas, and all of them center on the local rugby club the town’s social center, and Mary Connon’s preferred hunting ground. Peter Pascoe, Dalziel’s young sergeant, suspects that his new boss’s interest in the club has at least as much to do with access to good beer as it does with solving the murder. But while Dalziel never said no to a pint or three, Pascoe has much to learn about Fat Andy’s uniquely effective methodology. With A Clubbable Woman the first in an astonishing, multi award winning series his education begins.

An Advancement of Learning

The second book in the Dalziel and Pascoe series sends the two mismatched Yorkshire policemen among university students a group for which Andy Dalziel has no great love. In fact, when he hears a dead body has been found on the grounds of Holm Coultram College, he thinks of it as a rather good start. This is 1971, and the police force does not enjoy the warmest of relations with the Ivory Tower. Nevertheless, Dalziel takes himself to college, where the single corpse is followed by another and then another, until even Dalziel is forced to admit that someone is going after the academic community with rather excessive zeal. As the investigation grows more complex, help arrives from some unexpected corners, Dalziel’s callow young sergeant proves surprisingly insightful, and everyone involved gets some useful education.

Ruling Passion

After he’d seen Inspector Pascoe off on his honeymoon with a few ill chosen words, Superintendent Andrew Dalziel’s holiday got off to a damp start. Rescued from a flood by a bunch of singularly cheerful mourners, he accompanied them back to Lake House to recuperate. Bonnie Fielding seemed untroubled by her husband’s sudden demise, but more than worried by the half finished Banqueting Hall that was to have rescued the family from penury. Mrs Fielding’s ample charms stirred feelings that the obese Dalziel had forgotten existed. When he discovered that her first husband had also died in murky circumstances, he was inclined to take the news lightly. But before long, the rundown mansion was littered with fresh corpses, and it looked as though Pascoe would have to rescue his normally hard headed boss from making a complete fool of himself! ‘Hill is now so out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

An April Shroud

After he’d seen Inspector Pascoe off on his honeymoon with a few ill chosen words, Superintendent Andrew Dalziel’s holiday got off to a damp start. Rescued from a flood by a bunch of singularly cheerful mourners, he accompanied them back to Lake House to recuperate. Bonnie Fielding seemed untroubled by her husband’s sudden demise, but more than worried by the half finished Banqueting Hall that was to have rescued the family from penury. Mrs Fielding’s ample charms stirred feelings that the obese Dalziel had forgotten existed. When he discovered that her first husband had also died in murky circumstances, he was inclined to take the news lightly. But before long, the rundown mansion was littered with fresh corpses, and it looked as though Pascoe would have to rescue his normally hard headed boss from making a complete fool of himself! ‘Hill is now so out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

A Pinch of Snuff

Love, or at least po*rnography, are for sale at the arty Calliope Kinema Club on posh, proper Wilkinson Square. According to Yorkshire police superintendent Dalziel, it’s all legal. Detective Peter Pascoe, however, doesn’t believe it. His dentist, who knows real broken teeth and blood when he sees them, insists that the pretty actress wasn’t playing a part when it happened. But the action that puts Pascoe into the picture is homicide. The sudden death of the Calliope’s proprietor soon turns a sleazy sex flick into serious police business. And now Dalziel and Pascoe are looking into the all too human desire for pain, pleasure…
and murder.

A Killing Kindness

Andy Dalziel knows how to cope with crime. Give him a nice straightforward murder, some bloke with a gun and a grievance, and he?s a happy man. But this new one, that the press is calling the ?Yorkshire Choker??well, Andy could suggest some different names, none of them fit for a family paper. It?s not just that he keeps phoning the cops to boast about the girls he?s strangled. No, this one apparently thinks he?s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. And furthermore, the sergeant has called in a ?clairvoyant,? as though Andy needs some nutjob with a crystal ball to help him crack the case.

Deadheads

‘Oxford Bookworms’ offer students at all levels the opportunity to extend their reading and appreciation of English. There are six stages, taking students from elementary to advanced level. At the lower stages, many of the texts have been specially written for the series, to provide elementary and lower intermediate students with an introduction to real reading in English. At the higher stages, most of the books have been adapted from works originally published for native speakers. The language controls used in ‘Oxford Bookworms’ are based on a syllabus specially created for the series by Tricia Hedge. This takes account of the more traditional approaches to grading and recent research into the nature of reading difficulty. The approximate vocabulary count for each stage is: Stage 1 400 words; Stage 2 700 words; Stage 3 1000 words; Stage 4 1400 words; Stage 5 1800 words; Stage 6 2500 words. All stages have exercises for classroom or private use, plus a supporting glossary to help students with vocabulary. Illustrations are used, especially at the lower stages, to help comprehension.

Exit Lines

Three old men die on a stormy November night: one by deliberate violence, one in a road accident and the other by an unknown cause. Inspector Pascoe is called in to investigate the first death, but when the dying words of the accident victim suggest that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the entire Mid Yorkshire CID is called into question.

Child’s Play

There shouldn’t be anything unusual about the death of an elderly widow, until a man appears at her graveside, claiming to be her long lost son. He’s entitled to shed all the tears he likes, but whether he’s entitled to her substantial fortune is another question. It’s a poser, but one Fat Andy can handle much more easily than he can the decision of the resolutely boring Sgt. Wield to come busting out of the closet.

Bones and Silence

One woman dead and one threatening to die set Yorkshire’s police superintendent Dalziel and Inspector Pascoe on a chilling hunt for a killer and a potential suicide. A drunken Dalziel witnesses the murder that others insist is a tragic accident. Meanwhile the letters of an anonymous woman say she plans to kill herself in a spectacular way…
unless Pascoe can find her first. Dalziel has been picked to play God in a local Mystery Play, but can he live up to his role by solving this puzzling psychological thriller…
or unveiling the passions and perversions that lie hidden in the human heart?

One Small Step

In the year 2010 a French astronaut, one of an international space team from the Federated States of Europe, becomes the first man to be murdered on the moon. Retired Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe are required to investigate. The author also wrote ‘Bones and Silence’.

Recalled to Life

Reginald Hill’s ironic humor, polished prose, and keen insight have placed him squarely alongside such great mystery writers as P. D. James and Ruth Rendell. In his latest novel his much appreciated team of detectives, the incomparable Dalziel and Pascoe, find themselves in the pretty village of Enscombe, which is steadfastly trying though somewhat in vain to repel the advances of both tourists and developers. When a policeman is discovered missing, Pascoe is immediately worried, but Dalziel thinks he’s overreacting…
until the normally phlegmatic Sergeant Wield also shows signs of changing his first impressions of picture perfect village life. Over two eventful days a new pattern emerges: one of lust and lying, family feuds and ancient injuries, frustrated desires and unbalanced minds. Finally, inevitably, everything comes to a bloody climax at the Squire’s Reckoning, where the villagers gather each Lady Day to feast and pay old debts. Not even the three lawmen’s presence can change the course of history…
though one of them is to find the course of his own personal history changed forever.

Pictures of Perfection

Reginald Hill’s ironic humor, polished prose, and keen insight have placed him squarely alongside such great mystery writers as P. D. James and Ruth Rendell. In his latest novel his much appreciated team of detectives, the incomparable Dalziel and Pascoe, find themselves in the pretty village of Enscombe, which is steadfastly trying though somewhat in vain to repel the advances of both tourists and developers. When a policeman is discovered missing, Pascoe is immediately worried, but Dalziel thinks he’s overreacting…
until the normally phlegmatic Sergeant Wield also shows signs of changing his first impressions of picture perfect village life. Over two eventful days a new pattern emerges: one of lust and lying, family feuds and ancient injuries, frustrated desires and unbalanced minds. Finally, inevitably, everything comes to a bloody climax at the Squire’s Reckoning, where the villagers gather each Lady Day to feast and pay old debts. Not even the three lawmen’s presence can change the course of history…
though one of them is to find the course of his own personal history changed forever.

The Wood Beyond

Reginald Hill’s ironic humor, polished prose, and keen insight have placed him squarely alongside such great mystery writers as P. D. James and Ruth Rendell. In his latest novel his much appreciated team of detectives, the incomparable Dalziel and Pascoe, find themselves in the pretty village of Enscombe, which is steadfastly trying though somewhat in vain to repel the advances of both tourists and developers. When a policeman is discovered missing, Pascoe is immediately worried, but Dalziel thinks he’s overreacting…
until the normally phlegmatic Sergeant Wield also shows signs of changing his first impressions of picture perfect village life. Over two eventful days a new pattern emerges: one of lust and lying, family feuds and ancient injuries, frustrated desires and unbalanced minds. Finally, inevitably, everything comes to a bloody climax at the Squire’s Reckoning, where the villagers gather each Lady Day to feast and pay old debts. Not even the three lawmen’s presence can change the course of history…
though one of them is to find the course of his own personal history changed forever.

On Beulah Height

Into thin air…
Three little girls, one by one, had vanished from the farming village of Dendale. And Superintendent Andy Dalziel, a young detective in those days, never found their bodies or the person who snatched them. Then the valley where Dendale stood was flooded to create a reservoir, and the town itself ceased to be…
except in Dalziel’s memory. Twelve years later, the threads of past and present are slowly winding into a chilling mosaic. A drought and dropping water table have brought Dendale’s ruins into view. And a little girl has gone missing from a nearby village. Helped by Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, an older, fatter, and wiser Dalziel has a second chance to uncover the secrets of a drowned valley. And now the identity of a killer rests on what one child saw…
and what another, now grown, fears with all her heart to remember…
.

Arms and the Women

Someone attempts to abduct Ellie Pascoe, and her friend, Daphne Alderman, is assaulted by a man keeping watch on the Pascoe house. Dalziel, Pascoe and Wield feel certain there must be a link here with one of Pascoe’s cases, either current or past. Only DC Shirley Novello wonders whether perhaps these events might have more to do with Ellie than her husband.

While the men concentrate on their individual theories, Ellie, her daughter Rosie, Daphne, and Novello their official minder head for the coast to the supposed safety of the Alderman’s holiday home, Cleets Cottage. But their flight proves somewhat futile as Ellie’s would be abductor continues to send her letters of possibly threatening intent, composed in a strange Elizabethan English.

Dialogues of the Dead

Normally, there would be nothing sinister about a death by drowning and a motorcycle fatality had these tragic occurrences not been predicted before the fact in a pair of macabre ‘Dialogues’ submitted to a Yorkshire short story competition. Yet the local police department is slow to act until the arrival of a third Dialogue…
and another corpse. A darkness is settling over a terrorized community, brought on by a genius fiend who hides clues to his horrific acts in complex riddles and brilliant wordplay. Now two seasoned CID investigators, Peter Pascoe and ‘Fat Andy’ Dalziel, are racing against a clock whose every tick signals more blood and outrage, caught in the twisted game of a diabolical killer who is turning their jurisdiction into a slaughterhouse.

Death’s Jest-Book

From the winner of Britain’s most prestigious Diamond Dagger Award comes a beautifully written, multilayered psychological thriller. Three times Yorkshire policeman Peter Pascoe has wrongly accused ex con, aspiring academic, and inveterate joker Franny Roote of a crime, only to have Roote walk free. Now Roote is sending strange and threatening letters that connect back to a nineteenth century poet physician, and Pascoe fears there is worse to come. This time he’s determined to prove Roote guilty as sin. Meanwhile, Pascoe’s colleague Edgar Wield rides to the rescue of a boy in danger, and in return, the boy tips him off about the heist of a priceless treasure. Soon Wield is torn between protecting the lad and doing his duty. At least Detective Constable Bowler is looking forward to a blissful New Year with the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, her dreams are filled with a horror too terrible to tell…
Over all this activity broods Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel. As trouble builds, Dalziel discovers that omniscience can be more trouble than it’s worth. In this brilliant novel of suspense, complete with intricate plotting, sly humor, and deft wordplay, acclaimed author Reginald Hill sets up a battle of wills between determined cops and an ingenious villain. Hill has been praised by the New York Times Book Review as ‘ever the master of form and sorcerer of style,’ and with Death’s Jest Book, he delivers a tour de force not to be missed.

Good Morning, Midnight

From the winner of Britain’s most prestigious Diamond Dagger Award comes a beautifully written, multilayered psychological thriller. Three times Yorkshire policeman Peter Pascoe has wrongly accused ex con, aspiring academic, and inveterate joker Franny Roote of a crime, only to have Roote walk free. Now Roote is sending strange and threatening letters that connect back to a nineteenth century poet physician, and Pascoe fears there is worse to come. This time he’s determined to prove Roote guilty as sin. Meanwhile, Pascoe’s colleague Edgar Wield rides to the rescue of a boy in danger, and in return, the boy tips him off about the heist of a priceless treasure. Soon Wield is torn between protecting the lad and doing his duty. At least Detective Constable Bowler is looking forward to a blissful New Year with the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, her dreams are filled with a horror too terrible to tell…
Over all this activity broods Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel. As trouble builds, Dalziel discovers that omniscience can be more trouble than it’s worth. In this brilliant novel of suspense, complete with intricate plotting, sly humor, and deft wordplay, acclaimed author Reginald Hill sets up a battle of wills between determined cops and an ingenious villain. Hill has been praised by the New York Times Book Review as ‘ever the master of form and sorcerer of style,’ and with Death’s Jest Book, he delivers a tour de force not to be missed.

Death Comes for the Fat Man / The Death of Dalziel

Not for a second did Pascoe admit the possibility of death. Dalziel was indestructible. Dalziel is, and was, and forever shall be, world without end, amen…
Chief constables might come and chief constables might go, but Fat Andy went on forever. Barreling his way into an investigation of possible terrorist activities, Superintendent Andy Dalziel is caught in the blast of a huge explosion at a video shop and only ‘Fat Andy’s’ considerable bulk prevents his colleague, Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, from suffering a similar fate. Now Dalziel lies on a hospital bed barely clinging to life, while Pascoe remains determined to find those responsible. But the truth is not always cut and dried, and sometimes those who are sworn to terror’s destruction are even more dangerous than the foe they wish to annihilate.

A Cure for All Diseases / The Price of Butcher’s Meat

The new Dalziel and Pascoe novel to delight and thrill Reginald Hill fans. Some say that Andy Dalziel wasn t ready for God, others that God wasn t ready for Dalziel. Either way, despite his recent proximity to a terrorist blast in Death Comes for the Fat Man, the Superintendent remains firmly of this world. And, while Death may be the cure for all diseases, Dalziel is happy to settle for a few weeks care under a tender nurse. Convalescing in Sandytown, a quiet seaside resort devoted to healing, Dalziel befriends Charlotte Heywood, a fellow newcomer and psychologist, who is researching the benefits of alternative therapy. With much in common, the two soon find themselves in partnership when trouble comes to town. Sandytown’s principal landowners have grandiose plans for the resort none of which they can agree on. One of them has to go, and when one of them does, in spectacularly gruesome fashion, DCI Peter Pascoe is called in to investigate with Dalziel and Charlotte providing unwelcome support. But Pascoe finds dark forces at work in a place where medicine and holistic remedies are no match for the oldest cure of all…

Midnight Fugue

It starts with a phone call to Superintendent Dalziel from an old friend asking for help. But where it ends is a very different story.

Gina Wolfe has come to mid Yorkshire in search of her missing husband, believed dead. Her fianc , Commander Mick Purdy of the Met, thinks Dalziel should be able to take care of the job. What none of them realize is how events set in motion decades ago will come to a violent head on this otherwise ordinary summer’s day.

A Welsh tabloid journalist senses the story he’s been chasing for years may have finally landed in his lap. A Tory MP’s secretary suspects her boss’s father has an unsavory history that could taint his son’s prime ministerial ambitions. The ruthless entrepreneur in question sends two henchmen out to make sure the past stays in the past. And the lethal pair dispatched have some awkward secrets of their own.

Four stories, two mismatched detectives trying to figure it all out, and twenty four hours in which to do it: Dalziel and Pascoe are about to learn the hard way just how much difference a day makes.

Asking for the Moon

Reginald Hill’s ironic humor, polished prose, and keen insight have placed him squarely alongside such great mystery writers as P. D. James and Ruth Rendell. In his latest novel his much appreciated team of detectives, the incomparable Dalziel and Pascoe, find themselves in the pretty village of Enscombe, which is steadfastly trying though somewhat in vain to repel the advances of both tourists and developers. When a policeman is discovered missing, Pascoe is immediately worried, but Dalziel thinks he’s overreacting…
until the normally phlegmatic Sergeant Wield also shows signs of changing his first impressions of picture perfect village life. Over two eventful days a new pattern emerges: one of lust and lying, family feuds and ancient injuries, frustrated desires and unbalanced minds. Finally, inevitably, everything comes to a bloody climax at the Squire’s Reckoning, where the villagers gather each Lady Day to feast and pay old debts. Not even the three lawmen’s presence can change the course of history…
though one of them is to find the course of his own personal history changed forever.

Killing the Lawyers

A Diamond Dagger Award winner. Just because lawyers are rude and expensive doesn’t mean P.I. Joe Sixsmith killed two of them. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meanwhile, a young track star is being threatened with all sorts of nasty things if she shows up at the right place a new sports complex at the right time. Somehow, Joe has to clear up both cases before they all run ‘out’ of time. Martin’s Press.

Singing the Sadness

Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace’ Sunday Times’ Joe Sixsmith, who, with the Boyling Corner Choir, is on his way to the Llanffugiol Choir Festival, finds his singing plans rudely interrupted by the discovery of a badly injured woman trapped in the shower room of a burning cottage. And not only that, but she’s naked, too. Risking life, limb and vocal chords, Joe drags the woman from the burning building, but she remains in a critical condition, unable to speak, and even the arrival of the cottage’s owners, Fran and Franny Haggard, a media couple from London, throws no light on her identity. Unable to sing because of the smoke damage to his throat, Joe is soon caught up in a tangled skein of local rivalries, scandals and politics. Commissioned by no less than three individuals to investigate the causes of the fire, he’s embarrassed to discover that some of the local wild boys assume he must be as anti English as they are. And when he’s eventually roped in by an initially hostile police officer in charge of the case, Joe quickly realizes that the enquiries go much deeper than mere arson, and have their roots in a hushed up child abuse case. The fourth in Reginald Hill’s series featuring Joe Sixsmith, the serendipitous black PI from Luton, is perceptive and witty as ever, with a seriousness behind the hilarity that adds a greater depth to this delightful novel.

The Roar of the Butterflies

Laid off lathe operator turned private investigator Joe Sixsmith is suddenly very popular, and not just with the ladies. Though he doesn’t know a putter from a nine iron, he’s being implored to come to the rescue of one Christian Porphyry, the scion of the upper crust family that owns the most exclusive country club in Luton. Porphyry faces expulsion for the heinous crime of cheating at golf. Inexplicably, political boss/crime czar ‘King Rat’ Ratcliffe is also interested in employing Joe, offering him some very attractive surveillance work in sunny Spain. But Sixsmith’s more intrigued by the first case, especially when a possible witness to the alleged indiscretion mysteriously vanishes. It’s not unusual for Joe to feel out of his depth, but this time he feels out of his class too. Suddenly he faces a potentially fatal pummeling from a variety of sources and is in grave peril of discovering just how dangerous a contact sport golf can be.

Red Christmas (As: Patrick Ruell)

A reissue of a murder mystery, selected by the Crime Writers’ Association, which recounts the events of a Dickensian weekend beginning on Christmas Eve. A suspicion of conspiracy and intrigue develops when a servant is taken to hospital after a fall and a body is discovered by one of the guests.

Matlock’s System / Heart Clock (As: Dick Morland)

In Matthew Matlock’s England, the population has been controlled and regulated by the ‘National Regulation of Life’, dependant on what the economy can bear. This futuristic novel tells of Matlock, who introduced the system, and his desperate struggle 40 years later to fight against it.

Albion! Albion! / Singleton’s Law (As: Dick Morland)

Set in an England where the hooliganism of football supporters has got out of control, Parliament has been disbanded and now consists of four clubs. City, United, Wanderers and Athletic. Into the midst of this chaos comes Singleton an ex patriate journalist who soon finds himself sucked into a violent nightmare. From the author of MATLOCK’S SYSTEM.

Urn Burial / Beyond the Bone (As: Patrick Ruell)

The unexplained death of a diplomat in Baghdad; the mysterious diasappearance of a Roman skeleton from an archaeological dig; the suicide of a British scientist in California three apparently unconnected incidents but the secret to them all lies in an abandoned station on Thirlsike Waste.

The Spy’s Wife

Molly Keatley is deeply contented with her life, her loving husband, her comfortable home in an attractive London suburb. Things are so pleasant, in fact, that they re ever so slightly boring, but that changes abruptly one bright September morning, when her husband comes rushing home, mutters a hasty, unexplained apology…
and disappears. Minutes later, two strange men arrive with news that her husband is in fact a Soviet spy, and that the sleepy joys of her marriage have acted as a cover for years of personal and public betrayal. Her husband, it appears, has spent nearly a decade using her for his own purposes, and now the British intelligence service want to use her for theirs. It would be so easy to give in, to back away from the conspiracies and intrigues that suddenly loom in front of her. But the shock of Sam’s betrayal has woken Molly out of her long, complacent dream, and she is no longer prepared to be anybody s pawn.

Who Guards a Prince? / Guardians of the Prince

Who would sever a tongue from a living mouth? Or kill a pathetic, homeless old man? Or terrify a young doctor into silence? The questions are piling up, and Doug McHarg can t stop asking them, even especially when he’s warned off his inquiries by his boss in the local police force, by Scotland Yard, and by increasingly professional death threats. The pattern that emerges is of a shadowy, immensely powerful organization, with a reach that extends to the White House and the English throne. And all that stands against them is the implacable McHarg one discontented copper with little left to lose. Best known for his award winning series featuring Dalziel and Pascoe of the Mid Yorkshire CID, in Who Guards a Prince Reginald Hill takes on a different kind of cop and a very different bad guy. The Philadelphia Inquirer called the book a good old fashioned thriller, but in truth, that doesn t begin to describe the ride.

Traitor’s Blood

Lemuel Stanhope Swift, sixth Viscount Bessacarr and semi professional cad, has been on the lam from British justice, holed up in a tropical paradise and slowly drinking himself to death with a succession of young lovelies whose names he doesn?t bother to recall. But when he?s diagnosed with terminal cancer, he is struck with a sentimental desire to say farewell to the daughter he abandoned years ago. Back on British soil, Lem finds that Her Majesty?s secret service would be delighted to help Lem see his daughter. But they would like a wee something in exchange. Lem?s father defected to Moscow some while ago and has started stirring up trouble as of late. So if Lem wouldn?t mind, they?d like him to terminate Papa.

Death of a Dormouse (As: Patrick Ruell)

Trudi Adamson has lived her life in fear of strangers, of asking questions, of angering her husband, of leaving the house. When her husband dies in a car accident, she retreats even further into her cocoon of ignorance and incuriosity. But staying there isn’t an option; her husband apparently died broke, and Trudi’s best hope lies in suing the company responsible for his death. And that means asking what her husband was doing on a remote stretch of Yorkshire road. Even the painful knowledge that a woman was involved only leads to larger, more baffling questions. Who was Eric Blair and why did Trent Adamson have his credit cards? Why had Trent suddenly quit his job? By the time Trudi’s done unraveling the truth, her cozy refuge will be in ruins, but the quivering dormouse, too, will be history.

The Collaborators

From the bestselling author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series, a superb novel of wartime passion, loyalty and betrayal When Janine Simonian was dragged roughly from her cell to face trial as a collaborator in the days of reckoning that followed the liberation of France, she refused to conceal her shaven skull from the jeering crowds that greeted her. Before the jury of former Resistance members pledged to extract vengeance on all who had connived in Na*zi rule, Janine stood proudly in court and pleaded guilty to the charges. Why did so many French men and women collaborate with the Na*zi occupation forces whilst others gave their lives in resistance? Were the motives of those who betrayed their country always selfish and those of the Resistance always noble? The Collaborators is a superb novel of conscience and betrayal that portrays the human dilemmas brought about by the Na*zi occupation of France, and asks uncomfortable questions about the priorities of personal and national loyalty in time of war.

Dream of Darkness (As: Patrick Ruell)

‘One of Britain’s most consistently excellent crime novelist’ The Times Sairey Ellis’s father is writing his memoirs. As an ex security man whose life work has been in Africa, his revelations will be explosive, blowing the lid off British and Kenyan support for Idi Amin, and exposing the degree of unofficial British connivance in Rhodesian sanctions busting. He must be persuaded not to publish. This complex thriller from the acclaimed Reginald Hill takes a cool and pitiless look at the role of the security service, and its effect on the individuals, both innocent and knowing, who become caught up in it. Gripping, assured and perceptive in its psychology, here is a chillingly convincing portrait of the repercussions of a life of espionage.

The Stranger House

This is the stunning new standalone psychological thriller, set in Cumbria, past and present, from Reginald Hill, one of the UK’s most popular and admired crime novelists. Things move slowly in the village of Illthwaite, but that’s about to change with the arrival of two strangers intent on digging up bits of the past the locals would rather keep buried. Sam Flood is a young Australian mathematician whose grandmother was despatched from Illthwaite four decades ago, courtesy of the Child Migrant scheme. Miguel Madero, Sam’s fellow guest at The Stranger House inn, is a Spanish wannabe priest turned historian in pursuit of an ancestor last seen setting sail with the Armada in 1588. The antipathy between them is instant and mutual, but as they follow their separate quests their paths become increasingly entangled, with clashes physical and metaphysical, and shocks natural and supernatural, as the tension mounts to an explosive climax. All the elements we have come to expect from Reginald Hill’s writing mystery, humour, elegant style, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and a strong sense of history combine here to create what must be his finest novel yet.

The Woodcutter

A fast moving, stunning new standalone psychological thriller from the award winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series Wolf Hadda’s life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter’s son, he has risen to become a hugely successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams. A knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison while protesting his innocence, abandoned by friends and family, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo makes the breakthrough. Wolf begins to talk and under her guidance gets parole, returning to his rundown family home in rural Cumbria. But there is a mysterious period in Wolf’s youth when he disappeared from home and was known to his employers as The Woodcutter. And now The Woodcutter is back, looking for the truth and with the truth, revenge. Can Alva intervene before his pursuit of vengeance takes him to a place from which he can never come back?

2nd Culprit

A crime lover’s collection of short stories includes works by such notable authors as Robert Barnard, Antonia Fraser, Reginald Hill, Peter Lovesey, Sue Grafton, Ellis Peters, and Tony Hillerman. K. PW.

Thou Shalt Not Kill

The greatest story ever told; the rise and fall of civilizations, empires, kings, despots, prophets and disciples; tales of love, betrayal, revenge, war, and disaster, the most fundamental and eternal myths and fables of Judeo Christian society; the end of the world the Bible has all of these. And now acclaimed mystery author Anne Perry has culled together an extraordinary list of writers from Sharyn McCrumb, Carole Nelson Douglas, Robert Barnard, Marcia Talley, Susan Moody and Peter Lovesey to Sharan Newman, Nancy Pickard, Reginald Hill, Gillian Linscott, Simon Brett, and Peter Robinson to contribute all new mystery and crime stories inspired by and based on these most ancient of biblical tales.

From Sampson and Delilah to David and Goliath; from Mount Sinai to the Last Supper, Thou Shalt Not Kill explores the stories of the bible as chilling expressions of the most basic instincts found in the Good Book. With fifteen unique and inspired twists on the traditional mystery story, Thou Shalt Not Kill is an inimitable edition to any library.