Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Cosy

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

July 1910. Lady Hardcastle and her tireless sidekick Flo have finally embarked on a long-overdue seaside break. But just as they’re wavering between ice creams and donkey rides, their fellow guests start to go missing - and the duo find themselves with a hysterical hotel manager and a case to solve. The first to disappear is Dr Goddard, a scientist doing something terribly top-secret for the government. 

Summer 1911. A scorching heatwave engulfs the quiet town of Littleton Cotterell and brings about an unusually early harvest. The villagers are thrilled, but events quickly turn sour when one of them turns up dead in an apple orchard, stabbed through the heart. Amateur sleuth Lady Hardcastle and her trusty lady’s maid, Flo, suddenly have a juicy case on their hands. Might the mysterious stranger they recently met in the village be to blame?

November 1911. Lady Emily Hardcastle is celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke’s Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage—a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval. When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects—and his police colleagues. 

January 1910. A journalist has been killed in a suspicious blaze. Everything points to a group of suffragettes, but the apparent culprit insists she is innocent. When Lady Hardcastle receives a letter from a suffragette requesting her urgent help, the retired spy turned sleuth knows only she stands between an accused young woman and the gallows. Evidence at the scene makes Lizzie Worrel’s innocence difficult to believe, and with the police treating it as an open-and-shut case of arson, Lady Hardcastle faces a barrage of resistance as she tries to dig out the truth.

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady’s maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colorful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch’s Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night’s screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another. One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film.

Spring, 1909, and Lady Hardcastle, amateur sleuth and all-round eccentric, is enjoying a well-deserved rest. But a week after a trip to the cattle market, Spencer Caradine, a local farmer, turns up dead in the pub, face-down in his beef and mushroom pie. Once again, it is up to Lady Hardcastle and her maid, Florence, to solve the case. Armed with wit and whimsy, not to mention Florence’s mean right hook, the pair set out to discover what really happened and why. Was it poison or just ill luck?

September 1909, and Lady Hardcastle and her maid, Florence, have been invited to Lord Riddlethorpe’s country estate for a week of motor racing and parties. They both agree that it sounds like a perfectly charming holiday. But when one of the drivers dies in a crash during the very first race, they discover that what seemed like an uncharacteristic error in judgement may have a more sinister explanation...

July 1912. Lady Hardcastle and her tenacious lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, are enjoying a convivial gathering at the home of their dear friends, the Farley-Strouds. The only fly in the idyllic ointment seems to be the lack of musical entertainment for the forthcoming summer party—until, that is, Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry calls with news of a murder.

February 1913. Lady Hardcastle and her diminutive but brave lady’s maid, Flo, have been invited by their friend JB McIntyre to spend the weekend at his recently renovated Tudor fort on a remote island off the Devonshire coast. But the holiday quickly turns sinister when first a number of valuable jewels go missing—and then a fellow guest is murdered with a most unusual weapon.

From bestselling author Hannah Ellis comes a windswept mystery of meddling, murder and one very troublesome cat. Jamie Sinclair is only meant to be minding the cat. A temporary house-sitting job in a windswept Scottish seaside town feels straightforward enough. Keep the place ticking over...

A murder in a locked garden. A village full of secrets. Can DCI Oldroyd find a killer who has vanished into thin air? When a woman is found strangled in the locked garden of historic Bishop Hewick Hall in Yorkshire, DCI Jim Oldroyd needs to solve a seemingly impossible murder. The only door was...

A wickedly funny and empowering thriller about women, the manipulators who underestimate them, and keeping your dignity while saving the day by the author of I Thought You Said This Would Work. Jane Baye is a regular person, good at a lot of things, but identifying the serial killer right in...

As the Oxford Detective Society tackle their first case, someone is determined that a long-buried mystery should stay hidden… Oxford biographer Lyssa Moore is delighted to be commissioned to write about Amelia ‘Monty’ Montrose, the 1960s music icon who died mysteriously at her birthday...

London, 1941. Polly Hope is bravely working as an air raid warden during the Blitz when she saves the life of the charming Freddie Fairbank. Over a thank-you breakfast at the Ritz, he asks Polly to help requisition a sprawling English country house for the war effort. Petherbridge Hall has grand rooms, lovely views and will be a perfect nursing home for injured troops, if they can only persuade the family to give up their house. But then they find the lord of the manor dead behind the gardener’s shed.

Music legend Baz Carson is ready to welcome his closest friends and family to celebrate his seventieth birthday at Rockpool House, his stunning mansion set high on the cliffs on the Cornish coast. But the festivities come to an abrupt end when Baz is found dead, floating fully clothed in his infinity pool. Tallulah, a boho-chic Californian and Baz’s first love, is convinced that his death wasn’t an accident. He’s just published his tell-all memoir, and the list of those who might wish him harm is long. But with just eight guests at Baz’s luxury, gated home, who could have killed him—and why?

The last thing DS Stephanie Johnson and DS Andy Carter expected during their much-needed canal holiday was a murder. When retired folk musician Annie Shipton is found stabbed through the neck at the helm of her barge, the couple can’t help investigating the seemingly impossible crime. Nobody else boarded Annie’s boat—so how was she killed from behind?

Newly divorced Lily Kimura returns to her hometown to start fresh with her daughter and her recently retired parents. She’s committed to rebuilding her life, starting with a new job at the town theater. The Starlight Cove Playhouse has been closed for years, ever since a tragic fire took the life of the lead actress. Now, thanks to an anonymous donor, the town is finally ready for a revival. So is Lily, who wholeheartedly dives into her new duties as theater manager, including an unexpected connection with the visiting movie star playing the lead.

It’s December in Cornwall, and Mousehole harbour is illuminated with its famous Christmas lights. Ally Bright is among the crowd listening to the carol singers—and then to the piercing screams that rip through the darkness. A body has been found, brutally murdered and dumped in a fisherman’s boat.

Steeped in a history of award-winning Yorkshire ale, the town of Markham boasts not one but two breweries. Richard Foster runs one; his sister, Emily, along with her partner, Janice, runs the other. And not without some resentment. The unwelcome return of the town’s former bad boy, Brendan Scholes, threatens to ignite the sibling rivalry further. Scholes claims to have found the long-lost secret recipe to the beer that made Richard and Emily’s father famous, and he wants money.