Showing results by narrator "Judith Boyd" in All Categories

When Meredith Mitchell's old friend Toby Smythe turns up on leave, she is delighted to see him. But Toby has a problem - or rather his relative Alison Jenner has - and he wants to enlist the help of Meredith's fiance, Detective Superintendent Alan Markby...

In separate locations in Staffordshire, three separate tableaux are being played out. DI Joanna Piercy is writing to her lover to try and explain recent events; her sidekick Mike Korpanski is filling in insurance forms after his wife has had a prang in the car; and an unknown person is penning...

On a snowy December morning, a young woman is found outside Patches nightclub in Leek. Half dead from the cold, she says she has been raped. As Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy - fresh from a disciplinary action - investigates, she learns that Kayleigh Harrison has made unsubstantiated allegations before against her stepfather. But there are possible links to a similar rape case six months previously. Is there a real case to investigate or not? Kayleigh holds the key, but how much of her story can be trusted?

For recently engaged DI Joanna Piercy, a murder is the last thing she wants to deal with. Especially one with as dark a back story as that relating to calculating landowner and farmer Jakob Grimshaw; a man who managed to make enemies of all his neighbours and what little family he still had. One thing is certain; Joanna has a tough job ahead of her.

It doesn't take Meredith Mitchell long to regret giving up her lovely Cotswold cottage in favour ofliving in London. In addition, the fact that her job gives a whole new meaning to the word tedious does little to improve her mood. What she needs is a holiday. So, when Alan Markby's sister wants...

When an ambitious hotelier announces that he will be converting Springwood Hall into a smart country hotel, it is greeted with a chorus of local disapproval led by the fearsome Hope Mapple - head of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Bamford. So the grand opening, to which all are...

In this remarkable book, Alison Weir recounts one of the greatest and most remarkable love stories of medieval England. It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress, and later the wife, of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. But Katherine Swynford was much more than that.

When old Monty Bickerstaffe finds a dead body in his drawing room it comes as a nasty surprise. Monty lives alone in a crumbling Cotswold manor house and the last thing he wants is the police sniffing around his property. But Inspector Jess Campbell is determined to solve the mystery, with the help of Superintendent Ian Carter, she must dig deep into Monty’s family history to reveal the shocking truth...

When war is declared, Frances and Ralph, both pacifists, turn their house into a sanctuary for friends more materially involved. Invasion seems imminent as one by one the countries of Europe fall to the Nazis. People are even told to immobilise their car engines at night in case the Germans parachute into Britain. Yet although war looms persistently over the Partridges, only a few power cuts affect them, leaving them feeling oddly isolated from it.

It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby's spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled across human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds. Twenty-two years earlier, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure, in the hunt for a brutal serial...

In the heart of the Cotswolds a body is found. A teenage girl, probably local - somebody's daughter who went out one evening and didn't come back. It is not long before she is identified: fifteen-year-old Lynne Wills, who habitually drank underage in The Silver Bells pub and, on the night of her...

A poignant imagining of Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his last muse. A celebrated author, in the winter of his life, awaits a visit from a beautiful young actress – the leading lady in a staging of his most famous tragedy. But his wife is troubled. An anxious and sickly woman, she watches the growing intimacy between her husband and the young woman, and becomes tormented by the idea that they will betray her.

Sam Hunter only intended to help his brother fulfil his dream of having children, but now, through an IVF mix-up, a complete stranger is pregnant with his child! To make matters worse, she's utterly gorgeous... For warm-hearted widow Emelia Eastwood, this child was meant to be the final legacy of her husband. The hospital's discovery turns her world upside down.

The towering capricious figure of Henry VIII dominates Elizabeth's childhood, but others play powerful roles: Mary, first a loving sister, then as queen a lethal threat; Edward, the rigid and sad little King; Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, whose ambitions, both political and sexual, are...

In a land without rain, the people turn to the Archon, the god-on-Earth, to end their suffering and, for their sake, the old man must make a terrible sacrifice. Suddenly Mirany, a young priestess, finds herself thrust unwillingly into a desperate struggle to find the child who will be the new Archon. And the only help that she can find are Oblek, a drunken musician and Seth, a conniving scribe. If she fails, General Argelin and the high priestess Hermia will install a false candidate of their own and so gain absolute power. Nominated for the Whitbread Children's Book Award.

In the thrilling conclusion to the Oracle trilogy, Seth and his companions return from the desert to find a new reign of terror upon the Two Lands. General Argelin has pronounced himself King and declared war upon the Rain Queen and the God. Hired mercenaries repress the populous and prepare for battle with the forces of the Emperor. Returning the dead Speaker to the world of the living has become Argelin's one obsession and brings him under the malign influence of the sign of the Scarab.

"Things are going wrong". Alexos is now The Archon, the god-on-Earth, but Mirany, the young priestess, realises that nothing has changed. General Argelin still controls the army and Hermia still controls the temple, and their scheming and treachery threaten to ignite a war with the Emperor himself. And now, in the second book of The Oracle Trilogy, Alexos is determined to undertake a terrifying quest across the desert to the Mountains of the Moon to find the long lost Well of Songs.

The imprisonment and execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, in 1536 was unprecedented in English history and never before has there been a book devoted entirely to her fall. But here Alison Weir has reassessed the evidence and created a richly researched and detailed portrait of the last days of one of the most influential and important figures in English history.

When Sally Caswell persuaded her scientist husband Liam to move from London to the quiet of rural Oxfordshire it was in the hope of a more peaceful existence. But so far the move has led to nothing but discord. Liam's sabbatical book project is not going well so, frustrated and isolated, he...

It is with some trepiditation that Meredith Mitchell returns to the Cotswolds: the Bamford district holds memories that, to put it generously, are bittersweet, and Christmas is a difficult time to find oneself a stranger in a new area. Yet she receives a kindly welcome, in particular from her...