Ann Cleeves
Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. If a person's not heavily into birds - and Ann isn't - there's not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. A couple of these books are seriously dreadful.In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. The girls have both taken up with Geordie lads. In the autumn of 2006, Ann and Tim finally achieved their ambition of moving back to the North East.For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and still enjoys working with libraries.Ann Cleeves on stage at the Duncan Lawrie Dagger awards ceremonyAnn's short film for Border TV, Catching Birds, won a Royal Television Society Award. She has twice been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story The Plater, and the following year for the Dagger in the Library award.In 2006 Ann Cleeves was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet. The Duncan Lawrie Dagger replaces the CWA's Gold Dagger award, and the winner receives £20,000, making it the world's largest award for crime fiction.Ann's success was announced at the 2006 Dagger Awards ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton, in London's Aldwych, on Thursday 29 June 2006. She said: "I have never won anything before in my life, so it was a complete shock - but lovely of course.. The evening was relatively relaxing because I'd lost my voice and knew that even if the unexpected happened there was physically no way I could utter a word. So I wouldn't have to give a speech. My editor was deputed to do it!"The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine).Ann's books have been translated into sixteen languages. She's a bestseller in Scandinavia and Germany. Her novels sell widely and to critical acclaim in the United States. Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 200
The Raging Storm (Two Rivers, #3)
Ann Cleeves
Ann Cleeves― New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows―returns with The Raging Storm , the extraordinary third installment in the Matthew Venn series.
Fierce winds, dark secrets, deadly intentions.
When Jem Rosco―sailor, adventurer, and legend―blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. But just as abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again, and soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.
This is an uncomfortable case for Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Greystone is a place he visited as a child, a community he parted ways with. Superstition and rumor mix with fact as another body is found, and Venn finds his judgment clouded.
As the winds howl, and Venn and his team investigate, he realizes that no one, including himself, is safe from Scully Cove’s storm of dark secrets.
“A friend of mine once joked that the work of Ann Cleeves is the closest the crime fiction genre comes to evoking ASMR―the euphoric, pleasant, spine-tingling sensation that’s all the rage on YouTube. The books never get too dark, never venture too far into dangerous territory, but aren’t outright cozy, either.”― The New York Times
A Lesson In Dying (Inspector Ramsay, #1)
Ann Cleeves
Heppleburn, once a Northumberland pit village, has always been close-knit, friendly and safe - until the murder of headmaster Harold Medburn. Suddenly, the village seems unfamiliar, uncomfortable.
The school caretaker and his daughter pursue their own route of investigation, which should have made Inspector Ramsay's job a little easier. But hampered by false leads, powerless to pre-empt the killer's next move, and overshadowed by the evil atmosphere of All Hallow's Eve, Ramsay finds his own reputation is on the line...
A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (Inspector Ramsey, #3)
Ann Cleeves
For Dorothea Cassidy Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own, and would plan to visit people she wanted to see as a welcome respite from the routine duties that being a vicar’s wife entailed. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. It was the day that Dorothea Cassidy was strangled.
As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea’s last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases – a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care – and even her close family have their secrets to hide. All these people are daunted, in one way or another, by Dorothea’s goodness. But which of them could have possibly wanted her dead?
It is not until a second body is discovered that Ramsay starts to understand how Dorothea lived – and why she died. With the carnival festivities in full swing and dusk failing in Otterbridge, Ramsay’s murder investigation reaches its chilling climax . . .
The Woman on the Island (Vera Stanhope #9.5)
Ann Cleeves
New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves returns with a delicious short story featuring DCI Vera Stanhope as a young woman, and also including an excerpt from the next Vera Stanhope novel, The Rising Tide.A rare day off from policing leads DCI Vera Stanhope across the tidal causeway to Holy Island, the lure of crab sandwiches there too hard to resist.While on the island, she is reminded of the day decades before when, as a teenager, she went with her father Hector on another day trip. The day she watched him meet with a mystery woman on the beach...Vera already knew then that Hector kept secrets, but this time the fledging investigator was determined to find the truth of why he was meeting the woman on the island, never realizing it would mean taking her first step onto a path to becoming a detective...In this wonderful short story, Ann Cleeves shows us the origins of Vera as a detective, and showcases the setting for her forthcoming novel, The Rising Tide.
The Girls on the Shore (Two Rivers, #2.5)
Ann Cleeves
Ann Cleeves returns with a darkly delicious short story, "The Girls on the Shore", featuring DI Matthew Venn from the Two Rivers series.
It was winter. Cold and clear, a different sort of day for this coast where the westerly winds usually blew rain and cloud. Detective Inspector Matthew Venn is standing by his kitchen window when he first spots them. Two young girls, facing away from him, seemingly staring towards something in the distance. They are holding hands, and they are alone. Though not a natural with children, Matthew knows he must find out why the girls are here, on a school day, unsupervised. And so he meets Olivia and Imogen, a pair of sisters whose secrets Matthew must uncover if he hopes to get them home.
A Bird In The Hand (George & Molly Palmer-Jones, #1)
Ann Cleeves
From the author of Shetland and VeraIn England’s birdwatching paradise, a new breed has been sighted—a murderer . . . Young Tom French was found dead, lying in a marsh on the Norfolk coast, with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck. One of the best birders in England, Tom had put the village of Rushy on the birdwatching map. Everyone liked him. Or did they? George Palmer-Jones, an elderly birdwatcher who decided quietly to look into the brutal crime, discovered mixed feelings aplenty. Still, he remained baffled by a deed that could have been motivated by thwarted love, pure envy, or something else altogether. But as he and his fellow “twitchers” flocked from Norfolk to Scotland to the Scilly Isles, in response to rumours of rare sightings, George—with help from his lovely wife, Molly—gradually discerned the true markings of a killer. All he had to do was prove it . . . before the murderer strikes again.
Burial of Ghosts
Ann Cleeves
Burial of Ghosts is a page-turning stand alone novel from Ann Cleeves, creator of the astounding Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.
Twenty-five-year-old Lizzie Bartholomew has had more than her fair share of struggles. Abandoned as a baby, she spent her childhood moving between foster homes. Now she is running away from her past ...
A holiday in Morocco seems to be the perfect escape. Especially when she meets Philip, a fellow tourist who distracts her from her troubles. After a brief affair, Lizzie returns to England, to a solicitor's letter.
Philip Samson has died. In his will, he has left Lizzie a gift of £15,000. But there are conditions attached to this unexpected legacy that will soon force Lizzie to confront terrifying secrets from her past life ...
Too Good To Be True (Shetland Island, #6.2)
Ann Cleeves
Too Good To Be True is a gripping Quick Read from Ann Cleeves, featuring Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez from the bestselling Shetland series.
When young teacher Anna Blackwell is found dead in her home, the police think her death was suicide or a tragic accident. After all, Stonebridge is a quiet country village in the Scottish Borders, where murders just don't happen.
But Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez soon arrives from far-away Shetland when his ex-wife, Sarah, asks him to look into the case. The local gossips are saying that her new husband, Tom, was having an affair with Anna. Could Tom have been involved with her death? Sarah refuses to believe it - but needs proof.
Anna had been a teacher. She must have loved kids. Would she kill herself knowing there was nobody to look after her daughter? She had seemed happier than ever before she died. And to Perez, this suggests not suicide, but murder . .
Murder In My Backyard (Inspector Ramsay, #2)
Ann Cleeves
No one in Heppleburn has a bad word to say about Alice Parry . . .
. . . But here she is, murdered in her own backyard on a bitter St. David’s Eve. And when detective Stephen Ramsay starts asking questions in the village, a more ambiguous picture begins to emerge. Yes, old Mrs. Parry was loved by everyone, but sometimes her kindness had caused trouble. Yes, her two nephews were devoted to her, but they didn’t really want her interfering in their rather complicated personal lives. Even among her neighbours, Alice Parry’s helpfulness had sometimes misfired; and after her death, tension tight as a clenched fist grips the uneasy village.
Meanwhile, the suspects keep rolling in, and Heppleburn’s friendly neighbourhood killer continues his nasty piece of work . . .
The Sleeping and the Dead
Ann Cleeves
The Sleeping and the Dead is a tense psychological crime thriller from CWA Gold Dagger award-winning writer, Ann Cleeves.
Detective Peter Porteous is called to Cranwell Lake where the body of a teenager has been discovered. After trawling through the missing persons files, he deduces that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972.
For country prison officer Hannah Morton it is the shock of her life. Michael had been her boyfriend, and she had been with him the night he disappeared. The news report that a body has been found brings back dreaded and long buried memories from her past ...
The Seagull (Vera Stanhope #8)
Ann Cleeves
A visit to her local prison brings DI Vera Stanhope face to face with an old enemy: former detective superintendent, and now inmate, John Brace. Brace was convicted of corruption and involvement in the death of a gamekeeper - and Vera played a key part in his downfall.
Now, Brace promises Vera information about the disappearance of Robbie Marshall, a notorious wheeler-dealer who disappeared in the mid-nineties, if she will look out for his daughter and grandchildren. He tells her that Marshall is dead, and that his body is buried close to St Mary's Island in Whitley Bay. However, when a search team investigates, officers find not one skeleton, but two.
This cold case case takes Vera back in time, and very close to home, as Brace and Marshall, along with a mysterious stranger known only as 'the Prof', were close friends of Hector, her father. Together, they were the 'Gang of Four', regulars at a glamorous nightclub called The Seagull. Hector had been one of the last people to see Marshall alive. As the past begins to collide dangerously with the present, Vera confronts her prejudices and unwanted memories to dig out the truth . . .
The Seagull is a searing new novel by Sunday Times bestselling author Ann Cleeves, about corruption deep in the heart of a community, and fragile, and fracturing, family relationships.
The Moth Catcher (Vera Stanhope #7)
Ann Cleeves
This case was different from anything Vera had ever worked before. Two bodies, connected but not lying together. And nothing made her feel as alive as murder.
Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they're away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley - a beautiful, lonely place to die.
DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, with her detectives Holly and Joe. When they look round the attic of the big house - where Patrick has a flat - she finds the body of a second man. All the two victims have in common is a fascination with moths - catching these beautiful, rare creatures.
The three couples who live in the Valley Farm development have secrets too: Annie and Sam's daughter is due to be released from prison any day; Nigel watches, silently, every day, from his window. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped here . . .
Harbour Street (Vera Stanhope, #6)
Ann Cleeves
Harbour Street is the sixth book in Ann Cleeves' crime novel series VERA - which is a major TV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn on ITV.
As the snow falls thickly on Newcastle, the shouts and laughter of Christmas revellers break the muffled silence. Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along in the jostling crowd onto the Metro.
But when the train is stopped due to the bad weather, and the other passengers fade into the swirling snow, Jessie notices that an old lady hasn't left the train: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed as she sat on the crowded train. Nobody, including the policeman himself, sees the stabbing take place. Margaret's murderer is seemingly invisible; her killing motiveless. Why would anyone want to harm this reserved, elegant lady?
Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday festivities. As she's standing on the silent, snow-covered station platform, Vera feels a familiar buzz of anticipation, sensing that this will be a complex and unusual case. Soon Vera and Joe are on their way to the south Northumberland town of Mardle, where Margaret lived, to begin their inquiry.
Then, just days later, a second woman is murdered. Vera knows that to find the key to this new killing she needs to understand what had been troubling Margaret so deeply before she died - before another life is lost. She can feel in her bones that there's a link. Retracing Margaret's final steps, Vera finds herself searching deep into the hidden past of this seemingly innocent neighbourhood, led by clues that keep revolving around one street... Why are the residents of Harbour Street so reluctant to speak?
Told with piercing prose and a forensic eye, Ann Cleeves' gripping new novel explores what happens when a community closes ranks to protect their own - and at what point silent witnesses become complicit.
Also available in the Vera Stanhope series are The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices and The Glass Room. Ann Cleeves' Shetland series (BBC television drama SHETLAND) contains five titles, of which Dead Water is the most recent.
The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope, #5)
Ann Cleeves
DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation so she has more tolerance for them than most. When one of them goes missing she feels duty-bound to find out what happened. But her path leads her to more than just a missing friend. Shortlisted for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger.
Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope, #4)
Ann Cleeves
En morder holder øje … et samfund venter …
Da vicepolitikommissær Vera Stanhope opdager et kvindelig i saunaen i det lokale fitnesscenter, overvejer hun et kort øjeblik, om hun for en gangs skyld er stødt på et dødsfald af naturlige årsager. Men en nærmere undersøgelse afslører mærker rundt om ofrets hals – døden er aldrig så ligetil.
Vera gør det, hun er bedst til, samler sit hold og sætter dem i gang med at udspørge personalet og alle med forbindelse til ofret, mens hun og kollegaen Joe Ashworth arbejder på at finde et motiv til mordet. Mens Joe kæmper med at forene familielivet med de krav, som jobbet stiller, nyder Vera i fulde drag at være tilbage i spidsen for en efterforskning. Døden har aldrig fået hende til at føle sig så levende.
Da de opdager, at afdøde arbejdede som socialrådgiver og har været involveret i en chokerende sag om et mindre barn, virker det oplagt, at der er en forbindelse imellem de to sager. Men tingene er aldrig helt, hvad de giver sig ud for …
Hidden Depths (Vera Stanhope, #3)
Ann Cleeves
A hot summer on the Northumberland coast, and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued. But then a second body - that of beautiful young teacher Lily Marsh - is discovered laid out in a rock pool, the water strewn with flowers. Now Vera must work quickly to find this dramatist, this killer who is making art out of death. Clues are slow to emerge from those who had known Luke and Lily, but Vera soon finds herself drawn towards the curious group of friends who discovered Lily`s body. What unites these four men and one woman? Are they really the close-knit, trustworthy unit they claim to be? As local residents are forced to share their private lives and those of their loved ones, sinister secrets are slowly unearthed. And all the while the killer remains in their midst, waiting for an opportunity to prepare another beautiful, watery grave... ‘ Hidden Depths is another classic, traditional crime novel in a contemporary setting by Ann Cleeves, winner of last year`s Duncan Lawrie Dagger... The story follows each of the main characters in turn, but it is fat, lonely Vera, awkward with her staff and unaware that they are frightened of her, who makes the biggest impression in this skilfully crafted mystery’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Ann Cleeves improves with every book. Her previous novel, Raven Black, was a deserved winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger for best crime novel of 2006... Hidden Depths is a subtle, nuanced book and Cleeves draws her characters with care and compassion. The landscape of rural Northumberland is vividly evoked and Inspector Stanhope - overweight, fallible and driven by personal demons - is a terrific central character` Tribune
Wild Fire (Shetland Island, #8)
Ann Cleeves
When the Flemings--designer Helena and architect Daniel--move into a remote community in the north of Shetland, they think it's a fresh start for themselves and their children.
But their arrival triggers resentment, and Helena begins to receive small drawings of a gallows and a hanged man. Gossip spreads like wildfire.
A story of dysfunctional families and fractured relationships, Inspector Jimmy Perez's eighth case will intrigue series fans and Shetland Island newcomers alike.
Thin Air (Shetland Island, #6)
Ann Cleeves
A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland's most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears - apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It reads like a suicide note, saying she'll never be found alive. And then Eleanor's body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.
Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the legend of the ghost had seemed unhealthy - obsessive, even - to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor's death than there first appears.
Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill - many years later - to protect?
Cold Earth (Shetland Island, #7)
Ann Cleeves
In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the road and sweeps down to the sea.
At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and peaty water smash through a croft house in its path. Everyone thinks the croft is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. In his mind, she shares his Mediterranean ancestry and soon he becomes obsessed with tracing her identity.
Then it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit the house. Perez feels bound by duty - and something more powerful - to find out who she was, and how she died. Within the house, the only clue is a wooden box that contains two photos, one of two small children and one of an elderly couple. And a handwritten letter, which begins: "My dearest Alis..."
Telling Tales (Vera Stanhope, #2)
Ann Cleeves
It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still at large.
For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend--and of that fearful winter's day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch.
As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount. But are people afraid of the killer or of their own guilty pasts?
With each person's story revisited, the Inspector begins to suspect that some deadly secrets are threatening to unfurl.
Dead Water (Shetland Island, #5)
Ann Cleeves
Ann Cleeves returns to her critically acclaimed Shetland Island series with this stunning mystery featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, who readers will remember from Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning. When the body of a journalist is found, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted from outside to head up the investigation. Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his local knowledge is needed in this case, and he decides to help Willow. The dead journalist had left the islands years before to pursue his writing career. In his wake, he left a scandal involving a young girl. When Willow and Jimmy dig deeper, they realize that the journalist was chasing a story that many Shetlanders didn't want to come to the surface. In Dead Water, a triumphant continuation to her Shetland series, Ann Cleeves cements her place as one of Britain's most successful crime writers.
Blue Lightning (Shetland Island, #4)
Ann Cleeves
Murder can strike more than once...
Shetland Detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to the Fair Isles to introduce his fiancée, Fran, to his parents. It’s a community where everyone knows each other, and strangers, while welcomed, are still viewed with a degree of mistrust.
Challenging to live on at the best of times, with the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped, tension is high and tempers become frayed. Enough to drive someone to murder...
When a woman’s body is discovered at the renowned Fair Isles bird observatory, with feathers threaded through her hair, the islanders react with fear and anger. With no support from the mainland and only Fran to help him, Jimmy has to investigate the old-fashioned way. He soon realizes that this is no crime of passion—but a murder of cold and calculated intention.
With no way off the island until the storms abate, Jimmy knows he has to work quickly. There’s a killer on the island just waiting for the opportunity to strike again.
The Darkest Evening (Vera Stanhope, #9)
Ann Cleeves
On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets off for her home in the hills. Though the road is familiar, she misses a turning and soon becomes lost and disorientated. A car has skidded off the narrow road in front of her, its door left open, and she stops to help. There is no driver to be seen, so Vera assumes that the owner has gone to find help. But a cry calls her back: a toddler is strapped in the back seat.Vera takes the child and, driving on, she arrives at a place she knows well. Brockburn is a large, grand house in the wilds of Northumberland, now a little shabby and run down. It’s also where her father, Hector, grew up. Inside, there’s a party in full swing: music, Christmas lights and laughter. Outside, unbeknownst to the revelers, a woman lies dead in the snow.As the blizzard traps the group deep in the freezing Northumberland countryside, Brockburn begins to give up its secrets, and as Vera digs deeper into her investigation, she also begins to uncover her family’s complicated past.
Red Bones (Shetland Island, #3)
Ann Cleeves
An island shrouded in mist and a community with secrets buried in the past . . .
When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find - or a more contemporary mystery?
Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson - his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.
The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.
Surrounded by people he doesn't know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there's another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .
The Heron's Cry (Two Rivers, #2)
Ann Cleeves
North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder--Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases.
Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.
Then another body is found--killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.
White Nights (Shetland Island, #2)
Ann Cleeves
The electrifying follow up to the award-winning Raven BlackRaven Black received crime fiction’s highest monetary honor, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. Now Detective Jimmy Perez is back in an electrifying sequel.It’s midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws an elaborate party to launch an exhibition of her work at The Herring House, a gallery on the beach.The party ends in farce when one the guests, a mysterious Englishman, bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where he’s come from. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter, and Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that the man has been murdered. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bella’s musician nephew, is murdered, too.But the detective’s relationship with Fran Hunter may have clouded his judgment, for this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.A stunning second installment in the acclaimed Shetland Island Quartet, White Nights is sure to garner American raves for international sensation Ann Cleeves.
The Long Call (Two Rivers, #1)
Ann Cleeves
In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.
Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.
The case calls Matthew back into the community he thought he had left behind, as deadly secrets hidden at its heart are revealed, and his past and present collide.
Raven Black (Shetland Island, #1)
Ann Cleeves
Winner of Britain’s coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to mystery readers.Raven Black begins on New Year’s Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.
The Crow Trap (Vera Stanhope, #1)
Ann Cleeves
Vera Stanhope's first appearance was in The Crow Trap, published in 1999 and now available in a new edition; it forms the third episode of the TV series Vera, adapted by Stephen Brady.
At the isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal...
For team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide...
When Rachael arrives at the cottage, however, she is horrified to discover the body of her friend Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide - a verdict Rachael finds impossible to accept.
Only when the next death occurs does a fourth woman enter the picture - the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women's tangled lives...
The Rising Tide (Vera Stanhope, #10)
Ann Cleeves
For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .
But with the tide rising, secrets long-hidden are finding their way to the surface, and Vera and the team may find themselves in more danger than they could have believed possible . . .
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