Late on a spring night in 1920, five boys cross the Yorkshire dales to the ruins of Fountains Abbey, intent on raising the Devil. Instead, they stumble over the Devil himself, sitting there watching them. Terrified, they run for their lives, leaving behind a book on alchemy stolen from their schoolmaster. The next morning, a body is discovered in the cloisters of the abbey--a man swathed in a hooded cloak and wearing a gas mask. Scotland Yard dispatches...

When successful London businessman is found savagely and bizarrely murdered in a medieval tithe barn on his estate in Somerset, Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge is called upon to investigate and soon discovers that the victim was universally despised.

Late September, 1942. Jo Hardy, a 22-year-old ferry pilot, is delivering a Spitfire to Biggin Hill Aerodrome when she realizes someone is shooting at her aircraft. When she returns to the location on foot, she finds an American serviceman in a barn, tied up and gagged. Jo hurries away, but can't shake the image of the serviceman from her mind. Several days later, when Jo recounts the story to several other women, she receives the news that Erica,...

In Ellicott's captivating second mystery set in post-WWI England (after 2017's Murder in an English Village), adventure-seeking American Beryl Helliwell and her old English school chum, Edwina Davenport, who share a household in the hamlet of Walmsley Parva, set up their own informal private investigation business. Their first client, Vicar Wilfred Lowethorpe, calls on them for help in a matter that requires sensitivity and discretion. One of the...

February, 1927. The remains of an unidentified middle aged man are found beneath the snow in the grounds of Maxtead Court, home of the wealthy Scroope family. Meanwhile, Margaret Rees Talbot is preparing for her wedding to the Reverend Symon Scroope, to the disapproval of some residents of the small market town of Folbury, who think it's too soon after the death of Margaret's father Osbert, found drowned in his bath a few months previously. An accident,...

Taking flying lessons on the 1926 Essex countryside, Jane Wunderly teams up with the enigmatic Mr. Redvers to investigate the suspicious death of an Air Force veteran.

"In the lean years following World War I, brash American adventuress Beryl Helliwell and prim and proper Brit Edwina Davenport form a private inquiry agency to make ends meet, hoping that crime does indeed pay... The latest occurrence to disturb the peace in the quaint English village of Walmsley Parva hits rather too close to home--in fact, the prime suspect has taken up residence in Edwina's potting shed. Her elderly gardener Simpkins has been secretly...

Left an orphan after the influenza epidemic in British East Africa in 1918, thirteen-year-old Rachel is tricked into assuming a deceased neighbor's identity to travel to England, where her only dream is to return to Africa and rebuild her parents' mission hospital.

In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Cyril is off to fight, Anthea is at art college, Robert is a Cambridge scholar, and Jane is at high school when the sand fairy, Psammead, suddenly reappears, and his magic has a more serious purpose than when the siblings were children.

Beryl Helliwell cited for 'reckless' motoring? Why, the very idea! Constable Gibbs just has it in for her. The solution? Charm the magistrate, of course. Beryl and Edwina pay a visit to the magistrate only to find his home ransacked and the man himself lying dead at the bottom of a grand staircase. Declan O'Shea, who assists Beryl's aged gardener Simpkins, falls under suspicion after having had his own run-in with the magistrate - mostly, Beryl believes,...