Those two days in May seem to be a highpoint in Colin Pinnock's life: a stunning election victory, a new government, and junior office for himself. But among the many congratulations he receives is one hostile message, a grubby card asking, 'Who do you think you are?' Is this merely someone putting him back in his place, or do the words have a more profound meaning? And who, indeed, is he? Who were his real parents?
As Colin investigates these questions he is led back in time to an old political scandal: a murder case which led to a politician's downfall and disappearance. Events in the...

The Ketterick Festival revolves around the Saracen's Head, a Jacobean inn with its inn-yard and balconies miraculously preserved intact, due to the sloth of successive landlords. Here in festival time are performed the lesser-known masterpieces of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. This year it is The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe (a play of uncertain authorship, since no one owned up at the time). But the actors find that the Saracen's Head has been transformed by its new landlord - an Australian know-all with an insatiable curiosity and an instinct for power. The loathsome Des's activities bring...

Rosemary Sheffield has a sort of -reverse epiphany- one day while walking in the park: she no longer believes in God. This sudden loss of faith is at first entirely liberating, but the situation gradually becomes more complicated. Rosemary is, after all, the beloved wife of the vicar at St. Saviour's parish.
A storm of controversy erupts in her husband's church congregation, but Rosemary, with the words -I do not believe, - leaves behind the scandal and gossip for a seaside sojourn in Scarborough. Here she meets Stanko, a Bosnian refugee who illegally entered the country. But what begins...

The disappearance from school of two apparently unconnected teenagers worries DC Charlie Peace, until he discovers that they are both working at a hostel for homeless street kids. Peace knows the life and crimes of the people these two are trying to help, and decides that, for the moment, they are safe.
But will Peace have cause to regret his decision? After all, just who is the man running the hostel? And how nasty is the local opposition to the place likely to become? As the pair continue their good work, the situation at the hostel becomes even more fraught with the appearance of an...

Old church meets new with a vengeance when a monk is brutally murdered at St. Botolph's.
Murder wasn't on the agenda for the symposium on the role of the Anglican Church today-until a brother is found dead in his cell. Suddenly the diverse guest list falls under suspicion. Could it be the bishop famous for his television appearances or his exotic counterpart from Africa; one of the three vicars who run the gamut from trendy to traditional; the nondenominational American with a passion for fundraising; or perhaps one of the two Norwegian lady divines? Or is it one of the brothers...

Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction been so extreme, however, for shortly after an undistinguished appearance at Drummondale University, the doddering old professor is found brutally murdered.
As Police Inspector Royle (who had never actually had to solve a crime before) probes the possible motives of the motley crew of academics who drink their was through the dreary days at Drummondale and as he investigates the...

A Scandal In Belgravia is a story of murder; it is also a penetrating analysis of a decaying social class and a society in transition. And it is the personal, deeply moving story of two men, Peter Proctor, recently retired as a senior British cabinet minister, and Timothy Wycliffe, a young aristocrat who was bludgeoned to death more than thirty years ago.
The two had met in the early 1950s as fledgling diplomats in the Foreign Office. Wycliffe, the grandson of a marquess, had little in common with Proctor, the self-made man on his way up. But the elegant, joyful, intensely alive...

With A City of Strangers, award-winning novelist Robert Barnard, acclaimed for his quick wit and astute insight into the vagaries of class distinction and human foible, achieves a new level of mastery.
He also creates one of his most memorable characters ever: the dreadful Jack Phelan. Dirty, potbellied, vulgar, selfish, Jack is a man everyone loves to hate. And the rest of his family isn't much better. The wife is slatternly, the teenaged children flirt with petty crime and prostitution, even the baby is unpleasant. Only twelve-year-old Michael Phelan seems to have escaped the...

Upstairs, in the room looking out to sea, the old man dictates wills, leaving things he no longer has to friends who are long dead. His children, who look after him, can cope with his senility, and thought there was nothing more to learn about his erratic life-style.
When Roderick Cotterel hears from his illegitimate half-sister he is intrigued, even charmed: she is the daughter of his father, the distinguished novelist Benedict Cotterel, by the famous actress Myra Mason. She is writing a book about her mother, and is looking for material. The affair between the two had been a gutter...

Lydia Perceval was - apparently - a charming and gifted woman. As a successful biographer, she led a privileged and comfortable life in her well-ordered, luxurious country-cottage. She felt terribly sorry for her sister, married to an unemployed drunk, mother of two sons, both of whom had loved their adorable Aunt Lydia much more than their parents. Lydia had a way with young people, particularly boys. She knew how to bring out the best in them. As it happened, her sister's two boys had proved something of a disappointment - Maurice had demeaned himself by going to work in television, and...