How well do we ever know our friends? When Jemima Shore offers to flat-sit for her friend Chloe, the last thing she is expecting is threatening anonymous phone calls on her very first night. A vicious assault by Chloe's ex-lover the next morning forces Jemima to accept that she knows very little about her friend's life. Fuming, she decides to confront her. But then she realises that Chloe never reached her destination...and Jemima is not the only person trying to get in touch with her. It seems she was playing a dangerous game - and Jemima has been left with the aftermath. The only trouble...

'Was that what you thought - that you would come back, come back here to beautiful Lark, and get away with it, did you expect that? I can hardly believe it, even of you...' A series of murders have shocked the sleepy, rural village of Lark. The deaths all coincide with the reappearance of actress Christabel Herriot - it is clear that someone has decided her return is not to be tolerated. Amidst the gossip surrounding her reckless affair, Christabel decides to resume her theatrical career, joining a company performing at the Larminster Festival. Jemima Shore has been asked to present a...

'We don't want to hurt her. We must remember that. All of us. She is after all innocent ...Well, isn't she?' As preparations for the royal wedding advance, a secret organisation is formulating plans that will have dangerous consequences. They need a gesture that will call attention to the rights and wrongs of those who have no voice of their own. And what better way than to target the royal bride? Meanwhile, Jemima Shore is grappling with the royal wedding in her own way - as a commentator. So she happens to be on hand when things go badly wrong...

'As he turned ...he had the extraordinary impression of a man in full armour rearing up in front of him ...It was the last thing he saw, before he hurtled downwards to a certain death' An untimely death and the reappearance of a ghost lead television reporter Jemima Shore into a mysterious case of sex, violence and the supernatural. When the butler plummets from the battlements of Lackland Court, it becomes clear that the ghost of the legendary Civil War poet and soldier, Decimus Meredith, is not the only suspect. Jemima must look to history and delve deep into the ancient hall's past to...

Summoned by the wayward Lady Imogen Swain, Jemima is entrusted with the diaries she kept in 1964, diaries which contain an account of her passionate affair with Burgo Smyth MP; now Foreign Secretary but then a rising young Conservative politician. With the increasingly eccentric Lady Imogen threatening to reveal details about the affair, and of the subsequent disappearance of a young journalist, Jemima's meeting with Lady Imogen is the first step in a sinister series of events which leads to political scandal, blackmail and murder.

From treachery in the Caribbean to mischief in the Mediterranean, from murderous drama to sleek black comedy, from a baffling number of suspects to a single confrontation with a maniacal rapist, here is a tantalising and varied excursion round motives and methods in the realm of crime - a collection of wittily told and deftly turned stories, with a twist.

In this collection of mysterious and thrilling short stories, Jemima Shore is at her sparkling best as she solves the case of the Parr children in a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands and elegantly deals with a missing bride in Venice. From murders and ghostly visitors to devious plots and family feuds, Antonia Fraser's first collection of short stories is a feast of mingled delight and suspense.