British Fiction

Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter she adores, and lives a very proper life in a very proper English parish. Prudence, a year shy of 30, lives in London, has an office job, and is self-sufficient and fiercely independent - until Jane decides her friend should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind for her former pupil: a widower named Fabian Driver.

As the sun sets into the sea over the pretty Cornish town of St Ives, a young woman, Freya Kempston, hasn’t returned home after a day out in the mall at St Austell. Panicking, her husband begs Detective Lauren Pengelly and her team to find her. Has Freya run out on her stable, loving marriage, or has something more sinister taken place? Grainy security footage from the mall provides the first break in the case—capturing Freya talking intently with a well-known local mechanic on the day she disappeared. But when cornered, the mechanic denies even knowing her.

When a body is found on a lonely cliff top path, the angelic face of a murdered teenager lies facing the rising sun. Strangled by the hands of an unknown killer, it falls to DI Tom Janssen and his fledgling team to find out how she came to be there. Destined for a career in medicine, one to rival that of her parents, Holly Bettany’s future was as bright as it had been privileged. Seemingly, all that could threaten this promising teenager’s life was Holly herself.

Abandoned pregnant and penniless on the teeming streets of London, 16-year-old Amber St. Clare manages, by using her wits, beauty, and courage, to climb to the highest position a woman could achieve in Restoration England - that of favorite mistress of the Merry Monarch, Charles II. From whores and highwaymen to courtiers and noblemen, from events such as the Great Plague and the Fire of London to the intimate passions of ordinary - and extraordinary - men and women, Amber experiences it all.

One moonlit night, the bodies of two young people are discovered lying entwined on a blanket in the woods. The young man is clutching a red rose. It appears to be a lovers' suicide pact.... Until Detective Nikki Galena and DS Joseph Easter look more closely. Romeo and Juliet, as they decide to call them, were murdered somewhere else and brought to the woods. But why? Then another young couple are found dead, again beautifully posed as lovers.

Detective Joseph Easter's daughter discovers a cottage hidden in some trees on a large fenland farm. Someone has been living there. The farm owner's wife has been receiving sinister pagan artifacts, including a witch's knife. Are they some sort of warning or message? Joseph and his daughter search the cottage and find an old satchel. Inside are photos of a beautiful girl, Jennifer Cowley. She went missing 15 years ago. She'd been stalked by a young man, who was convicted of her murder, even though her body was never found.

Who hung the headmaster in the playground on the night of the school Halloween Party? Almost everyone in Heppleburn either hated or feared the viper-tongued Harold Medburn. Inspector Ramsay is convinced it was the headmaster’s enigmatic wife but Jack Robson, school governor and caretaker, is determined to prove her innocence. With the help of his restless daughter Patty, Jack digs into the secrets of Heppleburn, and uncovers a cesspit of lies, adultery, blackmail and madness.

In appearance Hercule Poirot hardly resembled an ancient Greek hero. Yet, reasoned the detective, like Hercules, he had been responsible for ridding society of some of its most unpleasant monsters. So, in the period leading up to his retirement, Poirot makes up his mind to accept just 12 more cases: his self-imposed "Labors". Each would go down in the annals of crime as a heroic feat of deduction.

This set contains books seven to nine in the gripping, fast-paced crime fiction series featuring DCI Whitney Walker and forensic psychologist Dr. Georgina Cavendish: Ritual Demise, Mortal Remains, and Silent Graves.

This fascinating audiobook is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time.

The rare letters Tell Sackett received always had trouble inside. And the terse note from his cousin Logan was no exception. Logan faced starvation or a hanging if Tell couldn't drive a herd of cattle from Kansas to British Columbia before winter. To get to Logan, he must brave prairie fires, buffalo stampedes, and Sioux war parties. But worse trouble waits, for a mysterious enemy shadows Sackett's every move across the Dakotas and the Canadian Rockies.

Mary Connon froze out her husband, Sam, long ago. She likes the attention of other men—like the fellow members of Sam's rugby club. Naturally, when she's found dead in her sitting room with a hole in her head, Sam is a suspect. If only he hadn't suffered a dizzying scrum injury that's left everything a blur. He isn't sure that he didn't kill her. But Det. Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his partner, Peter Pascoe, are looking outside the unhappy home. Because it seems everyone within spitting distance of the suburban femme fatale wanted Mary dead.

Ever since she drove her best friend's fiance to kill himself, Isabel Drew has been nicknamed Jezebel. She is domineering, arrogant, vain - and beautiful enough to get away with it. She is starring as a princess in a medieval pageant when her past catches up to her. On tiny slips of paper, threats appear, promising death to Isabel and those around her. Fearing she may be attacked, she invites the brilliant Inspector Cockrill to keep her safe after the performance.

When a body is discovered during the building of the new Govan-Partick Bridge, it forces the reopening of a case that DCI Lomond would rather forget.

October 1912. The inhabitants of Littleton Cotterell emerge from their homes after a week of torrential storms to the gruesome news that one of Sid Hyde’s prized sheep has been mauled to death. As rumours abound of a vicious beast stalking the Gloucestershire countryside in search of prey, Lady Hardcastle and her fearless lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, set out to find what is surely a rational explanation. Then Hyde himself is brutally killed in a similar attack, and the villagers go from curious to terrified.

In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, 12-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia's blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty - and not empty enough.

This audio program has all the ingredients of a high-flying adventure story. Unbeknownst to the combatants, the War of 1812 has ended. But Andrew Jackson, a brave, charismatic American general, sick with dysentery and commanding a beleaguered garrison, leads a desperate struggle to hold on to New Orleans and to thwart the army that defeated Napoleon.

When Mr. Rushworth, the former husband of Edmund's sister Maria, is discovered dead in his home, Jonathan and Juliet find themselves with problems far weightier than the marriage market. In one of the greatest scandals of its day, Maria abandoned her new husband in favor of the notorious rake Henry Crawford, and when he wouldn't marry her, was forced to flee to the continent in disgrace. Now Maria is back, accompanied by a daughter she claims Mr. Rushworth fathered after their divorce—and who he wrote into his will just before his death.

Jo told him the phone call had been about a woman who wanted to have her husband declared dead. Smith thought for a moment and then said, 'Hmm. There must be a few million women in this country who feel like that. I take it her husband's been missing for a while and she's decided it's time to move on. In the absence of a body, which is always a nuisance, she wants Diver and Diver to confirm there's no proof he's alive. And I've told Jason a dozen times I'm not getting involved in anything matrimonial. I have enough trouble sorting out my own relationships.'

Poirot Investigates a host of murders most foul—as well as other dastardly crimes—in this intriguing collection of short stories from the one-and-only Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie’s classic Murder in the Mews presents four mystifying criminal conundrums that will seriously test the superior detecting skills of the unflappable Hercule Poirot.