The charity fair at Seagrave Hall is a key date in the Saxford St Peter calendar and a chance for the villagers to nose around the house and grounds and cross paths with the rich and famous. New resident Eve Mallow is particularly excited by this year's special guest, the explorer Verity Nye, engaged to the heir to the Hall. Eve loves Verity's determination and she can't wait to meet her, but when they talk, Verity hints that she has something troubling on her mind. So after the festival mood is tragically interrupted by Verity's fall from a third-floor window, Eve can't be sure that it's an appalling accident especially when one small boy claims he saw someone behind her. Soon Eve finds herself tasked with writing Verity's obituary. As she dusts off her notebook and begins her interviews alongside her trusted dachshund sidekick Gus, she realises she has a fine array of suspects before her. Could it be a corrupt charity manager, the distraught fiancé, or jealous cousin Cora? And can Eve find out before her questions cause the killer to turn on her? 279pp, paperback.

Kay Scarpetta has been training at the Dover Port Mortuary, mastering a groundbreaking forensic procedure and it is not long before these new skills need to be put into practice. A young man drops dead eerily close to her home and when his body is examined, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when his body was locked inside the cooler. When the revolutionary 3D radiology scans reveal internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen, she realizes she is fighting a cunning and uniquely cruel enemy. Now it is a race against time to discover who and why, before more people die. 'One of our best crime writers writing today.' - Guardian. 488pp, paperback.

Late one night a man walks into the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear. It looks like Harry's many sins - corruption, greed and betrayal - have finally caught up with him. An hour later the intruder, J. P. Carney, hands himself in, confessing to the assault. The police have a victim, a suspect in custody and an eye-witness account, but Julie remains troubled. Has Carney's surrender really been driven by a guilty conscience, or is this confession the first calculated move in a deadly game? You will be addicted from the very first page in this brilliantly dark tale which is well plotted and beautifully written. 421pp, paperback.

Five years ago, Erin Kennedy moved to New York following a family tragedy. She now lives happily with her detective husband in the scenic seaside town of Newport, Long Island. When she answers the door to Danny's police colleagues one morning, it's the start of an ordinary day, but behind her, Danny walks to the window of their fourth floor apartment and jumps to his death. 18 months later, Erin is in court, charged with her husband's murder. Over that year and a half, she has learned things about Danny she could never have imagined. She thought he was perfect. She thought their life was perfect. But it was all built on the perfect lie. A fabulous page turner that will keep you guessing to the end and keep you up all night. 388pp, paperback.

Five years after being sacked as Chief Medical Examiner, Dr Kay Scarpetta is back with a vengeance. Her return as a consultant pathologist in the mysterious death of a teenage girl ruffled a few feathers, yet Gilly Paulsson's death has stumped the best in the business. There is no obvious cause and nothing suspicious except the fact that Gilly shouldn't be dead. Then Scarpetta uncovers trace evidence - Gilly was murdered, but why? For Scarpetta what began as a forensic puzzle expands into a larger and far more alarming picture, but still the vital pieces are missing. Who is the person tightening a noose around her and her loved ones? A real thriller from the expert. 457pp, paperback.

June 1917 and while German bombers raid London from above, a man's body is fished from the Thames below. With no identifying items or labels about his person, Detective Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy waste precious time struggling to name the anonymous victim before they can properly begin their investigation. One by one family and business associates are traced, which only makes the list of suspects ever longer. Between the interminable presence of war and closer to home pitched battles in the East End between rival gangs, Marmion must carefully tread a dangerous path to lead him towards the killer. 'Marsten has tapped into a rich vein of inspiration.' - Daily Mail. 378pp, paperback.

The body of a woman is found on Bruno, Chief of Police's patch in St Denis. She was discovered with her neck broken beside the ruined Templar chateau of Commarque in the heart of the Dordogne. An accidental fall, or was she pushed? The 11th century chateau has never been associated with the fabled hidden treasure of the Templars, but a sensational story in the local press about the unknown woman's death throws light on the chateau and the cave beneath it. When a Templar scholar is found brutally tortured and left for dead, Bruno must race to find the perpetrator before they strike again, while the village of St Denis holds its breath, waiting to see if a centuries-old mystery might finally be solved and uncovered when a local journalist publishes the sensational story around the woman's death. The victim carries no identification and her fingerprints are not known to the French police or Interpol. The only clue is that her dentistry looks American, but Bruno's enquiries at local hotels and gites yield no trace of a missing foreign woman. 343pp, paperback.

The gifted Venetian detective returns in his 31st case, this time investigating the Janus-faced nature of yet another Italian institution. What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It's a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face when he is approached for a favour by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows only casually. However her mother was good to Brunetti's mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately. Foscarini's son-in-law Enrico Fenzo has alarmed his wife by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he's involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects that the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client, yet his clients seem benign - an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However when Foscarini's daughter's place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favours - that his colleagues assist his private investigation which soon turns official as they uncover the dark nature and the wobbly line between the criminal and non-criminal world. Written in an elegant, witty prose, Donna Leon uses the relatively small canvas of Venice for rips about Italian life, sexual styles and best of all the kind of ingrown business and political corruption that seems to lurk just below the surface. Endpapers have maps, 294pp with fairly large print.

Guido Brunetti is baffled by the apparent murder of a seemingly innocuous immigrant man, until a connection to his own youthful past resolves the story of the man's death, and a decades-old disappearance. On a cold November evening, Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague alerts him that a hand has been seen in one of Venice's canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. He is forced to use the city's far richer sources of information - gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim to discover that he had been living in a small house on the grounds of a palazzo owned by a university professor. There Brunetti discovers books revealing the victim's interest in Buddhism, the revolutionary Tamil Tigers, and the last crop of Italian political terrorists, active in the 1980s. As the investigation expands, the puzzle uses random information about real estate and land use, books and university friendships and then Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to discovery. A story of justice and vengeance and with charming classical allusions which makes you smile. With maps on endpapers, 262pp fairly large print.

A vivid psychological suspense novel written some 20 years ago between two of the early Vera novels. A diving instructor makes a gruesome discovery in Cranwell Lake. The body of a teenager has been found very close to the surface of a reservoir due to a drought. The police are called to investigate and realise that the body has been anchored in place for a long time. They look at all the missing young males from the time and with dental work and identify the male as Michael Grey. However this is not his real name and the police are still looking for answers when another teenager is found murdered. Detective Peter Porteous deduces that Grey was the enigmatic and secretive man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972. On the other side of the country, prison officer Hannah Morton is about to get the shock of her life for Michael was her boyfriend, and she was 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. 395pp in paperback.