Obituary writer and amateur sleuth Eve Mallow is enjoying life in sleepy Saxford St Peter until a mysterious murder lands right at her door. Eve was relishing the gentle pace of the village until a new arrival stirs everyone up. Ashton Foley is back - a teenage tearaway turned interior designer to the stars, he's mad, bad and dangerous to know, but charming too, as Eve herself can testify, and every house in Saxford opens its doors to him. So when he's found murdered in the woods near his mother's home, Apple Tree Cottage, there's no shortage of suspects. A jealous husband? A spurned lover? Or has someone from his past life caught up with him? The police soon hit on a simple solution and arrest his mother's partner Howard. Ashton has always hated him, as he bears all the marks of a recent fight, but his mother, miles away in New Zealand, is convinced Howard is innocent, and enlists Eve's help to prove it. But there's just one problem. Eve saw Howard sniffing around Apple Tree Cottage on the morning of the murder, and she's fairly sure he's guilty, too. 286pp, paperback.

Something dangerous is afoot in St Denis. In the space of a few weeks the normally sleepy village sees attacks on Vietnamese vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, subpar truffles from China smuggled into outgoing shipments at a nearby supermarket, all of it threatening the Dordogne's truffle trade worth millions of dollars each year. It all spells trouble for Bruno Courrèges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and most importantly beloved Chief of Police. When one of his hunting partners, a noted truffle expert, is murdered, his investigation into the murky events unfolding around the village becomes infinitely more complicated. His friend was also a former high-profile intelligence agent and someone wanted him dead. Bruno's detective work takes him from sunlit markets to dim cafés, from luxurious feasts to tense negotiations, from all the paradisial pleasures of the region to its shadowy underworld and reunites him with a lost love, an ambitious policewoman also assigned to the case. Another instalment in this deliciously entertaining concoction. 354pp, paperback.

Benoît (Bruno) Courrèges, devoted friend, cuisinier extraordinaire and the town's only municipal policeman, rushes to the scene when a research station for genetically modified crops is burned down outside St Denis. He immediately suspects a group of fervent environmentalists who live nearby, but the fire is only the first in a string of mysteries. Then a bevy of winemakers descends on the village competing for its land and spurring resentment among the villagers. Romances blossom, hearts are broken and some of the sensual pleasures of the town - a dinner of a truffle omelette and grilled bécasses, a community grape-crushing - provide an opportunity for both warm friendship and bitter hostilities to form. A Californian wine producer wants to set up a business in the valley and despite the money and jobs this would bring, many fear it will destroy the town. When a violent death follows the crop burning, it looks as though someone is prepared to do anything to stop the scheme. Then there is another suspicious death and Bruno will have to draw on all his local knowledge to find his way to the truth. 309pp, paperback.

Bruno, the St Denis Chief of Police, is on the trail of the Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic, the most beautiful car of all time with its sleek trailing shape. Only four of them were ever built and one is unaccounted for, lost in France during the Second World War. When two young racing drivers come to the Périgord to hunt down clues to the missing car's whereabouts, Bruno is intrigued despite himself. When a local researcher turns up dead and French intelligence starts investigating the use of classic car sales to fund terrorism, Bruno finds himself once more caught up in a case that reaches far beyond St Denis and its people. Plenty to love in this intriguing mystery. 325pp, paperback.

Life in southwest France isn't as peaceful as you might imagine. Bruno, the local cop in the pretty market town of St Denis, knows this all too well. A summit in a local château is threatened by Basque separatists, animal rights campaigners are causing havoc, and now there's a dead body too. A local archaeological team has unearthed a skeleton and it's a lot more recent than they had hoped, boasting a Swatch on its wrist and a bullet-hole in its skull. The truth about the mysterious body appears to be linked to one of the visitors of St Denis and Bruno must think fast to find the connection between these events, especially if the answer lies closer to home than he thought. Throw in the complications Bruno must face with some farms involved in the production of foie gras and not to mention the arrival of a new 'green' magistrate, the discovery at the archaeological dig is just the beginning of the intrigues this time on Bruno's patch. 373pp, paperback.

We are invited to raise a glass and turn the page of another novel in the series with the enchanting backdrop of France's pastoral heartland with a cast of local characters as vibrant as their surroundings for every literary gourmand. Mystery, food and wine in the French province of the Dordogne, it is Spring in St Denis. The village choir is preparing for its Easter concert, the wild flowers are blooming, and among the lazy whorls of the river, a dead woman is found floating in a boat. It?s another case for Bruno, the town?s cherished Chief of Police. With the discovery of sinister markings and black candles near the body, it seems to him that the occult might be involved. As questions mount regarding a troubled real estate proposal in the region, a suspicious, violent death made to look accidental, and the sudden reappearance of a politically controversial elderly countess, Bruno and his colleagues and friends are drawn ever closer to a climactic showdown in the Gouffre de Colombac, the place locals call the Devil's Cave. 392pp, paperback.

When Bruno, Chief of Police in the small French town of St Denis, is invited to the 90th birthday celebration of a powerful local patriarch and former war hero, he meets a family hiding many secrets. Next morning, one of the party guests is found dead. When the family tries to cover it up, Bruno knows he must prevent the victim from becoming just another skeleton in their closet. Keeping his community and himself out of danger while discovering the dark truth will involve all of his cunning and skill. 'With lashings of gastro porn.' - Guardian. 342pp, paperback.

A CWA prize winning novel (2015) set in Cromwell's London and the first in the Damian Seeker series. London 1654 and Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector, yet he has many enemies at home and abroad. London is a teeming warren of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where he comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell and that nothing can be hidden from him for long. In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. When a popular captain and hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army is murdered, and Elias Ellingworth, an outspoken critic of Cromwell's regime is found standing over the bleeding body clutching a knife, his guilt seems to be without question. Yet Seeker is not convinced and he knows better than any man where to search for the real killer to bring him to justice. We are drawn into the Interregnum while the country was still divided between Royalists and Parliamentarians. 421pp, paperback.

A very quirky and playful black comedy which begins with two apparently harmless women residing in cottages one building apart in the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow are cousins who have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when a mysterious foreigner Theodore Cadmus from a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered. Soon, long-hidden secrets and long-held grudges threaten to surface, drawing all into a vortex of subterfuge, theft, violence, mayhem and murder. The book has been criticised for unexplained characters coming in, strange birds on islands which are sometimes green then purple, and some rather curious amethysts. Leave behind Midsomer Murders and move into the realm of the truly weird. A quick read, 186pp. Paperback.

A Dr Ruth Galloway mystery which is highly atmospheric and one of the excellent and delightful series. Two women are murdered in the shrine town of Walsingham, north Norfolk, not far from Dr Ruth Galloway's home. It's a place famous for hosting visions of the Virgin Mary and full of superstition. DCI Nelson finds it a frustrating town in which to separate fact from religious myth. A friend of Ruth's who is a priest has been receiving threats and the letter writer knows far more about her than they should, and the letters suggest Ruth's friend will be next. There is an avenging angel on the loose in Walsingham and Ruth had better pray that she and Nelson find them before they strike again. 358pp with Who's Who from the mystery series. Paperback.