"To celebrate their engagement, DCI Arthur St. Just and Portia De'Ath visit the quiet village of Maidsfell in Cornwall. Upon arriving they find the villagers in an uproar over plans to redevelop the local seafront. The fishermen want to build a new slipway to aid their business, but many residents worry it will spoil the view for the tourists who help drive the economy. After a heated village meeting on the issue, St. Just overhears an argument involving...

Max--Anglican priest, former MI5 agent, and village heartthrob--investigates two deaths at Chedrow Castle. But his growing attraction to Awena Owen complicates his case, as does the recent arrival at Chedrow Castle of a raucous group of long-lost, greedy relatives, any one of whom has a motive for murder.

While Augusta Hawke is a successful author of eighteen crime novels, since her husband's death she's been living vicariously through her Jules Maigret-like detective Claude and his assistant Caroline. Then a handsome police detective appears investigating a real-life mystery. Where are her neighbors, the Normans? No one has a clue what's happened - except Augusta. Although she isn't nosy, spending all day staring out the windows for inspiration means...

From deep in the heart of his eighteenth century English manor, millionaire Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk writes mystery novels and torments his four spoiled children with threats of disinheritance. Gathering them all together for a family dinner, he announces his latest blow - a secret elopement. Within hours, eldest son and appointed heir Ruthven is found cleaved to death by a medieval mace. And soon Sir Adrian himself is found slumped over his writing...

"Crime novelists Augusta Hawke expects to be quizzed her on writing skills when she's invited to a dinner party by aspiring writer Callie Moore. What she doesn't expect is to be solving a mystery, but that's just want happens when one guest suddenly dies, and Augusta suspects it is not a heart attack that killed the kindly celebrity doctor..."--

Something sinister is afoot at Totleigh Hall, the showcase of the sleepy English village of Nether Monkslip. Lord and Lady Baaden-Boomethistle have been in residence for some weeks now, and the villagers are hoping for a return to the days when the lord of the manor sprinkled benefits across the village like fairy dust. But a sudden grisly death intervenes, and Max Tudor's talent for sorting through clues is once again called into play.

When the lady of the local manor house is found dead among rumors of a suicide pact with her young lover, handsome vicar Max Tudor lends his MI5 expertise to the ensuing investigation, which is tied to the victim's far-from-bereaved husband.