Josephine Bell

> Haltingly, a boy tells his fearful story to Scotland Yard officials - how he alone had witnessed from the vantage point of his commuter train a scene of terror in a dingy room . . . a blood-chilling tableau framed in a lighted window, glimpsed for a moment between patches of fog, and then gone. Chief-Inspector Johnson listens tolerantly, yet official credence can hardly be given to such a tale. Terry Byrnes is an impressionable, imaginative lad. No crime of violence has been reported in the Battersea area, and if the boy has witnessed murder, where is the corpse? But if Scotland Yard is not worried, Janet Lapthorn is; and sometimes a fretful woman can be a powerful agent in the processes of justice. She has a number of questions which demand answers. Why have her letters to her close friend, Felicity Hilton, gone unanswered? Why has Felicity abandoned her husband, Alastair? Why has Alastair lied about his wife's whereabouts? To come straight to the point, where is Felicity Hilton? The evidence is disjointed. The clues are scattered. But slowly the mists of conjecture dissolve - as the police, like patient archaeologists themselves, reconstruct the hideous form and face of an unspeakable crime.

Also published as The Innocent Nobody ever bothered much with the girl who liked to call herself Lesley. She had spent all her life as a parcel being passed between children's homes and foster parents. Certainly no-one cared enough to report the fact when she finally walked out of her foster parents' Midland corner shop and, like so many young hopefuls before her, set out for London. Lesley added a new surname, Rivers, and with a few pilfered pound notes, had not much else to help her get on in a bewildering big city. And that was when she encountered the Holy Group and their depressing but convenient South London hostel. Circumstances have fortunately given Lesley Rivers a well developed sense of self-preservation, and she needs every ounce of this to survive a horrific ceremony presided over by the sect's sinister Ruler. However, when she eventually gets a job in the local health food shop, Lesley is to find that the drama is only just beginning. Josephine Bell tells a disquieting story of a quasi-religious sect and the way it preys on the minds of the immature, the disturbed, and the innocent.

> A car crashes near a provincial English town. The badly injured driver is taken to a hospital where he dies, partly owing to a mistake made by a young resident doctor. The corpse, it turns out, was a con man, long wanted (and often caught) by the police, who are quite content to have him dead. But the error has placed the hapless young doctor's career in jeopardy, and two of his friends, a young surgeon and a journalist, set out to prove that his apparent mistake was actually the result of someone else's deliberate murder plot. Their suspicions become virtual certainties as the young men delve into the con man's murky past and discover many people who might have wished him dead. But trapping the murderer proves to be both a difficult and dangerous mission for the two nonprofessional investigators.

Murder is not considered an essential part of the curriculum - even at a modern English preparatory school; nor did Shakespeare intend Twelfth Night to have a tragic ending. But when the curtain falls after the performance on the first evening of the half-term weekend, one of the cast lies dying a most unnatural death - Sir Toby Belch, who had played the drunk scene in the last act with brilliant realism. Most members of Shakespeare Players Ltd. suspect Lionel Basset, whose arrival in the troupe heralded an outbreak of petty theft. Yet Sonia Fenton behaves quite unpredictably when she learns of her husband's "accident," and Edward Gash, the most talented among them, is oddly embarrassed by the huge bruise on his arm. Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard finds he must make a quick study of Twelfth Night. And with the help of young Bruce Pritchard and Dr. Winthringham - who quietly speculates on the possible effects of internal hemorrhage - the inspector arrives at a startling solution to this enigmatic murder.

> The port area of London's River Thames is a tough neighbourhood but it is nevertheless shocked when Mary Holland is found dead, an apparent suicide using Lysol poison. Detective Sergeant Chandler believes it was murder and he makes investigations, but then he unaccountably disappears ...

He Was Taught How To Kill Even behind bars, serial killer Harvey Day Smith exudes menace. Psychologist Jolene Granger has agreed to hear his dying confession, vowing not to let the monster inside her head. And Harvey has secrets to share--about bodies that were never found, and about the apprentice who is continuing his grisly work. . . And Now He'll Teach Them He buries his victims alive the way his mentor Harvey did, relishing their final screams as the earth rains down. And as one last gift to the only father he knew, he'll make the most perfect kill of all. How To Die Everything about this investigation is unnerving Jo, from Harvey's fascination with her to the fact that she's working alongside Texas Ranger Brody Winchester, her ex-husband. Harvey's protege is growing bolder and more vicious every day. And soon the trail of shallow graves will lead them to the last place Jo expected, and to the most terrifying truth of all. . .

The sudden death of a small child in a crib is an occurrence as inexplicable and unexpected as it is shocking. But when such an event comes at the moment when incentive and opportunity for crime all conspire, the temptation for an already weak and greedy person becomes an ultimate opportunity. This was certainly the case for Mrs. Florence Bennet, nee Maisie Atkins, an actress past her prime, with a life of comfort and security totally threatened. She married to provide a rich older man an heir and now that heir was dead. When a violent crime takes place twenty years later, Mrs. Bennet's schemes come back to haunt her. With the unearthing of a child's teething ring, a police investiga- tion begins which involves young Philip Bennet, his ebullient Aunt Amy Tupper (whom we met in Wolf! Wolf!) and Philip's girlfriend Carlotta. Their search for truth takes them back to the Italy of the 1950s and leads to a climax involving such a particular and individual brand of bravery that it answers the question of inheritance once and for all.

She has nothing left to loseLike all cliches, this one is true at its core. Racked with grief over her son Danny's brutal death, Sarah Patterson steels herself to take revenge on his murderer. When detective Mac Donovan stops her from shooting Samuel Tate on the courthouse steps, he risks his career--and the case against Tate--to protect her.With a serial child-killer walking free, New Orleans is taut with anticipation of his next savage crime and the police and FBI are helpless. But Tate has developed a sick fascination with Sarah Patterson--and he'll kill to keep her attention. With Mac's help, Sarah positions herself at the center of a dangerous operation designed to stop Tate for good.Nothing can bring Danny back...but Sarah is hell-bent on ensuring no mother suffers as she has at the hands of Samuel Tate.

A boy tending goats on a lonely mountainside thinks it a fine joke to cry "wolf" and watch the villagers come running--until the day a real wolf appears and no one answers his call.

> Sally Combs had just finished a temporary job as a secretary to her uncle in Bermuda. As a farewell present he arranged for her to go on a cruise round the Caribbean. It seemed an ideal holiday, but the night before the ship arrived in Bermuda, Felicity Fennister, one of the passengers, suddenly disappeared. At first no one seemed at all anxious to discover the whereabouts of the missing woman - not even when Sally finds what looks like a suicide note. As sinister events build up into a pattern of violence, Sally is forced to realise that almost anyone on board could hold the key to the puzzle.

Retired nurse Hallett arrives in the fourth floor amenity ward of a small London hospital, where her sharp tongue and bad behavior quickly make her unpopular with the staff and other patients. The medical staff is already feeling pressed--the lay support people are disrupting service with a nasty strike. When Sister Hallett dies, is it murder or an accident? Where is Moll finding her drugs? Interesting characters, claustrophobic setting.

A book in the Henry Frost series >Who first cast Celia Wainwright in the role of Witch of Upfold, that little village in the Sussex Weald? And how and why did she disappear one night in 1953? What was the connection between her and young Julian Farnham, and why, on the day after she disappeared, did her husband suddenly leave their home at Mulberry Cottage never to return? What, in fact, is the mystery of Mulberry Cottage? Why did it remain empty for nearly ten years? And the rumours - those whispers of witchcraft and murder - are they all true?

> When the car of eminent sociologist Sir John Drewson is stolen from an airport car park, Detective Chief Superintendent Mitchell quickly links the theft to a failed wages snatch in south London. But only a few days later a body is found in the boot of the Jaguar, and not long after that a young woman drowns near to Sir John's home. >Returning from his trip abroad to a double murder enquiry, Sir John and those that surround him find themselves embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game of discovery and evasion. As suspicion clouds the air, time is running out to catch the killer.