

UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND AUTHOR · DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY · FICTION
Josephine Bell
Also known as: Doris Bell Collier Ball
Josephine is a female name. It is the English version of the French name Joséphine, itself a female variant of the name Joseph , which is ultimately derived from the Hebrew name Yosef (Hebrew: יוֹסֵף), meaning "he shall add/grow".
Most acclaimed

Bones in the Barrow
> 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.

A Deadly Place to Stay
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.

No escape
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. . .