Katherine John

This fast-paced action thriller is a multi-layered story that spans eight centuries, from medieval Germany and Prussia to present day Poland and USA centred on the legend of the Amber Knight - a beloved relic that inspired generations until the Nazis stole it. Created in 1232 during The Teutonic Crusade when the heroic knight, Helmut von Mau, dies in battle at Elblag. When the town is burned and the amber in the treasury melts and is poured into Helmut's sarcophagus, covering his body and creating the Amber Knight. Present day Gdansk. Adam Salen, director of a museum trust receives photographs of the Amber Knight which disappeared in 1945, and a demand for 15 million dollars. His assistant, Magda, believes that, given a corpse, amber and armour the knight could be recreated. Adam and Magda want the knight for the museum, but when a mafia hit man is found dead on Adam's doorstep and more corpses are discovered in woods near Hitler's Wolf's lair, it seems like there may be truth behind the myth that death awaits every unbeliever who looks upon Helmut's face.

Jubilee Street - the haunt of addicts and vagrants is a part of town to avoid at all costs, especially when it becomes the stalking ground of a brutal and ruthless murderer. A drunken down and out is the first casualty, mutilated and burned alive but his grisly death raises even more problems for the investigating officers, Sergeants Trevor Joseph and Peter Collins. They discover that their victim died two years earlier. So who is the dead man? And what was the motive for the bizarre crime? While they seek a killer in the dark urban underworld, the tally of corpses grows and the only certainty is that they can trust no man’s face as his own.

In the chilly half-light of dawn a bizarre pierrot figure waits in the shadows of a deserted stretch of motorway. The costumed hitchhiker’s victim is a passing motorist. The murder, cold-blooded, brutal. Without motive. Doctors at the local hospital Tim and Daisy Sherringham are blissfully happy. The perfect couple. When an emergency call rouses Tim early one morning, he vanishes on the way from their flat to the hospital. And Daisy is plunged into a nightmare of terror and doubt . . .

"Rida is an orphan out of California who dances for the troops in the USO. Spencer is a naval officer with roots deep in New England's upper crust. They meet during World War II at an Officer's Club dance, and Spencer might have been dissuaded if he saw just one engagement ring on her finger, but instead, he sees four. The courtship is easy, Rida wins him and wears his ring alone. But Rida is a wild card, and Spencer's family can't accept her unconventional approach to marriage, motherhood, and life. Even Rida's four daughters struggle to understand her, but for them it becomes a quest -- to untangle the mystery of their stubborn, off-beat, clear-sighted, loving and above all mesmerizing mother. Award-winning author Cynthia Voigt has penned a novel for readers who grew up loving her Newbery Award-winning novels for children and young adults. By Any Name features an indelible woman who sees lines as meant to be crossed, changing the lives of all who come into contact with her indefatigable spirit." -- From publisher's description.

Compton Castle is a Victorian psychiatric hospital long overdue for demolition. Its warrens of rooms and acres of grounds, originally designed as a sanctuary for the mentally ill, now provide the ideal stalking ground for a serial killer. Physically and mentally battered after his last case (Without Trace), Sergeant Trevor Joseph is a temporary inmate – but the hospital loses all therapeutic benefit when a corpse is dug out of a flowerbed. Then more bodies are found; young, female and both linked to the hospital. Everyone within the mouldering walls is in danger while a highly unpredictable malevolence remains at large. And, as patients and staff are interrogated by the police, the apparently motiveless killer watches and waits for the opportunity to strike again . . .

Dai Morgan has the body of a man and the mind of a child. He lived with his mother in the Mid Wales village of Llan, next door to bright, beautiful 19 year old Anna Harris. The vicar found Anna's naked, battered body in the churchyard one morning. The police discovered Anna's bloodstained earring in Dai's pocket. The judge gave Dai life. After ten years in gaol Dai appealed against his sentence and was freed. Sergeants Trevor Joseph and Peter Collins are sent to Llan to reopen the case. But the villagers refuse to believe Dai innocent. The Llan police do not make mistakes or allow murderers to walk free. Do they?

> Around the breakfast table at Friars Cross sit Matthew Barry, squire of Wampish village and host, Miss Barry, his half-sister and housekeeper, his lepidopterist son Edward, and five of their guests. But this morning the usually hearty meal and cheerful conversation are somewhat subdued, for the sixth member of the party is upstairs - dead. >As you would expect in a classic whodunnit, no one in the household escapes the obligatory interview in the library and everyone at Friars Cross has a theory about the crime. That is, perhaps, with the exception of the Reverend Joseph Colchester, the narrator of the story, whose unwavering Christian spirit prevents him from contemplating evil. Who can possibly be the murderer? Colonel Lawrence is a blundering idiot; Phyllis Winter is of a frail and hysterical disposition; Mrs Fairfax and Judith Grant seem to have no motive; the Barrys all have alibis. So did the butler, who has unfortunately embraced socialism, do it? And can a private investigator make a correct deduction when he is in love with one of his suspects? >Romilly and Katherine John's superbly crafted novel repeatedly surprises the reader with the most unexpected twists and turns of plot, and at the same time perfectly evokes the delightful conventions of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Death by Request will keep even the best armchair sleuth guessing right up to the last pages. >Romilly John, poet, writer and seventh child of Augustus and Dorelia John, met Katherine, a distinguished translator, at Cambridge where he was reading engineering and she languages. They married in 1929 and Death by Request their only crime novel, was published four years later.