Hilariously satirizing Britain’s education system, a mystery at the Burleigh School involves the inept leadership of its headmaster, Edward Crumwallis, and the evil pupil he chooses as his next headboy—sneaky sycophant Hillary Frome.

England's celebrated, multiple-award-winning master crime novelist returns with a witty and poignant chiller about the evil of gossip and the sin of indifference. Father Christopher Pardoe is a good priest. He cares about his parishioners. He is also a human being -- and is thus saddled with man's inherent weaknesses. Is it a bit odd, then, how much time the good Father has been spending at the house of a certain young, single mother called Julie Norris? And why, during each of his visits, are Julie's bedroom curtains always closed? Julie looks to be pregnant again. Just who could the father be? As nasty rumors begin to scorch the parish phone lines, Father Pardoe is suspended from St. Catherine's, and Cosmo Horrocks, the West Yorkshire Chronicle's shameless, muckraking journalist, exploits the story in a big way. Nothing goes over better than a juicy sex-and-the-church scandal, except, perhaps, murder. Do Father Pardoe and Julie protest too much? Why did Julie's...

Assigned as British Princess Helena’s personal bodyguard, Scotland Yard Detective Perry Trethowan struggles to defend his own virtue against the lascivious princess while tracking down the methodical killer who is murdering her numerous lovers.

Mystery and black comedy collide in this collection of sixteen stories with crime, wit, and twists to spare.

Inspector Alan Grant searches for the identity of a man killed in the line at a theater and for the identity of the killer--whom no one saw.A long line had formed for the standing-room-only section of the Woffington Theatre. London's favorite musical comedy of the past two years was finishing its run at the end of the week. Suddenly, the line began to move, forming a wedge before the open doors as hopeful theatergoers nudged their way forward. But one man, his head sunk down upon his chest, slowly sank to his knees and then, still more slowly, keeled over on his face. Thinking he had fainted, a spectator moved to help, but recoiled in horror from what lay before him: the man in the queue had a small silver dagger neatly plunged into his back. With the wit and guile that have made Inspector Grant a favorite of mystery fans, the inspector sets about discovering just how a murder occurred among so many witnesses, none of whom saw a thing.

From Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger-winning crime writer . . .With A Fall from Grace, Robert Barnard triumphs once again with a witty tale of family discord and murder.Detective Inspector Charlie Peace and his wife, Felicity, are shocked when Felicity's difficult dad, Rupert Coggenhoe, suddenly announces that he's moving north to their Yorkshire village. Felicity has never much liked her father, and to have him as a near-neighbor fills her with foreboding. The boorish old man has always loved to impress the ladies, young and old, by exaggerating his modest success as a novelist. True to form, soon after his move to Slepton Edge he surrounds himself with adoring females, including a precocious, theatrical teenager named Anne Michaels. Rupert and Anne could make a lethal combination.Rumors fly, but Felicity convinces herself that Rupert would do nothing seriously wrong. He can be annoying and outrageous but he's not a criminal. S...

Hiding their father’s insanity after the death of their mother in order to keep their family together, two resourceful adolescents, Matthew and Annie, find their plans thwarted when they discover a body in their backyard.

A man’s home is his castle, but for Percy Spender that motto has been taken just a bit too literally. After the sudden death of first one distant relative and then another, the amiable Perce has become the 12th Earl of Ellesmere. And his home, no longer a cozy council flat, is now the drafty, imposing Chetton Hall, complete with more bedrooms than Perce can count and an army of servants. Frankly, all these fancy trappings make Perce itch. He’d just as soon sell up, buy a comfy cottage, and put a bundle on the ponies. However, some of his mates and family members have other ideas. And the sad fact is that an Unfortunate Accident can happen to anyone, even a lord of the realm.

From Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger-winning crime writer . . .Some memories are better left buried in the past. Well-known author Graham Broadbent has managed to repress one particularly dangerous memory for many years, but a trip home to a school reunion brings back the shocking reality of a desperate youthful passion.It all begins with a knock on Graham's hotel door. His visitor is nineteen-year-old Christa, who read in the newspaper that he would be in town. She introduces herself as his long-lost daughter. His daughter? It's true that many years ago Graham had a fling with Christa's mother, an exquisitely alluring school actress named Peggy Somers. The dates don't work, though. Graham maintains he was out of the country when Christa was conceived. He couldn't be her father.He's almost sorry that he can't claim Christa, a lively young woman who intrigues him in a strange way. And what about Christa's mother, the f...

From master of mystery Robert Barnard comes a brilliantly witty and piercingly observant new suspense novel featuring one of the most dysfunctional families ever to grace crime fiction.Meet the Cantelos of Leeds, England. To call the Cantelos dysfunctional is actually a wild understatement. But is one of them also a killer?Clarissa Cantelo, a skilled clairvoyant, apparently thought so. Believing that her sixteen-year-old nephew, Merlyn Docherty, was in peril, she sent him into hiding in Italy, far away from the rest of her family. She told them he was dead. It was safer that way.Now Clarissa herself has died, and Merlyn, a successful lawyer and civil servant who still lives abroad, has returned to Leeds to claim his inheritance. First, he must prove his identity. Is he really Merlyn or, as some of his long-lost relations say they suspect, is he an imposter?Merlyn doesn't mind confirming his identity, but he'd at least like to move into the house that Aunt Clarissa lef...

At the age of three, Kit Philipson was abducted whilst on holiday with his family in Italy. He grew up adored by his adopted parents but as his mother lay dying she confessed her terrible secret and gave him the details of his real mother. Isla Novello is ecstatic to be reunited with her long-lost son but there are some members of the family who are less than thrilled. And why are they all so reluctant for him to investigate his disappearance all those years ago? Kit is determined to find out the truth about his abduction and the murky motives that lay behind it. But he has no idea just how harrowing his investigation will turn out to be.

Master of mystery Robert Barnard, internationally acclaimed for his suspenseful, witty literary gems, cleverly mixes past and present in A Cry from the Dark, an intriguing tour de force sweeping from 1930s Australia to contemporary London. Bettina Whitelaw has come a long way from her childhood in the little outback town of Bundaroo, Australia. Many years have passed, a lifetime really, but she's never forgotten what happened there on the evening that changed her life forever.How could she forget the school dance, her taunting classmates, dancing with the strange but brilliant English boy, Hughie Naismyth? How could she forget what happened next, when, overheated and exhilarated by the music and the moment, she wandered off alone into a secluded, wooded area? Now a renowned, elderly author living in London's elegant Holland Park, Bettina faces a flood of memories as she works on her memoirs, even though her focus is more on the frightening things that are h...

How far would a child go to rid himself of a despised parent? Or a man of the cloth to be elected pope? From murderous ministers and conniving cardinals to the dark imagination of a schoolboy and the suspicions of an ageing Mr Mozart, this unique collection of Robert Barnard's highly acclaimed short stories takes the reader on a journey of murder, mystery and intrigue with some of his finest – and darkest – literary creations. Including the CWA Short Story Award winner 'Sins of Scarlet', a story of sudden death in the Vatican, this compelling collection proves that, whether re-imagining the life of cultural icons or spying an opportunity for morbid crimes amidst events grand and domestic, Robert Barnard is the master of the short mystery story.

What an honor - to become trustee of an English stately home museum. Yorkshire Detective Inspector Charlie Peace's wife, Felicity, is initially thrilled when she's asked to join the board that oversees Walbrook Manor, an eighteenth-century mansion that's now part of a charitable trust. She's in for some surprises. With its shabby salons and drafty hallways, Walbrook shows signs of the financial burden it caused its recent owners, members of the related Quarles and Fiennes families, known more for feuds than for affectionate familial ties. They are known also for shadowy intrigues, great and small, some of which may emerge now that Walbrook and its archives are open to the public. The revelations could be devastating . . . and dangerous. Rupert Fiennes and Sir Stafford Quarles represent two lines of Walbrook's lords of the manor. Rupert seems relieved to have relinquished the estate to charitable hands, while Sir Stafford clings with perhaps unseemly pride to his position as chairman of the Walbrook Manor Trust Board. A tentative peace reigns, but when the wreck of a car and the remains of a body turn up in a nearby lake, it soon becomes clear that one of Walbrook's grimmest secrets may date to the years between the two world wars and may involve something much worse than mere malice. With police resources focused on more timely cases, Charlie and Felicity are left to discover that old sins are never forgotten, that 'family' means more than a slot on the ancestral tree, and that sometimes there can be a good reason for murder. Suspenseful, witty, and, as always, superbly insight-ful, A Charitable Body shows acclaimed master of mystery Robert Barnard at his clever best.Genre: Mystery

A mysterious new game has appeared in arcades across the Pacific Northwest. It’s called Phantasos, and it promises a state-of-the-art virtual reality experience. There’s only one problem: everyone who plays Phantasos inevitably falls victim to bizarre nightmares, dark hallucinations, and a string of very, very bad luck. Are these delusions all in the player’s mind? Or did something start to follow them the day they played Phantasos?