TH - 1270/1 | The Crow Trap (Vera Stanhope #1) by Ann Cleeves

At the isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal...

For team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp.
Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own.
And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide...

When Rachael arrives at the cottage, however, she is horrified to discover the body of her friend Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide - a verdict Rachael finds impossible to accept.

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TH - 1270/2 | Telling Tales (Vera Stanhope #2) by Ann Cleeves

It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still at large.

For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend--and of that fearful winter's day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch.

As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount. But are people afraid of the killer or of their own guilty pasts?

With each person's story revisited, the Inspector begins to suspect that some deadly secrets are threatening to unfurl.

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TH - 1270/3 | Hidden Depths (Vera Stanhope #3) by Ann Cleeves

On a hot summer on the Northumberland coast, Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers.

This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued.

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TH - 1270/4 | Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope #4) by Ann Cleeves

When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she’s uncovered a simple death from natural causes. Then Vera spots ligature marks around the victim’s throat – death is never that simple.

Vera revels being back in charge of an investigation again, working with Sergeant Joe Ashworth to find a motive.

The duo investigates the victim’s past and discovers a shocking case, involving a young child. Probing the secretive community, they try to stop a killer in the present who can’t seem to let go of the past.

With pitch-perfect writing, a finely tuned mystery, and a protagonist with a complex past of her own, Silent Voices is a stand out penned by one of Britain's most successful mystery writers.

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TH - 1270/5 | The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope #5) by Ann Cleeves

DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbors keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation, and somehow bonds have formed. When one of them goes missing, Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writer’s House, a country retreat where aspiring authors work on their stories. Things get complicated when a body is discovered, and Vera’s neighbor is found with a knife in her hand.

- Shortlisted for the Specsavers Bestseller Dagger -

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TH - 1270/6 | Harbour Street (Vera Stanhope #6) by Ann Cleeves

Harbour Street is the sixth book in Ann Cleeves' crime novel series VERA - which is a major TV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn on ITV.

As the snow falls thickly on Newcastle, the shouts and laughter of Christmas revellers break the muffled silence. Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along in the jostling crowd onto the Metro.

But when the train is stopped due to the bad weather, and the other passengers fade into the swirling snow, Jessie notices that an old lady hasn't left the train: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed as she sat on the crowded train. Nobody, including the policeman himself, sees the stabbing take place. Margaret's murderer is seemingly invisible; her killing motiveless. Why would anyone want to harm this reserved, elegant lady?

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TH - 1270/7 | The Moth Catcher (Vera Stanhope #7) by Ann Cleeves

This case was different from anything Vera had ever worked before. Two bodies, connected but not lying together. And nothing made her feel as alive as murder.

Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they're away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley - a beautiful, lonely place to die.

DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, with her detectives Holly and Joe. When they look round the attic of the big house - where Patrick has a flat - she finds the body of a second man. All the two victims have in common is a fascination with moths - catching these beautiful, rare creatures.

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TH - 1270/8 | The Seagull (Vera Stanhope #8) by Ann Cleeves

"Definitely one of the best crime novels of 2017."―Reviewing the Evidence

A visit to her local prison brings DI Vera Stanhope face to face with an old enemy: former detective superintendent, and now inmate, John Brace. Brace was convicted of corruption and involvement in the death of a gamekeeper - and Vera played a key part in his downfall.

Now, Brace promises Vera information about the disappearance of Robbie Marshall, a notorious wheeler-dealer who disappeared in the mid-nineties, if she will look out for his daughter and grandchildren. He tells her that Marshall is dead, and that his body is buried close to St Mary's Island in Whitley Bay. However, when a search team investigates, officers find not one skeleton, but two.

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TH - 1270/9 | The Darkest Evening (Vera Stanhope #9) by Ann Cleeves

- AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -

On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets off for her home in the hills. Though the road is familiar, she misses a turning and soon becomes lost and disorientated. A car has skidded off the narrow road in front of her, its door left open, and she stops to help. There is no driver to be seen, so Vera assumes that the owner has gone to find help. But a cry calls her back: a toddler is strapped in the back seat.

Vera takes the child and, driving on, she arrives at a place she knows well. Brockburn is a large, grand house in the wilds of Northumberland, now a little shabby and run down. It’s also where her father, Hector, grew up. Inside, there’s a party in full swing: music, Christmas lights and laughter. Outside, unbeknownst to the revelers, a woman lies dead in the snow.

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TH - 1259 | Burial of Ghosts by Ann Cleeves

Burial of Ghosts is a page-turning stand alone novel from Ann Cleeves, creator of the astounding Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.

Twenty-five-year-old Lizzie Bartholomew has had more than her fair share of struggles. Abandoned as a baby, she spent her childhood moving between foster homes. Now she is running away from her past ...

A holiday in Morocco seems to be the perfect escape. Especially when she meets Philip, a fellow tourist who distracts her from her troubles. After a brief affair, Lizzie returns to England, to a solicitor's letter.

Philip Samson has died. In his will, he has left Lizzie a gift of £15,000. But there are conditions attached to this unexpected legacy that will soon force Lizzie to confront terrifying secrets from her past life ...

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TH - 1251/1 | A Lesson In Dying (Inspector Ramsay #1) by Ann Cleeves

Heppleburn, once a Northumberland pit village, has always been close-knit, friendly and safe - until the murder of headmaster Harold Medburn. Suddenly, the village seems unfamiliar, uncomfortable.

The school caretaker and his daughter pursue their own route of investigation, which should have made Inspector Ramsay's job a little easier.

But hampered by false leads, powerless to pre-empt the killer's next move, and overshadowed by the evil atmosphere of All Hallow's Eve, Ramsay finds his own reputation is on the line...

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TH - 1251/2 | Murder In My Backyard (Inspector Ramsay #2) by Ann Cleeves

No one in Heppleburn has a bad word to say about Alice Parry ...
... But here she is, murdered in her own backyard on a bitter St. David’s Eve.

And when detective Stephen Ramsay starts asking questions in the village, a more ambiguous picture begins to emerge.
Yes, old Mrs. Parry was loved by everyone, but sometimes her kindness had caused trouble.
Yes, her two nephews were devoted to her, but they didn’t really want her interfering in their rather complicated personal lives.
Even among her neighbours, Alice Parry’s helpfulness had sometimes misfired; and after her death, tension tight as a clenched fist grips the uneasy village.

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TH - 1251/3 | A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (Inspector Ramsay #3) by Ann Cleeves

For Dorothea Cassidy Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own, and would plan to visit people she wanted to see as a welcome respite from the routine duties that being a vicar’s wife entailed.
But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. It was the day that Dorothea Cassidy was strangled.

As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea’s last hours.
He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases – a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care – and even her close family have their secrets to hide.

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TH - 1251/4 | Killjoy (Inspector Ramsay #4) by Ann Cleeves

Gabriella Preston is found in the boot of a car, lying curled on her side like a child asleep. She is dead. The car belongs to Gus Lynch. Gus Lynch is the director of Hallowgate's Youth Theatre, Gabriella his female lead.

Inspector Ramsay and Sergeant Hunter are called in to assist the local police who have their hands full with an outbreak of joy-riding.

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TH - 1251/5 | The Healers (Inspector Ramsay #5) by Ann Cleeves

The local New Age health center was making a killing.
Two stranglings lead Inspector Stephen Ramsay to the local center where the victims were known.
Meanwhile, the murderer quietly observes Ramsay--planning a new slaying.

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TH - 1251/6 | The Baby-Snatcher (Inspector Ramsay #6) by Ann Cleeves

When fifteen-year-old Marilyn Howe turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep he has little choice but to invite her in. Marilyn and her mother, Kathleen, are a familiar sight around Heppleburn, a strangely inseparable couple. But Kathleen has unaccountably failed to return home that evening, and Marilyn is fearful for her mother’s safety.

Ramsay takes the young girl home, to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously.

- From the author of Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series -

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TH - 530/1 | The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) by Ann Cleeves

For the first time in 20 years, Ann Cleeves—international bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—embarks on a gripping new series.

In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. Once loved and cherished, the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.

Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

The case calls Matthew back into the community he thought he had left behind, as deadly secrets hidden at its heart are revealed, and his past and present collide.

An astonishing new novel told with compassion and searing insight, The Long Call will captivate fans of Vera and Shetland, as well as new readers.

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TH - 366/1 | Raven Black (Shetland Island #1) by Ann Cleeves

Winner of Britain’s coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to mystery readers.

Raven Black begins on New Year’s Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

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TH - 366/2 | White Nights (Shetland Island #2) by Ann Cleeves

The electrifying follow up to the award-winning Raven Black

Raven Black received crime fiction’s highest monetary honor, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. Now Detective Jimmy Perez is back in an electrifying sequel.

It’s midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws an elaborate party to launch an exhibition of her work at The Herring House, a gallery on the beach.

The party ends in farce when one the guests, a mysterious Englishman, bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where he’s come from. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter, and Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that the man has been murdered. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bella’s musician nephew, is murdered, too.

A stunning second installment in the acclaimed Shetland Island Quartet, White Nights is sure to garner American raves for international sensation Ann Cleeves.

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TH - 366/3 | Red Bones (Shetland Island #3) by Ann Cleeves

An island shrouded in mist and a community with secrets buried in the past . . .

When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find - or a more contemporary mystery?

Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson - his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.

The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.

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