M. C. Beaton

This time it's the local gardener, George Marston, she has her eye on. But competition for his attention abounds. With her shameless determination Agatha will do anything to get her man - including footing the bill for a charity ball in town just for the chance to dance with him. But when George is a no-show Agatha goes looking for him - and finds he has been murdered, having been bitten by a poisonous snake and buried in a compost heap. Agatha and...

Incomer Gloria French is at first welcomed in the Cotswold village of Piddlebury. She seems like a do-gooder par excellence, raising funds for the church and caring for the elderly. But she has a bad habit of borrowing things and not giving them back, so when she is discovered dead, poisoned by a bottle of elderberry wine, folk in the village don't

A dead employer's legacy of 5000 allows spinster Hannah Pym to resign from housekeeping and find adventure travelling the English countryside by stagecoach. But adventure soon finds Miss Pym in the form of Miss Emily Freemantle.

Pete is always able to find work in the Scottish Highlands, until one day when Police Constable Hamish Macbeth notices blood dripping onto the floor of a villager's fireplace, and a body stuffed inside the chimney. The town of Lochdubh is sure Pete is the culprit, but Hamish doesn't believe that he is capable of committing murder. Originally publis

Recently married to James Lacey, Agatha quickly finds out that love is not all it's cracked up to be. After a fight down the local pub James vanishes - a bloodstain the only clue to his fate - and Agatha is prime suspect.