M. C Beaton

When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiance home to Lochdubh, everyone in town is delighted - except for love-smitten Hamish Macbeth. But affairs of the heart will have to wait.

Hamish's holiday at a health farm on Eileencraig isn't quite what he expected when Morag Todd is found at the foot of a cliff with a broken neck. He must enliven his distinctively sleepy style of policing in order to solve the death of a snob.

Cotswolds inhabitants are used to bad weather, but the night sky is especially foggy as Rory and Molly Harris, the new vicar and his wife, drive slowly home from a dinner party in their village of Sumpton Harcourt. They struggle to see the road ahead - but then screech to a halt. Right in front of them, aglow in the headlights of their car, a body hangs from a lightning-blasted tree at the edge of town. But it's not suicide; Margaret Darby, an elderly...

No one in Lochdubh expects Dorothy to stay for long. She is, after all, entirely unsuitable. She's an uptown girl, used to big city life in Glasgow. She'll never fit in. And how is that work-shy rogue Hamish Macbeth supposed to get anything done when his new assistant is such a distraction? The village needs a police sergeant who can get on with the job, not one who's constantly swooning over his pretty young constable. Then comes a brutal murder...

Nobody loves an honest man, or that was what police sergeant Hamish Macbeth tried to tell newcomer Paul English. Paul attended church in Lochdubh. He told the minister, Mr Wellington, that his sermons were boring. He told tweedy Mrs Wellington that she was too fat. Angela Brody was told her detective stories were pap for the masses and it was time she wrote literature instead. He accused Hamish of having dyed his fiery red hair. He told Jessie Currie...

Meet Agatha Raisin, high-flying public relations boss turned village sleuth. After her many years of bullying and cajoling others, her early retirement to a picture-perfect village in the Cotswolds is a dream come true.

A visit to the local village fete for a spot of fun and relaxation turns into a nightmare for Agatha Raisin when she discovers the body of the local landowner in the woods - with an arrow in his chest and his trousers round his ankles. At first her old adversary, Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, declares the death a tragic accident, believing the victim has been hit by a stray arrow from an archery demonstration. Agatha is convinced the man was murdered...

Agatha Raisin believes the village vet has taken a shine to her, but before romance can bloom, he is killed in an accident. Oh well, there is still her neighbour, and perhaps a common interest like a murder investigation will bring them together.

Scottish detective, Hamish Macbeth, is called upon to investigate the murder of an extremely unpopular woman in the remote village of Lochdubh.

Agatha Raisin's detective agency has become so successful she decides to take a well-earned break. She helps organise the church fete, where dark forces are lurking behind the innocent fun. Several of the offerings in the jam-tasting booth turn out to be poisoned and the festive entertainment becomes the scene of two murders.