North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder - Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed. His daughter Eve is a glassblower, and the murder weapon is a shard of one of her broken vases. Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his...

For one long hot summer in Devon, three families are sharing one very big house in the country. The Herreras: made up of two tired parents, three grumbling children and one promiscuous dog; the Littles: he's loaded (despite two divorces and five kids), she's gorgeous, but maybe the equation for a truly happy marriage is a bit more complicated than that; and the Browns, who seem oddly jumpy around people, but especially each other. By the pool, new...

Devon, 1954. The villagers of Burracombe pull together to help each other though the tough times but, this summer, it's time to celebrate love and new life. There are a few surprises to come, however, before anyone can walk up the aisle. It's been a long, hard winter in Burracombe. At Buracombe Barton, Hilary Napier is doing her best to care for her father and keep the estate ticking along, all the while longing for a man she cannot have. She welcomes...

1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number.

In the village of Burracombe, 'Dig for Victory' is more than just a wartime slogan. While the young men are away, everyone at home knows the war effort needs them too. Whether it's Land Girls on the farms, wives and mothers having to make do and mend, or the villagers knowing how to stretch rations to keep spirits bright, there is always something to be done to help. When the Barton is requisitioned as a children's home for war orphans, all of Burracombe...

When a skeleton is discovered on a Devon smallholding, DS Wesley Peterson, a keen amateur archaeologist, is intrigued by the possibility that it is a Viking corpse, buried in keeping with ancient traditions. But he has a rather more urgent crime to solve - the disappearance of a Danish tourist.

Serpent's Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path nearby, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The woman had been house-sitting at Serpent's Point and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was conducting an investigation of her own into unsolved missing persons cases. Could these enquires have led...

A teenage girl is strangled and left for dead by an attacker she describes as having the head of a dog. Then another body is found mutilated and wrapped in a white linen sheet. DI Wesley Peterson suspects that the killer is performing an ancient ritual linked to Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of death and mummification.

Little Marcus Fallbrook was kidnapped in 1976, and when he never returned home his grieving family assumed the worst - 30 years later, teenage singing sensation Leah Wakefield has suffered the same fate. DI Peterson must figure out whether the same kidnapper is responsible, but the plot deepens when Marcus suddenly reappears.

When the body of Pauline Brent is found hanging from a yew tree in a local graveyard, DS Wesley Peterson immediately suspects foul play. Then history provides him with a clue. Wesley's archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, has excavated a corpse at his nearby dig - a young woman who, local legend has it, had been publicly hanged from the very same tree before being buried on unhallowed ground five centuries ago. Wesley is now forced to consider the possibility...