Convinced that God would save him, John Lee was calm in the face of the executioner at Exeter Prison in 1885. His confidence proved well founded when three times the hangman's trapdoor failed to open, resulting in his reprieve. This collection of crime and punishment oddities ranges from a 13th-century ‘trial by battle’ to a phantom villain at Derby Magistrates Court in 2001.

In their third adventure, Morley, Miriam and Sefton set off to the Lake District to continue researching for the Grand Project, The County Guides, only to encounter murder and mayhem on the Settle to Carlisle Line and a body in an archaeological dig.

A specialist in hiding people and providing them with new identities, the protagonist of this thriller helps a woman in witness protection and finds his secret network of clients across Europe coming under threat from a menacing foe.

Kitty Peck, the young music hall artist, inherits her grandmother's criminal network in this, her second adventure. Set in Belle Époque Paris and Victorian London, Kitty takes a child into her protection, a child who someone badly wants dead.

May 1937: as London prepares to crown a new king, bestselling crime writer Josephine Tey is in town to oversee a BBC radio production. Then a famous broadcaster is found murdered, and Chief Inspector Penrose is called to investigate… Limited Quantity

On a summer night in Conduit Street, London, a woman approaches Joe Trayne and asks him for help with a dead man. She leads him to her flat, then disappears – leaving Joe with a body in a box. First published in 1946.

‘It all began, unpromisingly, with a cat.’ Seymour is sent to Athens in 1912 to investigate a sultan’s poisoned cat and dispel the rumour that the British were trying to kill the sultan and missed their aim.

Lynn Shepherd’s ingenious novel tells the story of a young detective who, in 1850, is hired by the only surviving son of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley to investigate a case of blackmail that develops into something far more disturbing.

A cold case detective, Lotte Meerman comes across an old murder case in which her father led a flawed investigation. Covering up his mistakes, Lotte must now find the real killer before her father is arrested.

In this sixth DS Fiona Griffiths murder case, the victim is an archaeologist who was excavating an Iron Age site; she has been decapitated in what looks like a ritual killing and the crime grows ever more bizarre as Griffiths investigates.

After a car is engulfed in flames on a quiet country road, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Tony Hill are drawn into a dark and twisted web of fear and revenge.

David Harwood moved back to his small-town childhood home; but when he visits his cousin Marla and a new baby that she claims is her own, Marla’s bizarre story reveals dark currents below the surface calm of Promise Falls.

Five women go into the Australian bush on a team-building exercise; only four come back. Alice Russell, the missing woman, is the whistle-blower in Federal Agent Aaron Falk’s latest case, and the secret information she has will have gone with her.

Lord Francis Powerscourt is approached by the Bishop of Lynchester, who has suspicions about the death of a Cathedral Close resident. When a prospective new tenant is poisoned, Powerscourt’s investigation uncovers a trail of corruption leading to the cathedral itself.

In this collection of new stories, Sherlock Holmes lives again to solve another eleven cases that would defeat a lesser sleuth. Among the authors are crime writers Simon Bestwick, Paul Finch, Carole Johnstone and Alison Littlewood.

In 1911, the Second Secretary of the British Embassy in Istanbul is shot and killed while swimming the Dardanelles Strait: a death in decidedly suspicious circumstances.

Venetian police captain Kat Tapo is given her first murder case to investigate in this final part of the Carnivia trilogy. Aided by an American intelligence analyst and a computer genius, she uncovers a web of conspiracy and corruption.

Swedish detective Fabian Risk thought he had left his schooldays behind. Now his former classmates are being murdered in revenge for their childhood sins. But which of the faces in his old class photograph belongs to the killer?

A year after Detective Chief Superintendent Terry Darnell's death, his daughter Stella finds a folder of photographs in his darkroom. The oldest dates back to 1966, when ten-year-old Mary Thornton witnessed something that would haunt her for ever.

A murdered family, hidden under the floorboards of an Irish mill worker's cottage in 1921, is the starting point for DS Katie Maguire's investigation in this thriller, which also sees her attempting to pin down a well-known local villain. Slightly off-mint.

DS Katie Maguire is the investigating detective in this thriller set in the city of Cork where a vigilante is murdering pimps involved in a sex trafficking and prostitution racket.

When a man dies under a late-night train, Stella Darnell suspects murder. With her friend Jack Harmon, whose home in an old water tower offers revealing views across London, she begins to investigate, stirring up questions nobody wants answered.

This third outing for detectives Carrigan and Miller finds them investigating the abduction and murder of a woman in Bayswater, setting them on the trail of a killer who uses the internet to stalk and intimidate his victims before striking.

What if your whole life was a lie? Shortly after her father’s death, Tommie McCloud is at their old home in Texas when she receives a letter from a woman claiming to be her biological mother. In this psychological thriller, the stranger’s letter unravels Tommie’s life.

The murder of a man who was supposed to have already been killed by his wife, Lena, twelve years previously begins the investigation for DI Francis Sadler in this fast-paced thriller. When Lena goes missing, her sister Kat follows the trail.

Psychological profiling suggests that serial killers sometimes begin by killing animals, so it makes sense that Tom Thorne, although a homicide detective, is tasked with catching a particularly brutal cat-killer before he or she starts murdering people.

Five people and a therapist meet every Monday evening to talk about addiction, then one of them is killed. It’s clear that a group member is responsible, but DI Nicola Tanner’s investigation hits a wall – the strict confidentiality of the circle and suspects inured to denial and deception.

In a chilling, twisting psychological thriller, Anna starts to question the circumstances of her parents’ deaths – two shocking suicides, just months apart – but sometimes it’s best to let things lie. By digging up the past, Anna endangers her future.

While investigating a series of organized killings, DI Nicola Tanner’s partner is murdered in their home. Taking over from his bereft colleague, DI Tom Thorne finds himself investigating a world where families will do anything to protect their honour.

Sam Morpeth, with her mother in prison, a younger sister to care for and the benefits system to negotiate, is trapped in the same dangerous web of online blackmail as the risk-taking investigative journalist, Jack Parlabane.

In a collection of short stories described by James Crawford as ‘a tribute to two of our nation’s greatest assets – our crime writing and our built heritage’, twelve of Scotland’s top crime writers, among them Lin Anderson, Val McDermid , Gordon Brown and Ann Cleeves, weave plots of murder and mystery around structures including a 5,000-year-old burial cairn, Bothwell Castle and the Forth Bridge.

Will Hurley, Dublin’s ‘Canal Killer’, is ten years into his prison sentence when the body of a young woman is pulled from the Grand Canal. It looks like a copycat murder and detectives want to speak to Will, but he will only talk to one person: his girlfriend of ten years ago.

Inspired by his mugging-up on Winnie the Pooh for Celebrity Mastermind, Stuart McBride describes his book as ‘the story of what happens to Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel after she was caught being Very, Very Naughty in In the Cold Dark Ground’. Now, the man she was accused of fitting up is freed and back on the streets of Aberdeen – but Roberta knows he is guilty.

Now working in Professional Standards and policing fellow officers, Logan McRae must investigate the death of DI Bell after his body is found in the driver’s seat of a crashed car – although Bell died, and they buried him two years previously. The deeper McRae digs into his former colleague’s past, the more sinister the case becomes.

Returning to work after being shot on duty, Lotte Meerman investigates a skeleton in a left luggage locker at Amsterdam Central Station. The corpse dates back to the Second World War – but is it a clue to more recent crimes?

Lured to a remote farmhouse in rural Québec, Armand Gamache finds himself the beneficiary of an unknown woman’s will. When a body is discovered, he must confront events that led to his suspension from the police force, and the dark secrets in his past.

When the faded film star Faye Marlow returns to her hometown of Whitstable in Kent to open the May Day festivities, her presence is far from welcome. After her corpse is found tied to the maypole, Pearl Nolan must investigate.

While Precious Ramotswe toys with entering local politics, the latest case for the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – involving a ruthless property developer’s plans for a ‘Big Fun Hotel’ - falls to the Agency’s mechanic. When danger looms over his investigation, Precious abandons politics to rescue Charlie.

DCI Karen Pirie happens to be nearby when a body is unearthed along with someone’s long-buried inheritance in the Highlands. At first, the victim is assumed to belong to the distant past; then new evidence suggests otherwise. Nothing is as it seems and Karen is called in to unravel the mystery.

‘Just when you think you’ve seen everything, you get a crucifixion in an abandoned church.’ DI Charlie George and his team set about finding the killer who has crucified a priest and stoned to death a policeman before anyone else dies a martyr’s death.

Crime writer Agatha Christie turns sleuth aboard a liner to Tenerife, instructed by the Secret Service to investigate an agent’s mysterious death. After a troubled heiress falls overboard, the novelist must use her intuition to outwit a deadly enemy.

When East End gangster Eddie Butcher is murdered, DI Carter and DS Willis monitor his funeral in case his violent brother Tony attends. But as the Butchers’ enemies surround him, Carter must confront his own personal connection to the family.

American-born, but now a police Commissioner in Rome, Alex Blume investigates his fourth case: the shooting of a woman who was the only witness to a previous killing. His sole lead is another victim who survived, but awoke from her coma with no memory.

Taken off one case for beating up a suspected human trafficker, Inspector Salgado is sent to investigate a teenager’s death in uptown Barcelona. The boy’s fatal fall appears to be an accident, but Salgado uncovers sinister links between powerful families and two seemingly insoluble cases.

Investigating two different murders with one thing in common – the same rough tattoo on both victims’ legs – DI Lottie Parker’s leads converge on a former children’s home and unsolved murders from decades ago. This was the first of the bestselling Lottie Parker series.