Recommendations based on "Hare Sitting Up"

Agatha Christie's ingenious murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Nick Buckley was an unusual name for a pretty young woman. But then she had led an unusual life. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed. Upon discovering a bullet-hole in Nick's sun hat, Hercule Poirot decides the girl needs his protection. At the same time, he begins to unravel the mystery of a murder that hasn't been committed. Yet.

Police Sergeant William South has a good reason to shy away from murder investigations: he is a murderer himself.A methodical, diligent, and exceptionally bright detective, South is an avid birdwatcher and trusted figure in his small town on the rugged Kentish coast. He also lives with the deeply buried secret that, as a child in Northern Ireland, he may have killed a man. When a fellow birdwatcher is found murdered in his remote home, South's world flips.The culprit seems to be a drifter from South's childhood; the victim was the only person connecting South to his early crime; and a troubled, vivacious new female sergeant has been relocated from London and assigned to work with South. As our hero investigates, he must work ever-harder to keep his own connections to the victim, and his past, a secret.The Birdwatcher is British crime fiction at its finest; a stirring portrait of flawed, vulnerable investigators; a meticulously constructed mystery; and a primal story of fear, loyalty and vengeance.**Longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

Charlie Leathers was not the most popular man in the charming English village of Ferne Basset, but few people seemed to hate him enough to murder him. Still, that was his fate one night, and it brings Inspector Barnaby to the scene to investigate. What Barnaby doesn't know is that before his death, Charlie witnessed what might have been the suicide--or murder--of a young woman whose troubles with the law have landed her in the home of a local retired minister and his none-too-pleased wife. Now a man is dead, a girl is missing, and a town is in chaos as long-kept secrets begin to unravel, with deadly repercussions.

A violent past haunts Sir Walter Maltravers, the wealthy lord of Ingoldby Hall. As a commander during the War of the Roses, he fought alongside Edward IV at the bloody, fratricidal Battle of Towton. Decades earlier, and thousands of miles away, he served in the fanatical bodyguard of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus.There, as Turkish Jannisaries breached Constantinople’s walls and set the city aflame, Sir Walter committed what may have been an unforgivable sin: instead of defending the emperor with his last drop of blood, Maltravers fled. But not before scooping up all the treasure he could carry, including the Lacrima Christi---a giant ruby said to be a holy relic of incalculable value.When the ruby disappears from Canterbury’s Franciscan monastery, Sir Walter fears the emperor’s vengeful loyalists---the Athanatoi---have tracked him to his estate. He doesn’t have much time to ponder his dilemma. Crawling on his bare knees to the shrine at the center of his enormous private hedge maze, the penitent Sir Walter encounters his axe-wielding killer. . . . Maltravers’s head turns up days later, impaled on a pole.Gossips in Canterbury whisper of the fabled Athanatoi, come to claim their bloody due from a traitor. But apothecary Kathryn Swinbrooke doesn’t think so. Her Irish fiancée, Colum Murtagh, the King’s Commissioner in Canterbury, is called in to investigate the crimes. A Renaissance woman in a Middle Age world, Swinbroke comes to believe that all is not as it seems within the cozy confines of Ingoldby Hall. She asks tough questions of the wealthy power-players who seem to hover around the murder case. And before long, the death toll mounts: a maid, a madwoman, a scribe, a retainer. . . . One thing becomes abundantly clear: if Swinbrooke and Murtagh don’t nail down the killer---or killers---soon, they’ll be next!

Contains three full-length novels: "The Secret of Annexe 3" which concerns a murder at the New Year celebrations at the Haworth Hotel; "The Riddle of the Third Mile" which is about the disappearance of Dr Browne-Smith; and "Last Seen Wearing" in which new evidence opens a case over two years old.

'DCI Matilda Darke is the perfect heroine' Elly Griffiths The second book in Michael Wood's darkly compelling new crime series featuring DCI Matilda Darke. Perfect for fans of Stuart MacBride, Mark Billingham and Val McDermid. When elderly George Rainsford goes to investigate a suspicious noise one night, the last thing he expects to find is a bloodbath. A man has been killed and a woman brutally beaten, left for dead. The victims are Lois Craven and Kevin Hardaker - both married, but not to each other. Their spouses swear they knew nothing of the affair and, besides, they both have alibis for the attack. With nothing else to link the victims, the investigation hits a dead end. The pressure is on for investigating officer, DCI Matilda Darke: there's a violent killer on the loose, and it looks like her team members are the new targets. With no leads and no suspects, it's going to take all Matilda's wits to catch him, before he strikes again.

"A female investigator every bit as brainy and battle-hardened as Lisbeth Salander." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie Dobbs The thirteenth installment in Jacqueline Winspear's enormously popular New York Times bestselling historical mystery series. As Britain declares war on Germany, the indomitable Maisie Dobbs stumbles on the deaths of refugees who may have been more than ordinary people seeking sanctuary on English soil. Sunday September 3rd 1939. At the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britain’s declaration of war with Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbs' flat to await her return. Dr. Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for Maisie: to find the killer of a man whose dangerous WWI secrets may have followed him from occupied Belgium twenty-three years earlier during the Great War. In a London shadowed by barrage balloons and the threat of invasion, this tense WWII suspense novel takes a dark turn when another former Belgian refugee is found murdered. And as Maisie delves deeper into the killings of the dispossessed from the "last war," a new kind of refugee — an evacuee from London — appears in Maisie's life. The little girl billeted at Maisie’s home in Kent does not, or cannot, speak, and the authorities do not know who the child belongs to or who might have put her on the "Operation Pied Piper" evacuee train. They know only that her name is Anna. As Maisie’s search for the killer escalates, the country braces for what is to come. Britain is approaching its gravest hour — and Maisie could be nearing a crossroads of her own.

In the latest installment of the New York Times bestselling series, a series of possible attacks on British pilots leads Jacqueline Winspear's beloved heroine Maisie Dobbs into a mystery involving First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Late September, 1942. Jo Hardy, a 22-year-old ferry pilot, is delivering a Spitfire to Biggin Hill Aerodrome when she realizes someone is shooting at her aircraft. When she returns to the location on foot, she finds an American serviceman in a barn, tied up and gagged. Jo hurries away, but can't shake the image of the serviceman from her mind. Several days later, when Jo recounts the story to several other women, she receives the news that Erica, another ferry pilot--flying the same route she had--has been killed in a crash near Kent. Erica's death is attributed to "pilot error," but Jo is convinced there is a link between her own experience and Erica's--and that of Jo's dead fiancé, who was killed over a year earlier under inexplicable circumstances in the same area. At the suggestion of an Australian colleague, Jo takes her suspicions to Maisie Dobbs, along with two pages of coded notes she found in the barn. If someone is trying to take down much-needed pilots, Maisie wants to find out why--and what happened to the bound American serviceman. But before she can even begin to investigate, her new husband, Mark Scott, finds the documents and demands to know how they came to be in her possession: The papers pertain to an upcoming diplomatic mission by Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of the United States' president--and now the First Lady's safety has been compromised. To protect Eleanor's life--and possibly the safety of all of London--Maisie must quickly uncover the connection between the pilot deaths, the mysterious American soldier, and the top-secret documents.

Two years after the Black Death has decimated the population of England, a new killer is stalking the streets of Cambridge: a serial murderer preying on the women of the small town. Matthew Bartholomew, a physician with ideas ahead of his time, and his companion, the portly monk Brother Michael, must uncover the identity of the killer before he strikes again. Martin's Press.

An excavation at the lost gardens of Earlsacre Hall is called to a halt when a skeleton is discovered under a three-hundred-year-old stone plinth, a corpse that seems to have been buried alive. But Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson has little time to indulge in his hobby of archaeology. He has a more recent murder case to solve. A man has been found stabbed to death in a caravan at a popular holiday park and the only clue to his identity is a newspaper clipping about the restoration of Earlsacre.Does local solicitor Brian Willerby have the answer? He seems eager to talk to Wesley, but before he can reveal his secret he is found dead during a “friendly” game of village cricket, apparently struck by a cricket ball several times with some force. What is it about Earlsacre Hall that leads people to murder?