Murder in an English village

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Albert A. Bell, Jr

"While staying at his villa on Lake Comum, with Tacitus and his wife as guests, Pliny decides to add on to the house. When workmen begin demolishing a wall, they find a human skeleton. Pliny knows when the wall was built and he knows his wife's father disappeared at that time. But his father-in-law supposedly drowned. Shortly after finding the skeleton, Pliny begins to receive warnings and threats to halt his investigation. Then his wife, Livia, is kidnapped. The kidnapers want a document in exchange for Livia, but Pliny has no idea where it is. With the help of Tacitus and Aurora, he rescues Livia, but Aurora is injured and suffers a miscarriage. (She had not told Pliny she was pregnant.) Pliny learns that an innkeeper in the town of Comum was his father's mistress. She knows where the missing document is. Ultimately Pliny discovers that his biological father was complicit in the death of Livia's father by hiding the body in the wall. Livia's father and two other men were involved in a pedophile ring. Her father was killed in an argument among the men."--

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Carola Dunn

After a lifetime of travel and experiences, widow Eleanor Trewynn is more than happy to retire to the sleepy village of Port Mabyn in Cornwall - but unfortunately, excitement seems to follow her around! Her friend and neighbour, artist Nick Gresham, discovers several of his paintings in his shop have been slashed and destroyed. The finger of suspicion rests on rival local artist Geoffrey Monmouth but when Nick and Eleanor go to have it out with him, they find Monmouth's stabbed body in his studio - and Nick is immediately flagged up as most likely suspect. DI Scumble and DS Megan Pencarrow, Eleanor's niece, have been assigned to investigate the murder but Eleanor isn't leaving anything to chance - but once she starts investigating she learns Nick is far from being the only candidate with a compelling motive for murder.

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John Burnham Schwartz

At the close of a beautiful summer day near the quiet Connecticut town where they live, the Learner family - Ethan and Grace, their children, Josh and Emma - stop at a gas station on their way home from a concert. Josh Learner, lost in a ten-year-old's private world, is standing at the edge of the road when a car comes racing around the bend. He is hit and instantly killed. The car speeds away. From this moment forward, Reservation Road becomes a harrowing countdown to the confrontation between two very different men. The hit-and-run driver is a small-town lawyer named Dwight Arno, a man in desperate need of a second chance. Dwight is also the father of a ten-year-old boy, who was asleep in the car the night Josh Learner was killed. Now Dwight must decide whether to run from his crime or to pay the price for what he did. Ethan Learner, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, has seen his orderly world shattered in a single moment, yet persists in the belief that he can find the unknown man who killed his son. Behind their stories are those of eight-year-old Emma, who can't stop thinking her brother's death was her fault, and of Grace, who must find the strength to keep herself and her family together, and to be the mother Emma so badly needs.

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Frances Brody

Nothing ever happens in August, and tenacious sleuth Kate Shackleton deserves a break. Heading off for a long-overdue holiday to Whitby, she visits her school friend Alma who works as a fortune teller there. Kate had been looking forward to a relaxing seaside sojourn, but upon arrival discovers that Alma's daughter Felicity has disappeared, leaving her mother a note and the pawn ticket for their only asset: a watch-guard.What makes this more intriguing is the jeweler who advanced Felicity the thirty shillings is Jack Phillips, Alma's current gentleman friend.Kate can't help but become involved, and goes to the jeweller's shop to get some answers. When she makes a horrifying discovery in the back room, it becomes clear that her services are needed. Met by a wall of silence by town officials, keen to maintain Whitby's idyllic façade, it's up to Kate - ably assisted by Jim Sykes and Mrs Sugden - to discover the truth behind Felicity's disappearance.And they say nothing happens in August...