Showing results by author "Elly Griffiths" in All Categories

A brand-new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Crime’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by 12 remarkable best-selling and acclaimed authors. This collection of 12 original short stories, all featuring Jane Marple, will introduce the character to a whole new generation. Each author reimagines Agatha Christie’s Marple through their own unique perspective while staying true to the hallmarks of a traditional mystery.

When builders renovating a café in King's Lynn find a human skeleton behind a wall, they call for DCI Harry Nelson and Dr Ruth Galloway. Ruth is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with Nelson. However, she agrees to look at the case. Ruth sees at once that the bones are modern. They are identified as the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in the 1990s. Emily attended a course run by her Cambridge tutor. Suspicion falls on him and also on another course member - Ruth's friend Cathbad.

Shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library. Ruth Galloway receives a phone call that bears shocking news. A friend of hers from college, Dan Golding, has been killed in a fire at his Lancashire home. Her shock turns to alarm when she gets a letter from Dan. He has made a discovery that will change archaeology forever but he needs Ruth's advice. Even more alarming, he sounds vulnerable and frightened. DCI Harry Nelson is also rediscovering his past. Up north for a holiday, he meets his former colleague Sandy MacLeod, now at Blackpool CID.

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres and to explore what some of her much-loved creations such as Dr Ruth Galloway might have done outside of the novels. This collection gathers them all together in one splendid volume. Here are bite-sized tales to please and entertain every thriller taste as well as all Elly Griffiths' fans.

Dr Ruth Galloway is flattered when she receives a letter from Italian archaeologist Dr Angelo Morelli, asking for her help. He's discovered a group of bones in a tiny hilltop village near Rome but doesn't know what to make of them. It's years since Ruth has had a holiday, and even a working holiday to Italy is very welcome!

Boiled human bones have been found in Norwich's web of underground tunnels. When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder enquiry on his hands. The boiling might have been just a medieval curiosity - now it suggests a much more sinister purpose. Meanwhile, DS Judy Johnson is investigating the disappearance of a local rough sleeper. The only trace of her is the rumour that she's gone 'underground'.

Elizabeth II's coronation is looming, but the murder of their wartime commander, Colonel Cartwright, spoils the happy mood for DI Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto. A playbill featuring another deceased comrade is found in Colonel Cartwright's possession, and a playing card, the ace of hearts: the blood card. The wartime connection and the suggestion of magic are enough for him to put Stephens and Mephisto on the case.

Natalka from Ukraine has quit her job as a carer and joined up with retiree, Edwin, to run a detective agency on England's south coast. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated, longing for a big juicy investigation such as murder to come the agency's way. Edwin is a big reader of obituaries, so when a local obit writer, Dan Haynes, dies, Edwin decides to look further, only to discover a series of unexpected deaths. Are the clues in the obits themselves? Edwin decides to write an obit to see what clues it throws up. Then he disappears.

Norfolk is experiencing a July heat wave when a construction crew unearths a macabre discovery - a buried World War II plane with the pilot still inside. Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway quickly realizes that the skeleton couldn't possibly be the pilot, and DNA tests identify the man as Fred Blackstock, a local aristocrat who had been reported dead at sea. When the remaining members of the Blackstock family learn about the discovery, they seem strangely frightened by the news.

Dr Ruth Galloway is called in when a child's bones are discovered near a prehistoric site on the north Norfolk salt marshes. Are they the remains of a local girl who disappeared ten years earlier - or are the bones much older? DCI Harry Nelson refuses to give up the hunt for the missing girl. Since she vanished, someone has been sending him creepy anonymous notes about ritual sacrifice. He knows that Ruth's expertise and experience could help him finally to put this case to rest.

Brighton, 1950: When the body of a girl is found, cut into three, Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is reminded of a magic trick: the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old friend of Edgar's. When the dead girl turns out to be known to him, Max decides to help Edgar investigate.

Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway has excavated a body from the grounds of Norwich Castle, a forbidding edifice that was once a prison. She believes the body may be that of infamous Victorian murderess Jemima Green. Called Mother Hook for her claw-like hand, Jemima was hanged in 1867 for the murder of five children in her care. DCI Harry Nelson has no time for long-dead killers.

The murder of women priests in the shrine town of Walsingham sucks Dr. Ruth Galloway into an unholy investigation. Ruth's friend, Cathbad, is housesitting in Walsingham, a Norfolk village famous as a centre for pilgrimages to the Virgin Mary. One night, Cathbad sees a strange vision in the graveyard beside the cottage: a young woman dressed in blue.

Dr Ruth Galloway is called in by a team of archaeologists investigating coastal erosion on the north Norfolk coast, when they unearth six bodies buried at the foot of a cliff. They seem to have been there a very long time. Ruth must help discover how long, and how on earth they got there. Ruth and DCI Nelson are drawn together once more to unravel the past. Tests reveal that the bodies have lain, preserved in the sand, for sixty years. The mystery of their deaths stretches back to the Second World War, a time when Great Britain was threatened by invasion.

It is Halloween in King's Lynn, and forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway is attending a strange event at the local history museum - the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But then Ruth finds the body of the museum's curator lying beside the coffin. Soon the museum's wealthy owner lies dead in his stables too. These two deaths could be from natural causes but DCI Harry Nelson isn't convinced, and it is only a matter of time before Ruth and Nelson cross paths once more.

The death of a 90-year-old woman with a heart condition should absolutely not be suspicious. DS Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing to concern her in carer Natalka's account of Peggy Smith's death. But then Natalka reveals that Peggy lied about her heart condition and that she had been sure someone was following her....

Justice and her friends are third years now and there's an intriguing new girl in Barnowls. Letitia has never been to school before and doesn't care for the rules - and the teachers don't seem to mind! She decides that Justice is her particular friend, much to Stella and Dorothy's distress. But Letitia just isn't the kind of girl you say no to. Then, after a midnight feast in the barn, and a terrifying ghost-sighting in the garden, a girl disappears. Soon ransom notes appear, and they're torn from the pages of a crime novel.

Ali Dawson is a police officer working on crimes so old, the joke goes, that they are not only cold but frozen. What most people don't know is that the team travels back in time to complete their research - a process pioneered by the mysterious Italian physicist, Serafina Pelligrini. So far the team has only ventured a few years back but Ali's boss has a new assignment for her. He wants her to step back to 1850, the heart of the Victorian Age, to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of Tory MP Isaac Templeton.

When Justice returns for spring term at Highbury House, it's not long before murder is back on her mind. Assigned to look after the elderly Mr Arthur in Smugglers' Lodge on the other side of the marshes from school, Justice is initially dismayed. But dismay quickly gives way to intrigue as she finds herself drawn to Mr Arthur and his stories of piloting in the First World War - and especially when Dorothy, who lives nearby, tells her that the lodge is haunted.

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. As a literature teacher specialising in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a short course on it every year. Then Clare's life and work collide tragically when one of her colleagues is found dead, a line from an R. M. Holland story by her body. The investigating police detective is convinced the writer's works somehow hold the key to the case.s....