Three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal....For team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double-betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange,...

As disheveled and indomitable as ever, DCI Vera Stanhope leads her tightly knit team of Northumberland police through four more daunting cases. No one seems to know anything about the police officer whose body turns up in a slaughterhouse incinerator, the woman killed in a car crash meant to look like an accident, the suburban neighbor found dead in her back garden, and the teenager whose body floats to the surface of a reservoir. How will Vera break...

Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope and her trusted team chase ruthless killers and unravel complex mysteries, uncovering secrets that sometimes stray a little too close to home, set in rural Northumberland.

"On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets off for her home in the hills. Though the road is familiar, she misses a turn and soon becomes lost and disorientated. A car has skidded off the narrow road in front of her, its door left open, and she stops to help. There is no driver to be seen, so Vera assumes that the owner has gone to find help. But a cry calls her back: a toddler is strapped in the back seat. Vera takes...

Investigator Vera Stanhope searches for a young man's killer and uncovers a small town's secrets.

A visit to her local prison brings DI Vera Stanhope face to face with an old enemy: former detective superintendent, and now inmate, John Brace. He is willing to tell Vera where the body of a missing person is buried, in return for protection for his family. But opening up this cold case strikes much closer to home than Vera anticipates, when her investigation takes her to The Seagull, a once decadent and now derelict nightclub where her father and...