Ocean State Libraries

Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead—a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon...

After an old university friend and fellow archeologist's murdered, forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway travels to Lancashire to examine the bones he found, which reveal a shocking fact about King Arthur, and discovers a campus living in fear of a sinister right-wing group called the White Hand.

An unexpected inheritance offers Libby Pulford the opportunity to escape her abusive marriage and return to her Lancashire roots with her young son Ned. But her domineering husband Steven won't let her go so easily. Just as she's beginning to settle into her new life, Libby's troubled past catches up with her. The one person she can turn to for help is her new neighbour, former police detective Joss Atherton, to whom Libby feels a growing attraction....

"The Garths had farmed their fertile acres for generations and fine land it was with the towering hills of the Lake Country on the far horizon. Garthmere Hall itself was old before Flodden Field, and here hot-tempered Robert Garth, still hale and hearty at eighty-two, ruled his household with a rod of iron. When he is killed, Inspector MacDonald sets to work on the close-knit cadre of suspects in this grim story of evil passions and murderous hate...

A yeoman farmer causes a scandal when he marries a lady of good family near Lancashire in 1760.

The story of Daniel Dunkerley, printer and entrepreneur and Alec Dillwoth, would-be-poet, his sister Elsie, and their respective families and Theodore Crystal, curate, set in Manchester from 1885.

In a 19th Century English mill town, Annie leaves home, banished by her stepmother, hoping never to return. But a rape leaves her pregnant and she is forced to return. In need of money and security, Annie agrees to marry Charlie Ashworth, an old, slow-witted junk dealer, but a man who can provide her with a home, thus saving her from slave labor in a mill. A reminder of the harsh conditions under which people lived.

"Henry Christie is focused on running his pub, the Tawny Owl, where he learns of the Kendleton protest group's fury with James Twain, a local property developer, and the keen desire of some residents to solve a murder that stretches back to the Second World War. When James is viciously killed in his barn, and another body is found in similar disturbing circumstances nearby, Henry is drawn into the investigations and the villagers' dark wartime secrets....