LAST BUS TO WOODSTOCK

Beautiful Sylvia Kaye and another young woman had been seen hitching a ride not long before Sylvia's bludgeoned body is found outside a pub in Woodstock, near Oxford. Morse is sure the other hitchhiker can tell him much of what he needs to know. But his confidence is shaken by the cool inscrutability of the girl he's certain was Sylvia's companion on that ill-fated September evening. Shrewd as Morse is, he's also distracted by the complex scenarios that the murder set in motion among Sylvia's girlfriends and their Oxford playmates. To grasp the painful truth, and act upon it, requires from Morse the last atom of his professional discipline.

LAST SEEN WEARING

Valerie Taylor has been missing since she was a sexy seventeen, more than two years ago. Inspector Morse is sure she's dead. But if she is, who forged the letter to her parents saying "I am alright so don't worry"? Never has a woman provided Morse with such a challenge, for each time the pieces of the jigsaw start falling into place, someone scatters them again. So Valerie remains as tantalizingly elusive as ever. Morse homefers a body - a body dead from unnatural causes. And very soon he gets one....

THE SILENT WORLD OF NICHOLAS QUINN

Nicholas Quinn is deaf, so he considers himself lucky to be appointed to the Foreign Examinations Board at Oxford, which designs tests for students of English around the world. But when someone slips cyanide into Nicholas's sherry, Inspector Morse has a multiple-choice murder. Any one of a tight little group of academics could have killed Quinn. Before Morse is done, all their dirty little secrets will be exposed. And a murderer will be cramming for his finals. . . .

SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD

This time Inspector Morse brings the imposition on himself. He could have been vacationing in Greece instead of investigating a murder that the police have long since written off. But he finds the crime - the brutal killing of a suburban churchwarden - fascinating. In fact, he uncovers not one murder but two, for the fatal fall of St. Frideswides vicar from the church tower Morse reckons to be murder as well. And as he digs into the lives and unsanctified lusts of the late vicar's erring flock, the list of the dead grows longer. Not even the oddly appealing woman he finds scrubbing the church floor can compensate Morse for the trouble he's let himself in for. So he has another pint, follows his hunches, and sets out to untangle the deadly business of homicide....

THE DEAD OF JERICHO

He meets her at a suburban party. They share a flirtation over their red wine . . . and he doesn't see her again. It's the old familiar story for Morse. Then one day he just happens to be in Jericho, where Anne Scott lives. Nobody's home - and Morse should know since her door is unlocked and he takes a quick look inside. Only later does Morse learn that the lady was at home, just not alive. The jury's verdict at the inquest is death by suicide. But that doesn't sit right with Morse, and he embarks on his own investigation into the tangled private life of a lovely woman, all the while feeling his own remorse of what might have been....

THE RIDDLE OF THE THIRD MILE

Inspector Morse isn't sure what to make of the truncated body found dumped in the Oxford Canal, but he suspects it may be all that's left of an elderly Oxford don last seen boarding the London train several days before. Whatever the truth, the inspector knows it won't be simple - it never is. As he retraces Professor Browne-Smith's route through a London netherworld of topless bars and fancy bordellos, his forebodings are fulfilled. The evidence mounts; so do the bodies. So Morse downs another pint, unleashes his pit bull instincts, and solves a mystery that defies all logic.

THE SECRET OF ANNEXE 3

Much too early on New Year's Day, a grumpy Inspector Morse is summoned to investigate a murder at the Haworth Hotel. The victim is still wearing the Rastafarian costume that won him first prize at the hotel's New Year's Eve party; his female companion and the other guests in the annexe have vanished. It's a mystery that's a stretch even for Morse. But with pit-bull fervor he grabs the truth by the throat and shakes loose the bizarre secrets of a cold-blooded crime of passion....

THE WENCH IS DEAD

Bored and impatient with his slow recuperation from a perforated ulcer, Inspector Morse comes across an account of Joanna Frank's long-forgotten death. As he studies the details, he becomes convinced that the men convicted and hanged for her murder were innocent.

THE JEWEL THAT WAS OURS

The case seems so simple, Inspector Morse deemed it beneath his notice. A wealthy, elderly American tourist has a heart attack in her room at Oxford's luxurious Randolph Hotel. Missing from the scene is the lady's handbag, which contained the Wolvercote Tongue, a priceless jewel that her late husband had bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum just across the street. Morse proceeds to spend a great deal of time thinking - and drinking - in the hotel's bar, certain the solution is close at hand - until conflicting stories, suspicious doings, and a real murder convince him otherwise....

THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS

When a young girl disappears on a hot summer's day just north of Oxford, Morse - to the irritation of his fellow policemen - insists she has been murdered. But without a corpse, how can he prove it? Twelve months later, the case remains unsolved. Then an anonymous letter appears at Thames Valley Police headquarters, containing a cryptic poem that the writer says is the key to the mystery. Morse is on a rare (and stressful) holiday in Dorset when he reads of the letter in the London Times. And so begins the most astonishing investigation even of Morse's unorthodox career.

MORSE'S GREATEST MYSTERY AND OTHER STORIES

In short mysteries so brilliantly plotted they'll confound the cleverest of souls, Inspector Morse remains as patient as a cat at a mouse hole in the face of even the most resourceful evildoers. Muldoon, for instance, the one-legged bomber with one fatal weakness ... the quartet of lovers whose bizarre entanglements Morse deciphers only after a beautiful woman is murdered ... and those artful dodgers who catch the cunning and very respectful Morse with his pants down. There are mysteries featuring new characters and some familiar ones, including the great Sherlock Holmes, and a royal flush of American crooks.

THE DAUGHTERS OF CAIN

Here, two interlinked murders challenge Morse and Lewis. First Dr. Felix McClure, late of Wolsey College, Oxford, is found stabbed in his flat. The trail of clues leads to a college servant, one Edward Brooks. Then Brooks himself vanishes, and Morse suddenly finds himself with too many suspects, including Brooks's wife, a prostitute, and an enigmatic schoolmistress. The detective, of course, is used to such puzzles. But as he finds himself attracted - in fact, more than attracted - to one of the possible killers, Morse is at sea in a way he has never known before.

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

The peaceful quadrangle of Lonsdale College seems remote from the shocks of the outside world - such as the shooting of a young woman in her North Oxford home. But things at Lonsdale are not as tranquil as they appear. The Master of the college is retiring, and two senior dons, Denis Cornford and Julian Storrs, are vying, discreetly but furiously, to succeed him. There are only two people to whom the coveted appointment means more than it does to Cornford and Storrs - their wives. Chief Inspector Morse, investigating the murder on Bloxham Drive, follows a trail that leads first to a tabloid journalist, then to the strip clubs of Soho. It soon winds back, however, to the university. For Morse and his partner, Sergeant Lewis, the question becomes: Is the Mastership of Lonsdale worth killing for?

THE REMORSEFUL DAY

For a year, the murder of Yvonne Harrison at her home in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead has baffled the Thames Valley CID. But one man has yet to tackle the case - and it is just the sort of puzzle at which Chief Inspector Morse excels. So why is he adamant that he will not lead the reinvestigation, despite two anonymous phone calls that hint at new evidence? And why, if he refuses to take on the case officially, does he seem to be carrying out his own private inquiries? When Sergeant Lewis learns that Morse was once friendly with Yvonne Harrison, he begins to suspect that the man who has earned his admiration, and exasperation, over so many years knows more about her death than he is letting on. When Morse finally does take over, the investigation leads down highways and byways that are disturbing to all concerned.