A QUESTION OF GUILT

A West and Bailey mystery. Rich, middle-aged Eileen Cartwright has never known the love of a man, yet she is obsessed by her solicitor. She plots the murder of his wife with chilling ease, but chooses an amateur for the job. There's no doubt about her guilt, but proving it is a daunting task.

TRIAL BY FIRE

A woman's naked and dead body is found outside the Essex commuter village of Branston. Crown Prosecutor Helen West and the local police discover a world of passion and envy ready to explode under the veneer of village gentility.

DEEP SLEEP

Pip Carlton is a kind soul. A good son and a devoted husband, he is also a highly respected pharmacist, cherished by his loyal customers in Herringbone Parade. When his wife dies in her sleep, without cause and without pain, he is distraught. Comforted by his caring assistant, Pip struggles to take up the threads of his life, ignoring the rumours about Margaret's death, relieved that the police are content to shrug off the mystery. But Helen West, Solicitor and Crown Prosecutor, fresh from hospital herself, refuses to believe that Margaret simply slipped into her final slumber. Others are more difficult to convince, including Helen's awkward and pragmatic partner, Detective Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey, and the only people who share her suspicions are a confused and lonely boy and the drug addict who dies so mysteriously in Geoffrey's arms. There is quiet breathing in the Parade: long memories are inflamed by the dramatic discovery of an unexploded bomb hidden beneath the foundations for almost half a century. And there is deep sleep, until the streets are emptied into the darkness of the resulting evacuation. Then one lone man, armed with his strange love potions, strives for his heart's desire and homepares to murder again.

SHADOW PLAY

Solicitor, and Crown Prosecutor, Helen West is doubly frustrated by the absence of her lover, Detective Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey and by her unsuccessful attempts to convict a notorious child molester. But frustration turns to fear when Helen's friendship with a young woman draws them both into a maze of murder.

A CLEAR CONSCIENCE

Helen West, Crown Prosecutor in domestic violence court, is nearing burnout. Obtaining justice is an uphill battle, while her romance with Police Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey is on a downhill spiral. Then she takes on the case of her young cleaning woman, who is being beaten by her husband - and whose brother has already been brutally murdered.

WITHOUT CONSENT

No-nonsense prosecutor Helen West is a rare combination of jaundiced pragmatism and well-guarded vulnerability. Her take-no-prisoners attitude is legendary - she has always put the harsh strictures of the law first, the human tragedies she cannot alter, second. Yet rape is a crime that haunts her - particularly the latest case now on her plate. Especially because the accused is the fellow police officer and best friend of her craggy, rumpled lover, Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey. As she freely admits, she doesn't even like the accused, D.S. Ryan, a volatile and compulsively unfaithful man who maintains a stubborn silence in the face of the rape charge. In a case with a victim as pure as the driven snow and all of the physical evidence pointing to the accused, both West and Bailey assume Ryan's guilt. But slowly, homeoccupied though they are with their own bittersweet love and loyalties, Helen and Geoffrey begin to delve into this most traumatic of crimes. And as they do, there emerges a man of consummate, cold-blooded intuition about women and their insecurities, a man whose charm, chocolates, and flowers guarantee him a ready welcome - and rape, even murder, without a trace.

SHADOWS ON THE MIRROR

Sarah Fortune is a beautiful and successful solicitor. Following the death of her unfaithful husband, she escapes the tedium of her career by transforming the lives of lonely men. But she isn't ready for the attentions of Charles Tysall, a ruthless businessman and an obsessive misogynist.

PERFECTLY PURE AND GOOD

Sarah Fortune is sent to Merton-on-Sea in Norfolk to sort out the inheritance problems of the small town's homemier family. But she discovers much more than just an ambiguously-worded will - and also has to confront the pain of her own past.

STARING AT THE LIGHT

Why should a man want to destroy his brother's wife? For John Smith, a man with a corrupted conscience, the motive is simple. Someone has stolen the only person he has ever loved or was ever capable of loving: his twin brother, Cannon. Without him, life has no meaning and Johnny will stop at nothing to be his brother's keeper. But Cannon does not want his brother any more. He's married now and his wife both loves and needs him. He and Johnny may once have been disfigured orphans in a storm, but he's changed that too, with the help of a good dentist. Johnny is afraid of the dentist. Cannon, sometime bombmaker and gifted artist, goes into hiding rather than risk Johnny's destructive brotherly love. Sarah Fortune, an unusual lawyer who has made helping the needy and eccentric into her own kind of art form, shields Cannon and more importantly, his wife, the real target, the one who deserves the worst kind of pain Johnny can inflict. But is Cannon really telling the truth about Johnny? Sarah cannot quite believe anyone is incapable of redemption. Failure to believe in evil could make her vulnerable.

BLIND DATE

Elisabeth Kennedy is a complicated, prickly ex-police detective recovering from a brutal attack of deadly acid - and a woman who is determined to fight back. Unable to escape the memory of her sister's murder, Elisabeth flees the stiflingly safe confines of her mother's seaside Index to return to her own homecarious existence in an apartment high atop a crumbling London bell tower. In her self-imposed exile, she assumes she will be safe, anonymous. But even the most cloistered places are not sacrosanct - especially the human heart. As she tracks her quarry through a London peopled by the pathetic and the poisonous, Elizabeth is headed for something far more chilling than loneliness, more savage than self-doubt....

UNDERCURRENTS

Henry didn't turn back when Francesca needed him 20 years before. Now, on a journey to anchor his soul, he arrives in her Index town to discover she's even further beyond his reach - serving a life sentence for the murder of her child. He is unable to believe her guilt - despite her confession.

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

Why would someone who had survived a rail crash, walk away from the scene and then pretend to be dead? Amy slowly reveals why she cannot return to her beloved home, and why she can never escape from the lies she was told as a child.

THE PLAYROOM

Katherine & David appear to have an ideal marriage. However, David believes one of their children is not his, for his daughter hardly conforms to his perfectionist lifestyle. Katherine tries to keep peace within the family, but David's obsession intensifies, as he locks the playroom door.

HALF LIGHT

Elizabeth Young is a picture restorer with modest needs - complete privacy & the beauty of the painting she painstakingly brings back to life. But as she works alone in her basement flat, she becomes haunted by the echo of mysterious footsteps & a silent figure in the shadows. When a wealthy recluse invites her to restore his remarkable collection at his luxurious residence, it sees to be the refuge she seeks. Too late, she realizes her error, as privacy becomes her nemesis.

LET'S DANCE

Isabel Burley returns to her childhood Index to look after her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. She is looking for the love she lacked as a child. Isolated by her mother's growing dementia, the two women become locked in a relationship of hatred & simmering violence, with roots that go deep into the past.