When a marriage proposal appears imminent for the beautiful – if rebellious – Lady Rose Summer, her father wants to know if her suitor’s intentions are honorable. He calls on Captain Harry Cathcart, the impoverished younger son of a baron, to do some intelligence work on the would-be fiancé, Sir Geoffrey Blandon. After his success in uncovering Geoffrey’s dishonorable motives, Harry fashions a career out of ‘fixing’ things for wealthy aristocrats. So when the Marquess of Hedley finds one of his guests dead at a lavish house party, he knows just the man to call. But when Harry is caught between his client’s desire for discretion and his suspicion that murder may indeed have been committed, he enlists the help of Superintendent Kerridge of the Scotland Yard and Lady Rose, also a guest at Lord Hedley’s.

Enjoying his new fiancée and a lull in his Scottish village’s crime rate, police sergeant Hamish Macbeth is upset when his future bride urges him to find a better job, and rivalry over a local heartthrob results in murder.

When Constable Hamish Macbeth receives news that there has been a murder at the home of the practical joker Arthur Trent, he prepares himself for another prank. But on arrival Macbeth finds Trent most decidedly dead, and a houseful of greedy relations all interested in the contents of the will.

No coach journey is ever dull with Miss Pym aboard, and this one proves no exception: Hannah meets Yvonne Grenier, fleeing the Horror in France, and very soon determines to find a suitable match for this beautiful and charming Frenchwoman.

New York Times bestseller M. C. Beaton's cranky, crafty Agatha Raisin—now the star of a hit T.V. show—is back on the case again in The Dead Ringer. The idyllic Cotswolds village of Thirk Magna is best known for the medieval church of St. Ethelred and its bells, which are the pride and glory of the whole community.As the bell-ringers get ready for the visit of the dashing Bishop Peter Salver-Hinkley, the whole village is thrown into a frenzy. Meanwhile, Agatha convinces one of the bell-ringers, the charming lawyer Julian Brody, to hire her to investigate the mystery of the Bishop's ex-fiancée: a local heiress, Jennifer Toynby, who went missing years ago and whose body was never found...Meanwhile, the bodies in the village just keep on piling up: the corpse of Larry Jensen, a local policeman, is discovered in the crypt. Millicent Dupin, one of a pair of bell-ringing identical twins, is murdered near the church. And Terry Fletcher, a...

Must one sister suffer in poverty while the other sister lives in the lap of luxury? This question plagued Harriet Clifton incessantly. Inviting herself to her widowed sister Cordelia's posh London townhouse for the season was surely the only way to meet a suitable partner - as well as to escape droughty old Pringle House forever. The vain Cordelia was meanwhile casting her net for the notorious Marquess of Arden, a man who preferred to court a mistress rather than wed a wife. Who would have believed that the Marquess would succumb to Harriet's countrified charms? Or that Cordelia would stoop quite so low as to try to conquer the Marquess at her own sister's expense? ABOUT THE SERIES Lovers are joined by force - by family pressure, by societal pressure, and cultural mores, but Chesney's heros and heroines never seem to want to give up on their search for the real thing. They are willing to go through almost anything in their hunt to find love - they'll jump through hoops to avoid the tricks of outsiders who thrust them together for fortune (that doesn't exist), they'll dance their way into the hearts of the most eligible bachelors using all of their charms, and if it takes even lessons in love (the title of one of these page turners) then so be it. The Love Series is all about love in its various forms, from lukewarm to searing hot and we're along for the ride. ABOUT THE AUTHOR From 1977 to the early 1990s, Marion Chesney wrote over one hundred romance novels. Now writing as M. C. Beaton, she is the bestselling award-winning author of two internationally successful mystery series - HAMISH MACBETH and AGATHA RAISIN. She lives in the United Kingdom.About the AuthorMarion Chesney, the widely acclaimed author of historical romances, also writes the popular Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth mystery series under the name M. C. Beaton. This is the fourth book in her Edwardian murder mystery series. Born in Scotland, she currently divides her time between the English Cotswolds and Paris.