The twentieth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while... A few weeks later, George Marshalson lives every father's worst nightmare: he discovers the murdered body of his eighteen-year-old daughter on the side of the road. As a man with a strained father-daughter relationship himself, Wexford must struggle to keep his professional life as a detective separate from his personal life as husband and father. Particularly when a second teenage girl is murdered - a victim unquestionably linked to the first - and another family is shattered...

Fans of PD James, Ann Cleeves and Donna Leon will devour this enthralling mystery of deception, doubt and death from multi-million copy and SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author Ruth Rendell ... 'Probably the greatest crime writer in the world' -- Ian Rankin '[Wexford] has become an old friend who gets better with age' -- Herald 'Pacy and surprising right to the last page' -- ***** Reader review 'You cannot go wrong with a Ruth Rendell' -- ***** Reader review 'Extremely thrilling and entertaining' -- ***** Reader review 'Full of twists and turns' -- ***** Reader review ********************************************************************************** Sir Manuel Camargue, Kingsmarkham's very own celebrity flautist, dies tragically on a snowy night. His death is met with a ruling of misadventure and appears to be an open-and-shut-case. However Wexford, as the investigating officer, has a few niggling doubts. Nineteen years later, Camargue's entrancing daughter, Natalie, now a considerable heiress, suddenly reappears in Kingsmarkham. When her fiancé appeals to Wexford for help, believing that Natalie is using a false identity, the case of the Camargues is once more under investigation. Events soon take a gruesome twist and the pressure is on for Wexford to discover Natalie's true identity and to solve the mystery of the Camargue family, once and for all.

Want to be cunning? You might wish you were more clever, more flexible, able to cut a few corners without getting caught, to dive now and again into iniquity and surface clutching a prize. You might want to roll your eyes at those slaves of duty who play by the rules. Or you might think there's something sleazy about that stance, even if it does seem to pay off. Does that make you a chump? With pointedly mischievous prose, Don Herzog explores what's alluring and what's revolting in cunning. He draws on a colorful range of sources: tales of Odysseus; texts from Machiavelli; pamphlets from early modern England; salesmen's newsletters; Christian apologetics; plays; sermons; philosophical treatises; detective novels; famous, infamous, and obscure historical cases; and more. The book is in three parts, bookended by two murderous churchmen. "Dilemmas" explores some canonical moments of cunning and introduces the distinction between knaves and fools as a "time-honored but radically deficient scheme." "Appearances" assails conventional approaches to unmasking. Surveying ignorance and self-deception, "Despair?" deepens the case that we ought to be cunning--and then sees what we might say in response. Throughout this beguiling book, Herzog refines our sense of what's troubling in this terrain. He shows that rationality, social roles, and morality are tangled together--and trickier than we thought.

A young girl is murdered in a cemetery. And Wexford's doctor has prescribed no alcohol, no rich food and, above all, no police work. When a young girl's body is found in a London cemetery and the local police, under the command of Wexford's nephew, are baffled, Wexford decides to brave his doctor's wrath and the condescension of the London police by doing a little investigating of his own. A compelling story of mysterious identity and untimely death, Murder Being Once Done is Rendell at her most sublime. With her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, has added layers of depth, realism and unease to the classic English mystery. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable of the most appalling crimes.

It’s the depths of the Depression, and a mining town in Utah is shut down. Something has awakened underground, and now a monster roams the tunnels. Along comes Hiram Woolley. Hiram is a man with mystical abilities derived from the commonsense application of Scot-Irish folk wisdom and German Braucher magic. He possesses an arcane Bloodstone that allows him to see a lie the moment it is spoken. Behind the played-out farms and failed businesses are demons, curses, sorcerers, and unatoned wrongs. Bags of groceries and carpentry won’t be enough this time.The job will take a man who has known sorrow. A man who has known war. A man of wisdom. A man of magic. The job will take a Cunning Man. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About The Cunning Man: “An attempt at charity during the Great Depression turns into a protracted fight against supernatural forces in this admirable paranormal mystery. . . . the richly imagined magic system and glimpses of Mormon culture create a fully realized world. Historical fantasy fans will delight in the zigzagging plot of this mystery.”—Publishers Weekly "An amazing tale that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go! Butler & Ritchey are a literary force to be reckoned with! Hit that download button and grab your copy now! The Cunning Man will never let you go!"—Sherrilyn Kenyon, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

I'm not all that special, really. Or uncommon. I'm sure there are a lot of girls with old gypsy blood who see the dead, have killer cults hunting their family, and turn into something that gets scary when they panic. Yep. Completely unoriginal, if I do say so myself.Move along. Nothing to see here. Nope. I'm just an ordinary girl.I wish people would believe that.I've been labeled as one thing or another for most of my life:Death Girl.Crazy Gypsy Girl.Gothic Chick.Monster...It took my mother's death for me to finally start getting answers about what's really been going on. Unfortunately, most of the answers come from men...who aren't just men. Somehow, I've gone and landed myself in a world truly filled with monsters, and I'm starting to think this is where I should have been all along.Only...I don't understand what's going on. I'm walking into the middle of a story that's thousands of years old, and I'm the new girl on the block who doesn't have a clue how this world even works. My only guides happen to be the most lethal of the bunch.They decide who lives or dies. They decide who gets stabbed or tortured.Yeah...I've gone and drawn attention to myself, and the ones paying attention are the ones everyone else seems to fear.How do these things always happen to me?**Reverse Harem**Language warning**Sexual content**Dark Humor

Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford -- a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.