In her latest Richard Jury adventure, Martha Grimes takes us to Ashdown Dean, a little English village where animals are dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents. While the puzzling deaths of village pets may raise some idle gossip over a pint or two at the Deer Leap, the village pub, this hardly seems a case for Superintendent Jury of Scotland yard. Nor does it seem much of a challenge for the combined deductive powers of Jury and Melrose, the affable former Earl of Caverness. It is his mystery-writing, amethyst-eyed friend, Polly Praed, who drags Plant and Jury to Ashdown Dean. The impatient Polly, having yanked open a call box in the pouring rain, is ill-prepared for what lands at her feet. The now-deadly case is cause for calling in Scotland Yard.

Princes of the Church brings together the latest research exploring the importance of bishops’ palaces for social and political history, landscape history, architectural history and archaeology. It is the first book-length study of such sites since Michael Thompson’s Medieval Bishops’ Houses (1998), and the first work ever to adopt such a wide-ranging approach to them in terms of themes and geographical and chronological range. Including contributions from the late Antique period through to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it deals with bishops’ residences in England, Scotland, Wales, the Byzantine Empire, France, and Italy. It is structured in three sections: design and function, which considers how bishops’ palaces and houses differed from the palaces and houses of secular magnates, in their layout, design, furnishings, and functions; landscape and urban context, which considers the relationship between bishops’ palaces and houses and their political and cultural context, the landscapes and towns or cities in which they were set, and the parks, forests, and towns that were planned and designed around them; and architectural form, which considers the extent of shared features between bishops’ palaces and houses, and their relationship to the houses of other Church potentates and to the houses of secular magnates.

Whether you're a curious tourist or a local history buff, this guide contains all the tools you'll need to explore New England's history on your hikes. Each of the 40 featured hikes comes with helpful maps and directions, as well as a carefully researched impression of the trail, and a comprehensive guide to the area's natural and human history.