Books by Ann Cleeves

White Nights is the second book in Ann Cleeves' bestselling Shetland series - a major BBC One drama starring Douglas Henshall.When Shetland detective Jimmy Perez finds a body in a hut used by fishermen it seems to be a straightforward case of suicide. He recognizes the victim - a stranger with amnesia who had disrupted a local party the night before his death.Yet this is no desperate act of anguish, but the work of a cold and calculating killer. As Perez investigates, he finds himself mired in the hidden secrets of the small Biddista community. Then another body is found.Perez knows he must break the cycle before another death occurs. But this is a crazy time of year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems . . .

Ann Cleeves, winner of the 2017 CWA Diamond Dagger, delivers The Seagull, her searing eighth novel in the Vera Stanhope series. A cold case takes Vera back in time, and very close to home, as she looks into the fragile, and fracturing, family relationships deep in the heart of her community.

*Winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger*The Moth Catcher is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - now the major ITV detective drama Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn.'This case was different from anything Vera had ever worked before. Two bodies, connected but not lying together. And nothing made her feel as alive as murder.'Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they're away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley - a beautiful, lonely place to die. DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, with her detectives Holly and Joe. When they look round the attic of the big house - where Patrick has a flat - she finds the body of a second man. All the two victims have in common is a fascination with moths - catching these beautiful, rare creatures. Those who live in the Valley Farm development have secrets too: Annie and Sam's daughter is due to be released from prison any day; Nigel watches, silently, every day, from his window. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped here . . . Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices, The Glass Room, Harbour Street, and The Seagull.

*Winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger*Harbour Street is the sixth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - now the major ITV detective drama Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn.A KILLING. In Newcastle, Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie travel home on the busy Metro. The train is stopped unexpectedly, and Jessie sees that one woman doesn't leave with the other passengers: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed. A WITNESS. No one saw the murder take place. How can this be, when the train was packed? Searching for a lead, DI Vera Stanhope heads to the quiet Northumberland town of Mardle to investigate. She can feel in her bones that the local residents know more than they are letting on: a killer is among them.A SECRET.Just days later, a second woman is murdered. Retracing the victims' final steps, Vera finds herself searching deep into the hidden past of this seemingly innocent neighbourhood, led by clues that keep revolving around one street: why are the residents of Harbour Street so reluctant to speak? DI Vera Stanhope is back. And she wants answers.Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices, The Glass Room, The Moth Catcher, and The Seagull.

Winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger.The Glass Room is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, Vera. DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation. But when one of them goes missing, her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . . Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writer's House, a country retreat where aspiring authors work on their stories. Things get complicated when a body is discovered and Vera's neighbour is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She's too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting and she's never been one to follow the rules. There seems to be no motive. When another body is found, Vera suspects that someone is playing games with her. Somewhere there is a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real . . .Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices, Harbour Street, The Moth Catcher, and The Seagull.

The ninth novel in the Vera Stanhope series from the Sunday Times bestseller Ann Cleeves; now a major TV series from ITV.

Winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger.Silent Voices is the fourth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, Vera. When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. Then Vera spots ligature marks around the victim's throat - death is never that simple . . . Vera revels being back in charge of an investigation again, working with Sergeant Joe Ashworth to find a motive. While Joe struggles to reconcile his home life with the demands of the case, death has never made Vera feel so alive. The duo investigates the victim's past and discovers a shocking case, involving a young child. Probing the secretive community, they try to stop a killer in the present who can't seem to let go of the past . . .Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, The Glass Room, Harbour Street, The Moth Catcher, and The Seagull.

Winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger.Hidden Depths is the third book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, Vera. A hot summer on the Northumberland coast and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers. This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope intrigued. But then another body is discovered in a rock pool, the corpse again strewn with flowers. Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death. As local residents are forced to share their deepest, darkest secrets, the killer watches, waits and plans to prepare another beautiful, watery grave . . .Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Telling Tales, Silent Voices, The Glass Room, Harbour Street, The Moth Catcher, and The Seagull.

Winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association Diamond DaggerTelling Tales is the second book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, Vera. Ten years after Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel, disturbing new evidence proving her innocence emerges in the East Yorkshire village of Elvet. Abigail's killer is still at large. For Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend - and of the fearful winter's day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch. Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh inquiries, and the villagers are hauled back to a time they would rather forget. Tensions begin to mount, but are people afraid of the killer, or of their own guilty pasts?Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope's investigations with The Crow Trap, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices, The Glass Room, Harbour Street, The Moth Catcher, and The Seagull.

Crime fiction inspired by Scotland's iconic buildings: in Bloody Scotland twelve of Scotland's best crime writers use the sinister side of the country's built heritage in stories that are by turns gripping, chilling and redemptive.

A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy is the third novel in the Inspector Ramsay series by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.For Dorothea Cassidy Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own, and would plan to visit people she wanted to see as a welcome respite from the routine duties that being a vicar's wife entailed. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. It was the day that Dorothea Cassidy was strangled.As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea's last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases - a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care - and even her close family have their secrets to hide. All these people are haunted, in one way or another, by Dorothea's goodness. But which of them could have possibly wanted her dead?It is not until a second body is discovered that Ramsay starts to understand how Dorothea lived - and why she died. With the carnival festivities in full swing and dusk falling in Otterbridge, Ramsay's murder investigation reaches its chilling climax . . .

A Bird in the Hand is the first novel featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.In England's birdwatching paradise, a new breed has been sighted - a murderer . . .Young Tom French was found dead, lying in a marsh on the Norfolk coast, with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck. One of the best birders in England, Tom had put the village of Rushy on the birdwatching map. Everyone liked him. Or did they?George Palmer-Jones, an elderly birdwatcher who decided quietly to look into the brutal crime, discovered mixed feelings aplenty. Still, he remained baffled by a deed that could have been motivated by thwarted love, pure envy, or something else altogether.But as he and his fellow "e;twitchers"e; flocked from Norfolk to Scotland to the Scilly Isles, in response to rumours of rare sightings, George - with help from his lovely wife, Molly - gradually discerned the true markings of a killer. All he had to do was prove it . . . before the murderer strikes again.

Ann Cleeves' bestselling series of crime novels, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, now also adapted for a major BBC television series, draw their inspiration from the place in which they take place: Shetland. In this gloriously illustrated companion to her novels, Ann Cleeves takes readers through a year on Shetland, learning about its past, meeting its people, celebrating its festivals and seeing how the flora and fauna of the islands changes with the seasons.An archipelago of more than a hundred islands, it is the one of the most remote places in the United Kingdom. Its fifteen hundred miles of shore mean that wherever one stands, there is a view of the sea. It has sheltered voes and beaches and dramatically exposed cliffs, lush meadows full of wild flowers in the summer and bleak hilltops where only the hardiest of plants will grow. It is a place where traditions are valued and celebrated, but new technologies and ways of working are also embraced. Whether it is the drama of the Viking fire festival of Up Helly Aa in winter, or the piercing blue and hot pink of spring flowers on the clifftops, the long, white nights of midsummer or the fierce gales and high tides of autumn, Shetland is vividly captured in all its bleak and special beauty.

The Baby-Snatcher is the sixth and final mystery novel in the Inspector Ramsay series by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.Marilyn Howe's and her mother Kathleen are an inseparable duo, until one night Kathleen doesn't come home . . .Fifteen year old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay's doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes' dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more. And for the second time he is drawn into the strange relationships of the families living on the lonely Headland.Then a woman's body is washed up on the beach . . .

Sea Fever is the sixth mystery novel featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.A rare and unrecorded sea bird captures all the birders attention whilst right under their noses the most fanatical birder of them all disappears . . .Later, Greg Franks' corpse, the head bludgeoned, is found floating in the sea. Had it not been for Greg Franks, amateur detective George Palmer-Jones would not have been on the bird watching trip in Cornwall to the first place. He had been hired by Greg Franks' anxious parents to try and persuade their errant son to return home. George would have turned the case down flat but the offer of a free weekend's bird watching was too tempting to resist. Now, he must unhappily shoulder the burden of finding why the young man had been murdered.Who hated Franks enough to kill him? Almost everyone, it seems . . .

The Mill on the Shore is the seventh mystery novel featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.Meg Morrissey refuses to believe that her husband James committed suicide.James was in high spirits because he'd finally completed his long awaited autobiography. He didn't leave a suicide note. But even more suspiciously the record of his life's environmental achievement, his magnum opus, has gone missing. Troubled, Meg calls in amateur sleuths George and Molly Palmer-Jones to investigate. They soon uncover that life in the Morrissey family is not as idyllic as it seems - relations with ex-wife Cathy are not as friendly as Meg makes out and James appears to have fallen for another women. But the disappearance of his autobiography is most puzzling of all, did he uncover a secret so damaging someone was prepared to kill for it?George and Molly must try to fit together the missing pieces of information to reveal who could have wanted James dead . . .

Too Good To Be True is a gripping Quick Read from Ann Cleeves, featuring Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez from the bestselling Shetland series.When young teacher Anna Blackwell is found dead in her home, the police think her death was suicide or a tragic accident. After all, Stonebridge is a quiet country village in the Scottish Borders, where murders just don't happen. But Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez soon arrives from far-away Shetland when his ex-wife, Sarah, asks him to look into the case. The local gossips are saying that her new husband, Tom, was having an affair with Anna. Could Tom have been involved with her death? Sarah refuses to believe it - but needs proof.Anna had been a teacher. She must have loved kids. Would she kill herself knowing there was nobody to look after her daughter? She had seemed happier than ever before she died. And to Perez, this suggests not suicide, but murder . . .

Picking up the primary scent of any investigation, this anthology of wicked tales paints a chilling portrait of modus operandi--the signature that identifies any repeat offender. In this collection of villainous narratives, a coroner reveals a body's telltale clues to his students as he unwittingly dissects his own relationship, a broken-down driver turns his roadside routine into a quite different type of pick-up, and two creative-writing tutors discuss the merits of "hard-boiled" versus "cozy" schools of crime writing while a murderous student points out that it's really procedure that counts. From the ex-doctor tenderly administering a final prescription to his victims to the party of finishing school debutantes exacting revenge on their lecherous host, these stories demonstrate that, even with the most despicable of crimes, there is always methodology within the madness.