Books by Jill Paton Walsh

'Here I have set down all that I know of the Plague'It's 1665 and Mall Percival is a shepherd girl living in a Derbyshire village.

In A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh tells how World War II changed the lives of Peter, Harriet and their growing family.The story opens in 1940. Harriet Vane - now Lady Peter Wimsey - has taken her children to safety in the country. But the war has followed them: glamorous RAF pilots and even more glamorous land-girls scandalise the villagers; the blackout makes the night-time lanes as sinister as the back alleys of London. Then the village's first air raid practise ends with a very real body on the ground - not a war casualty but a case of plain, old-fashioned murder. And even before the second body is found, Lord Peter Wimsey and his brilliant wife are on their way to finding the killer.

A new murder mystery featuring Lord Peter Wimsey - now a Duke - and his wife Harriet Vane, set in an Oxford college in the 1950s. Peter Wimsey is pleased to discover that along with a Dukedom he has inherited the duties of 'visitor' at an Oxford college.When the fellows appeal to him to resolve a dispute, he and Harriet set off happily to spend some time in Oxford. But the dispute turns out to be embittered. The voting is evenly balanced between two passionate parties - evenly balanced, that is, until several of the fellows unexpectedly die.The Warden has a casting vote, but the Warden has disappeared. And the causes of death of the deceased fellows bear an uncanny resemblance to the murder methods in Peter's past cases - methods that Harriet has used in her published novels .

John, a boarding school boy, and Pat, an evacuee from a London slum. Together John and Pat make a daring plan to sail a boat across the English Channel to Dunkirk. Foolhardy as their plan may seem, the boys are sure they must do something to help the stranded British soldiers.

Told through the eyes of nine characters who live through the forty years between the end of the war and the fall of Communism, A Desert in Bohemia is a complex and enthralling testament to the power and powerlessness of the individual in challenging times.

A re-issue of a forgotten favourite, FIREWEED is an evocative and unflinching story of wartime survival for younger readersBill is a fifteen-year-old runaway evacuee, and he's finding that surviving on the streets of London is pretty easy, thank you very much.

It was 1921 when Lord Peter Wimsey first encountered the Attenbury emeralds. The recovery of the magnificent gem in Lord Attenbury's most dazzling heirloom made headlines - and launched a shell-shocked young aristocrat on his career as a detective. Now it is 1951: a happily married Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife, the detective novelist Harriet Vane. Then the new young Lord Attenbury - grandson of Lord Peter's first client - seeks his help again, this time to prove who owns the gigantic emerald that Wimsey last saw in 1921. It will be the most intricate and challenging mystery he has ever faced . . .Since the publication of A Presumption of Death, which was set in 1941 in the wartime English countryside, readers have been eagerly asking for this story - a wholly original and utterly engrossing new detective adventure.

Another foolhardy Cambridge college-climber has died attempting Harding's Folly. This time it's John Talentire, one of the brightest young dons at St Agatha's, and the verdict is accident, compounded by idiocy. But Imogen Quy - her name rhymes with 'why' - can't help wondering how such a clever young man died so stupidly. And when a wildly eccentric production of Hamlet is interrupted by a murder accusation, Imogen has to look into it, uncovering more crime than she expected.

Biography is usually a safe profession. Even rather sedate. But more than one biographer has found that writing about the late great mathematician Gideon Summerfield leads to a hasty retreat. Or something more deadly... Imogen Quy, the coolly competent college nurse at St. Agatha's College, Cambridge, first notices the pattern when her enthusiastic lodger Fran becomes the latest Summerfield biographer. Before she realises how deadly the Summerfield secret is, Fran's life is in danger. And Imogen may be next...

The locked library of St Agatha's College, Cambridge houses an unrivalled, and according to certain scholars, deeply uninteresting collection of seventeenth century volumes. It also contains one dead student. Tragic and accidental, of course, even if malicious gossip hints that Philip Skellow had been engaged in stealing books rather than acquiring knowledge when he'd slipped, banged his head, and bled to death overnight. Only Imogen Quy, the college nurse, has her doubts - until another student is found, drowned in an ornamental fountain...

Marion's search for the father she never knew takes her to St Ives. Here she learns of a lifeboat tragedy which is intrinsically tied up with her father's life. To find out more, Marion must delve deep into the past where she has to confront the demons which have tortured her own adult life.

Hoping to attract a generous endowment, St Agatha s College, Cambridge, invites fabulously wealthy Sir Julius Farran to dine. The evening is a disaster for everyone but Imogen Quy: Farran invites her to come and work for him. She declines, but when Farran dies, suddenly and shockingly, she has to look into it. His death left a large hole in his company accounts that could mean financial ruin for St Agatha s. To save her college, Imogen starts to cast her cool eye over the financier s heirs, employees and enemies. What is right about the death of Sir Julius? What is wrong about it? And why did it happen? After all, her name rhymes with ''why''.

It is, perhaps, the fifteenth century and the ordered tranquillity of a Mediterranean island is about to be shattered by the appearance of two outsiders: one, a castaway, plucked from the sea by fishermen, whose beliefs represent a challenge to the established order;