Showing results by author "P.D. James" in All Categories

Seven BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of P. D. James' acclaimed mysteries, plus P. D. James in Her Own Words. This collection includes: Cover Her Face, A Taste for Death, Devices and Desires, A Certain Justice, The Private Patient, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and The Skull Beneath the Skin.

Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty, but now, privately owned, it offers respite to overstressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered. Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team.

The acknowledged 'Queen of Crime', P. D. James, was a past master of the short story, weaving together motifs of the golden age of crime writing with deep psychological insight to create gripping, suspenseful tales. The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories contained four of these perfectly formed stories, and this companion volume contains a further six, published here together for the first time. As the six murderous tales unfold, the dark motive of revenge is revealed at the heart of each.

Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. When she agrees to defend Garry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, it is one more opportunity to triumph in her distinguished career as a criminal lawyer. But just four weeks later, Miss Aldridge is found dead at her desk.

Meet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family, Cordelia soon realises it is not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister.

An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery. Set on the banks of the River Thames in the literary world, P. D. James' Original Sin is the ninth Adam Dalgliesh mystery and a brilliant work of crime fiction from the best-selling author of Death Comes to Pemberley. The Peverell Press, a 200-year-old publishing firm housed in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames, is certainly ripe for change.

Innocent Blood is a standalone thriller and chilling mystery from P.D. James, the best-selling author of Death Comes to Pemberley and Children of Men. Philippa Palfrey, adopted as a child, believes herself to be the motherless, illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic father. At eighteen she exercises her right to find out the truth. What she discovers will change her life forever.

As Dalgliesh probes beneath the apparently unruffled calm of the clinic, he discovers that many an intrigue lies hidden behind the Georgian terrace's unassuming façade. Professionally, he has never known the taste of failure. Now, for the first time, he feels unsure of his own mastery as he battles to unmask a cool killer who is proving to be his intellectual equal, and who is poised to strike again.

The fourteenth Adam Dalgliesh Mystery. When the notorious investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, booked into Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for the removal of a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar, she had every prospect of a successful operation by a distinguished surgeon, a week's peaceful convalescence in one of Dorset's most beautiful manor houses, and the beginning of a new life. She was never to leave Cheverell Manor alive.

An Adam Dalgliesh mystery. Cover Her Face is P. D. James' debut novel, the first Adam Dalgliesh mystery, and a thrilling work of crime fiction set in the English countryside, from the best-selling author of Death Comes to Pemberley and Children of Men. From P. D. James, one of the masters of British crime fiction, comes the debut novel that introduced Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh.

From P.D. James, one of the masters of British crime fiction comes the second novel to feature the famous female detective Cordelia Gray of the Pryde Detective Agency. Set on the sinister Courcy Island, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is a thrilling murder mystery. Clarissa Lisle hopes to make a spectacular comeback in a production of The Duchess of Malfi, to be played in Ambrose Gorringe's sinister castle at Courcy Island. Cordelia is there to ensure her safety following the appearance of a number of poison-pen letters.

An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Commander Adam Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life-threatening illness when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has recently and mysteriously died, as has one of the patients at Toynton Grange. Evidently the home is not quite the caring community it purports to be. Dalgliesh is determined to discover the truth of his friend's death.

An Adam Dalgliesh mystery. Set on the remote Suffolk coast, the third Adam Dalgliesh mystery, Unnatural Causes is a thrilling work of crime fiction from P. D. James, the best-selling author of Death Comes to Pemberley. Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh had been looking forward to a quiet holiday at his aunt's cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the furthest-flung spots on the remote Suffolk coast.

An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery When Commander Adam Dalgliesh visits Larksoken, a remote headland community on the Norfolk coast in the shadow of a nuclear power station, he expects to be engaged only in the sad business of tying up his aunt's estate. But the peace of Larksoken is illusory. A serial killer known as the Whistler is terrorising the neighbourhood and Dalgliesh is drawn into the lives of the headlanders when it quickly becomes apparent that the Whistler isn't the only murderer at work under the sinister shadow of the power station.

From P.D. James, one of the masters of British crime fiction, comes the seventh Adam Dalgliesh novel, set against the bleak fens of East Anglia. Death of An Expert Witness is a classic work of detective fiction packed with forensic detail, intrigue and suspense. When a young girl is found murdered in a field, the scientific examination of the exhibits is just a routine job for the staff of Hoggatt's forensic science laboratory. But nothing could have prepared them for the brutal death of one of their own.

Two great literary minds - master of suspense P.D. James and literary icon Jane Austen - come together in Death Comes to Pemberley, a bestselling historical crime fiction tribute to Pride and Prejudice. Conjuring the world of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and combining the trappings of Regency society with a classic murder mystery, James creates a delightful new story that will intrigue any fan of Jane Austen.

A collection of four short stories from P. D. James, published together for the first time. As the acknowledged "Queen of Crime", P. D. James was frequently commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write special short stories for Christmas. Four of the very best of these have been rescued from the archives and are published together. P .D. James' prose illuminates each of these perfectly formed stories, making them ideal listening for the darkest days of the year.

When the body of a theology student is found on a desolate stretch of coast in East Anglia, his wealthy father demands that Scotland Yard should re-examine the verdict of accidental death. Commander Adam Dalgliesh agrees to pay a visit to the young man's theological college, St Anselm's, a place he knew as a boy, expecting no more than a nostalgic return to old haunts and a straightforward examination of the evidence. Instead he finds himself embroiled in intrigue, secrets and mystery as the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious and horrifying murder . . .

The year is 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction. Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiat, the Warden of England, the old are despairing and the young cruel. Theo Faren, a cousin of the Warden, lives a solitary life in this ominous atmosphere. That is, until a chance encounter with a young woman leads him into contact with a group of dissenters. Suddenly his life is changed irrevocably as he faces agonising choices which could affect the future of mankind.

Mystery Two men lie in a welter of blood in the vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington, their throats brutally slashed. One is Sir Paul Berowne, a baronet and recently resigned Minister of the Crown, the other an alcoholic vagrant. Dalgliesh and his team, set up to investigate crimes of particular sensitivity, are faced with a case of extraordinary complexity as they discover the Berowne family's veneer of prosperous gentility conceals ugly and dangerous secrets.