She had heard James moving around carefully downstairs, and the creaking stairs had prepared her for his entrance. Sitting with Matthew on her lap, looking down on the bent heads of the congregation who were kneeling, she tried to conjure up an image of Jeanie. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now .

When she comes across a car slewed off the road while driving home during a terrible blizzard Vera is shocked to find the driver's seat empty but a toddler strapped in the back seat. My introduction to Deputy Chief Inspector (DCI) Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police came by way of my local public television station, which for the past several years has hosted Vera, the television series based on the edge-of-your-seat novels written by Ann Cleeves. When another death occurs, a fourth woman enters the picture – the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope . Telling Tales, the book I am so pleased to talk about today, was the second book written in the series. We soon learn that ten years earlier, at the age of fifteen, Emma discovered the murdered body of her best friend, Abigail Mantel, lying in a field.In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for her novel Raven Black, [1] the first novel in the Jimmy Perez series.

From Ann Cleeves— New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—comes Telling Tales. Terrie ~ You might have been there a few years ago when Ann Cleeves showed the film Crow Trap at Malice Domestic. Things get complicated when a body is discovered and Vera's neighbour is found with a knife in her hand.There was a gale the afternoon Abigail Mantel died and it seems to Emma that it’s been windy ever since, that there have been ten years of storms, of hailstones like bullets blown against her windows and trees ripped from the earth by their roots. She decided he was thinking already of other things, a tricky tide perhaps, an overloaded ship, a hostile skipper.

Inside a Christmas party is in full swing, but outside a woman – possibly the child's mother – lies dead . Now, evidence has emerged that proves her innocence and means that Abigail's killer still roams free.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. Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook, and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing.

As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount. All the two victims have in common is a fascination with moths and catching these beautiful, rare creatures. Salma and Bilal are your typical British couple looking to move off the estate and into a quiet suburban neighborhood.Vera revels being back in charge of an investigation again, working with Sergeant Joe Ashworth to find a motive. Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope may not be the first person you'd think of for a heroine: she's overweight, a bit rough around the edges, and her staff knows when to stay out of her way. Shocked by the new revelations, she begins to realize that she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought . She felt like a child listening in to an adult conversation, a parent and teacher, perhaps, discussing her academic progress.