Betrayal is in their blood ... When Anna and Therese's father walked out on their mother, the Calvert family was shattered. Now that he's deceased, his carefully crafted plans are set to unravel their lives all over again.After their mother died, the two sisters were sent to live at the Blessed Sacrament Convent. Anna rebelled and escaped to the real world, while Therese remained devoted to a life of duty and worship. Until, one day, the mysterious and seductive gardener Francis takes up residence at the convent. While the nuns are besotted with his charm and handiwork, Anna is less than convinced. Shortly after Francis's arrival, eerie and ominous occurrences begin. As Anna tries to uncover his sinister secrets and save her sister, she realizes the answer lies in finding the truth about her own family's past.Fans of Ruth Rendell and S. J. Bolton will love this brilliant psychological thriller.

This sophisticated, psychologically gripping tale about crimes of the most twisted passion is perfect for fans of Linda Fairstein and Patricia Highsmith.The odd, vaguely menacing little man called Mr. Logo is a familiar figure in the old court building in London. Although frequently brought before the judge for indecent assault, he is invariably acquitted due to lack of evidence. He is especially familiar to Helen West, the take-no-prisoners lawyer who has just failed for the fifth time to convict him. Now he is off-limits to her until his next appearance in court. Yet when she befriends Rose, the young, compulsively secretive, and promiscuous clerk in her office, Helen unwittingly sets in motion events that will dangerously complicate her connection to Mr. Logo and push his rage and dark passion to lethal extremes.

A woman's body is found decomposing in a shallow grave, stab wounds to the neck and blows to the head and shoulders. She is identified as Yvonne, missing wife of local property developer John Blundell. When Antony Sumner, English teacher and Yvonne's lover, confesses to striking her down with his walking stick, it looks like an open and shut case for Detective Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey. Too much so thinks Crown Prosecutor Helen West. Sumner denies murder - and where is the knife? And when Helen and Geoffrey dig deeper into the secrets of the sleepy commuter village what they discover is a hidden world of passion, envy and betrayal.

Cunning and evil, poisoned by a lifetime of love withheld, Eileen Cartwright has an unrivaled passion for revenge. When the rich, middle-aged widow falls in love with her lawyer, she goes to fatal lengths to make him hers. Prosecutor Helen West is assigned to the case, but when Eileen's extraordinary evil reaches out even from behind prison bars, the investigation reaches a climax of frightening and frenzied violence.

Elisabeth is a picture restorer. This gives her the solitude and independence she needs--living and working alone in her flat. Despite her skills and reliability, Elisabeth undercharges for her work--valuing the worth of the paintings rather more than she values herself. Her ambitions are modest: beauty to look upon, unintrusive friendships, and complete privacy. But when a mysterious and obviously wealthy man commissions her to restore his fabulous collection, an uncharacteristic combination of curiosity and financial need prompts her to accept his offer. Elisabeth soon realizes her error, as the past and the present combine to make privacy her nemesis. As she becomes a hostage to her patron, her lover and her friend realize they know nothing about her, or where she might be.

A tense, twisting thriller perfect for fans of Linda Fairstein.Prosecutor Helen West's relationship with police officer Geoffrey Bailey is becoming more serious, but the couple is at odds because Bailey's protégé, Sergeant Ryan, is suspected of rape. As the evidence slowly mounts against Ryan, West and Bailey examine the seemingly open-and-shut case; a terrible crime warrants justice regardless of their feelings toward Ryan. But as they dig deeper, a new suspect emerges—one who possesses a cold-blooded intuition about women. West and Bailey quickly find themselves trying to clear Ryan's name and avenge a series of crimes with no evidence.

This searing thriller is perfect for fans of Carol O'Connell and Louise Penny.Sarah Fortune is bored to death--but few know, and fewer would guess, how the beautiful and successful lawyer escapes the stultifying tedium of her career. Since the death of her unfaithful husband, she has been moonlighting as a generous mistress, offering intimate company to lonely men.Sarah is satisfied with her routine. But then she meets Charles Tysall, an important figure at her firm, whose charisma and enormous wealth conceal an implacable will and a misogynist's mad aggression. Soon Sarah finds herself implicated in a murder when a decaying body is found off the coast. Inexorably, Sarah is hurtling toward a confrontation where there will be no escape from the shadows, no turning from the face of lethal obsession ...

A twisting tale of suspense—perfect for fans of Linda Fairstein.When the body of a successful criminal lawyer is found outside a chic London hotel, it looks like a suicide. For those who knew her, the woman's death is a shock—Marianne Shearer was at the pinnacle of her career, wealthy and stylish—but for the police, the case is open-and-shut.There's something strange about the circumstances, though, something that prompts her colleague Peter Friel to dig deeper. Little by little, he discovers that things are not as they seem. In her final days, Marianne appears to have left a series of small, almost imperceptible clues—clues that point to a far more sinister truth. ReviewA genuinely original and imaginative writer, [Fyfield] offers a fascinating read... An admirable crime novel Literary Review Fyfield is routinely and rightly praised for her elegant prose... What doesn't get mentioned so often is that when it comes to the dissection of the human spirit, she is the most brutal scalpel-wielder we have...one of Highsmith's true heirs The Guardian Blood From Stone has all the complexity you'd expect from this award-winning grande dame of crime fiction - she's up there with Rendell, James, McDermid and Walters... Simply terrific Observer As always, Fyfield leaves her readers with shivers that take a long time to go away' The Times 'Among her myriad literary skills, Frances Fyfield is adept at creating blood-chilling psychopaths. Like her American predecessor Patricia Highsmith, she takes us deep into their twisted psychology' About the AuthorFrances Fyfield is a criminal lawyer, a trade she has used to huge success in many of her novels. She lives in London and in Deal, by the sea which is her passion. She has won several awards, including the CWA Silver Dagger and in 2008, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger.

Henry didn't turn back when Francesca needed him twenty years before. Now, on some sort of journey to anchor his soul, he arrives in her home town of Warbling and discovers that she's even further beyond his reach - serving a life sentence for the murder of her child. Still intrigued by her, and entranced by his memories, he becomes drawn into the town and the people who knew her far better than he - her cousin, her lawyer, her closest friend, Angela, whose adopted daughter Francesca had helped her acquire. He finds himself a lodger in the House of Enchantment, an eccentric boarding house run by two gays who believe the comfort of their guests is above profit. And he finds himself incapable of believing that Francesca is a killer, even if she did confess her crime in chillingly logical detail. But if it wasn't her, then who? Peopled with richly quirky and original characters, this is a novel of suspense in which the truth is better left unknown

Kathryn and David are the ideal couple: she, petite, pretty; he, dark, debonair and gifted. But beneath the smooth surface, unseen by their envious or admiring friends, splinters are beginning to form. David suspects one of their two children is not his own, for plump and naughty Jeanetta does not conform with the controlled perfection with which he surrounds himself. Kathryn struggles to iron out family confrontations and maintain the calm of their lives together. But slowly things start to slip from her control. Bits of jewellery and items of clothing mysteriously go missing. David's mood swings become more irrational and violent. His drive to dominate and order the world he's created intensifies to the point of locking the playroom door and pocketing the key - a move that signals the final route into the chaos that will disrupt their perfect world.**Review'Nobody could fail to admire this novel - a wholly believable horror story. Frances Fyfield's acute portrayal of a psychopath and his victims is frighteningly real.' Ruth Rendell 'Excellent.' Margaret Forster About the AuthorFrances Fyfield is a practising criminal lawyer and the author of many highly acclaimed novels, most recently UNDERCURRENTS and THE NATURE OF THE BEAST, some of which have been dramatised for television.

Rachel Doe is a shy accountant at a low ebb in life when she meets charismatic Ivy Schneider, nee Wiseman, at her evening class and her life changes for the better. Ivy is her polar oppositte: strong, six years her senior and the romantic survivor of drug addiction, homelessness and the death of her child. Ivy does menial shift work, beholden to no one, and she inspires life; as do her farming parents, with their ramshackle house and its swan-filled lake, the lake where Ivy's daughter drowned. As Rachel grows closer to them all she learns how Ivy came to be married to Carl, the son of a WWII prisoner, as well as the true nature of that marriage to a bullying and ambitious lawyer who has become a judge and who denies her access to her surviving child. Rachel wants justice for Ivy, but Ivy has another agenda and Rachel's naive sense of fair play is no match for the manipulative qualities in the Wisemen women.

Family fights, suicides, sirens, death, and even a ghost. Everything happens here ...Attorney Sarah Fortune is dispatched to a small coastal town to straighten out the financial affairs of the eccentric Pardoe family. The three siblings and their mother, who is suffering from dementia, own most of Merton on Sea. The business of the estate should be simple enough, and Sarah sees the job as an opportunity for a mini-vacation--a chance to get out of the city.But she soon discovers that the family, and the town itself, are afflicted by a past filled with guilt, pain, and unrequited love. Most haunting of all, though, is the legacy of a suicide that took place two years ago, when a beautiful woman with an uncanny resemblance to Sarah walked into the sea and never came back ...Fans of Ruth Rendell and Julia Spencer-Fleming will love this atmospheric psychological thriller.

This gripping psychological maze is perfect for fans of Ruth Rendell and P. D. James.Pip Carlton is a devoted husband and a highly respected pharmacist, cherished by his loyal customers. When his wife dies in her sleep, with no apparent cause, he is distraught. Comforted by his caring assistant, Pip ignores the rumors about Margaret's death, relieved that the police seem to have moved on. But prosecutor Helen West refuses to believe that Margaret simply slipped into her final slumber. As she probes deeper into the affairs of the neighborhood, she uncovers a viper's nest of twisted passion, jealous rage, and lethal addictions. Then a sudden act of violence erupts, shaking the community, and one lone man, armed with strange love potions, prepares to murder again ...