While Cadfael has bent Abbey rules, he has never broken his monastic vows--until now. Word has come to Shrewsbury of a treacherous act that has left 30 of Maud's knights imprisoned. All have been ransomed except Cadfael's secret son, Olivier. Conceived in Cadfael's soldiering youth and unaware of his father's identity, Olivier will die if he is not freed.
(2nd book of The Heaven Tree trilogy) Young Harry Talvace, the son of Ralf Isambard's master-builder who raised the great church of Parfois and was put to death by his jealous patron, has grown up at the court of Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales. Deep in his heart he nurses a desire for vengence, and when Harry become innocently involved in the tragedy which strikes Llewelyn's marriage he sets out to avenge his father's death. Alone he makes his way to Parfois to challenge Isambard. But enmity can prove as complex as love, Harry discovers, as in his turn he falls under the spell of the old warrior.
Gervase Bonel, with his wife and servants, is a guest of Shrewsbury Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul when he is suddenly taken ill. Luckily, the Abbey boasts the services of the clever and kindly Brother Cadfael, a skilled herbalist. Cadfael hurries to the man's bedside, only to be confronted by two very different surprises. In Master Bonel's wife, he good monk recognises Richildis, whom he loved many years ago before he took his vows, and Master Bonel has been fatallly poisoned by a dose of deadly monk's-hood oil from Cadfael's herbarium. The Sherrif is convinced that the murdered is Richildis' son Edwin, who had reasons aplenty to hate his stepfather. But Cadfael, guided in part by his tender concern for a woman to whom he was once betrothed, is certain of her son's innocence. Using his knowledge of both herbs and the human heart, Cadfael deciphers a deadly recipe for murder.
The knocker hung on a very special door - oak, heavy, with a late-Gothic arch, and apparently a late-Gothic curse. Then the door was moved from an old house, once an abbey, to the village church. Legend held that sinners who seized the knocker had their hands burned by the cold iron. But Gerry Bracewell didn't die of burns, neither did a second victim. Had they knocked on death's door, or was a more down-to-earth killer at large? Detective Chief Inspector George Felse, returning from a weekend in Wales, had passed through the village of Mottisham and watched the ceremony enacted to re-dedicate the door. Little did he know that soon he would be called back to investigate murder...
The fourth anniversary of the transfer of Saint Winifred's bones to the Abbey at Shrewsbury is a time of celebration for the 12th-century pilgrims gathering from far and wide. In distant Winchester, however, a knight has been murdered. Could it be because he was a supporter of the Empress Maud, one of numerous pretenders to the throne? It's up to herbalist, sleuth, and Benedictine monk Brother Cadfael to track down the killer in the pious throng.
A post-WWII love affair is eroded by suspicions of murder, from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. Talented potter Suspiria Freeland and her painter husband, Theo, survived the Blitz and are living among fellow artists in a bombed-out London suburb. But since the war’s terror ended, Theo’s drunken self-loathing has become even harder for his long-suffering wife to bear. When Dennis Forbes enters their lives, Suspiria is immediately drawn to the handsome young mechanic. Though he obviously shares her passionate attraction, he is fourteen years her junior and she, of course, is married . . . until Theo’s lifeless body is discovered. Theo’s death from poison leaves his widow free to love and marry her much younger paramour. But their newfound happiness is soon threatened on all sides—by a community’s gossip and mistrust, by a legal system determined to enact justice at any price, and by the lovers themselves, as suspicion continues to mount that one of them is a murderer. This stand-alone novel of forbidden love, suspicion, and suspense is further evidence why the Financial Times called Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author Ellis Peters “a cult figure of crime fiction.”
Auf dem Felsen von Parfois soll Burgherr Isambard nicht mehr lange residieren. Als selbst sein Sohn gegen ihn intrigiert, steht ihm ausgerechnet sein Gefangener, der Baumeister Harry Talvace, zur Seite. Zu spät erkennt Isambard, wer seine wahren Freunde sind. Und die Tage der unglücklichen Benedetta sind gezählt. Mit dem dritten Band der großen Mittelalter-Trilogie über den Baumeister Harry Talvace krönt Edith Pargeter das Glanzstück ihres Schaffens und liefert das eindrucksvolle und lebendige Bild einer sagenumwobenen Zeit.
In the Summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden to the bloody battlefield. Not far from the safety of the Abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal to the Empress to hang as traitors. With a heavy heart, brother Cadfael agrees to bury the dead, only to make a grisly discovery: ninety-five bodies lies in a row, and the extra corpse tells Cadfael that the killer is both clever and ruthless. But one death among so many seems unimportant to all but the good Benedictine. He vows to find the truth behind disparate clues: a girl in boy's clothing, a missing treasure, and a single broken flower - the tiny bit of evidence that Cadfael believes can most easily expose a murderer's black heart.
