Following her husband's death, Jan Hardy is left with two young children, and a crumbling Welsh farm which she immediately sells in order to buy training stables in Gloucestershire. Life in a caravan is hard and money is tight, but she has good friends and helpers, and gradually begins to make her mark in this male-dominated world. Then she discovers that the auctioneer has swindled her, and so she begins a bitter fight to regain what is rightly hers....

After seeing Inspector Pascoe off on his honeymoon, Superintendent Andy Dalziel soon runs into trouble - and water - on his own solitary holiday. Rescued by a bunch of somewhat cheeful mourners, he accompanies them back to their rundown mansion - the owner of which, Bonnie Fielding, seems rather less troubled by her husband's tragic death than by trying to save her family fortunes. Interested in Mrs Fielding's ample charms, Dalziel stays on. But, by the time Padcoe reappears, there have been several more deaths....

Anne Perry
Slaves And Obsession

When William and Hester Monk agree to investigate the blackmail threatening a London weapons trader, they are unexpectedly drawn into America's violent Civil War. Daniel Alberton had promissed arms to the South but faces a moral dilemma when his daughter Merrit, in love with a Union officer, insists he change sides. When he refuses, she disappears. That night, Alberton is murdered, his weapons are stolen, and Merrit's lover is the immediate suspect.