Robert Lacey
Great Tales From English Hiostory, Vol 2

This volume opens with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the flowering of the modern English language in the fourteenth century, and culminates with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, when Parliament secured tighter control of the Crown.

Marian Babson
Retreat From Murder

The quaint village of Brimful Coffers, colonised by a group of mystery writers, is seen as an ideal retreat, until a child is killed in a callous hit-and-run incident. Two of the visiting authors discover they are both using the same well-known lady as the heroine and villain of their respective mysteries. Soon one of them is killed in a hit-and-run....

After opening her own agency, Agatha Raisin finds that her clients are mostly ladies with missing cats - until wealthy Catherine Laggat-Brown walks in. Her daughter has received a death threat, and when Agatha thwarts an attack on the girl at a dinner dance, she recognises an opportunity to show what Raisin Investigations can do.