It is no ordinary Christmas at Lexham Manor. Six holiday guests find themselves the suspects of a murder enquiry when the old Scrooge, Nathaniel Herriad, who owns the substantial estate, is found stabbed in the back. Whilst the matter of inheritance could be the key, the real conundrum is how any of the suspects could have entered the locked room.

Wonderfully entertaining mystery stories set in the world of the acclaimed ROMA SUB ROSA series. It is the Rome of the Late Republic, and Gordianus the Finder has a knack for finding trouble - and dead bodies.

Agatha Troy, world famous painter, is working on the portrait of 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies. The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in.

Seven foul crimes; seven cunning murderers brought to justice by the master-detective of China's glorious T'ang Empire. (And one innocent person exonerated). 'A rich new vein of detective fiction is worked by Mr van Gulik . . . Entertaining, instructive and impressive'.

At a lakeside town near the Imperial capital T'ang, China's master detective, Judge Dee finds his astounding powers of deduction put to their greatest challenge yet as he battles murder and high treason against the Imperial throne.

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?