Tim Hayes is a highly successful local businessman, who has single-handedly driven what began as a small electronics business to success. But there is a seedier side which the police are already investigating when Hayes is suddenly and violently murdered. Was he dispatched by the wife who had vowed to rid herself of him?

After an uneasy start to their marriage, Cherry and Lance Melchior are now living on a small working farm. It's a very different life for both Lance, a once-rich playboy, and Cherry, a former kitchen-maid. But when Lance's brother dies he becomes Lord Melchoir, and must return to Bristol to run the family estate.

When the body of a man is discovered in a rough grave deep in the woods, the police find that it is of one of their young undercover officers - who died nearly thirty years ago. As their inquiries from slender clues progress, it becomes clear that what they are also uncovering is a sordid tale of corruption and murder within their own ranks.

In August 1883, the first steam train on the new Princetown branch line makes its halting passage across Dartmoor, stopping near the quarrymen's hamlet of Foggintor. For Ling Southcott and her young sister, this is a momentous event. Ling realizes that the arrival of railway has the power to change her life, by making the outside world accessible.

In Bill James' London, everything seems to lead back to the drug-ridden housing estates of Whitsun Festival and Temperate Park Acres, where a connection, once made, is only ever one thing: trouble. Trouble for journalist Gervaise Maniciple Tasker, whose investigation into the drug firms at the heart of the estates leads to his murder.

Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is used to murder, but lately there's been an awful lot of it in Philadelphia. A gangland shooting in a popular tourist location has left six dead, most of them innocent bystanders, and days later the body of a headless Latina turns up in the Schuykill River.

Ingrid Langley isn't best pleased when her husband and colleague, Patrick Gillard, late of MI5 and now working for the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, is sent on assignment just days after the birth of their new son. She has no time to dwell on it though, what with nursing a newborn - and discovering a dead body, in the Church vestry.

In 1953 Anna Fehrbach, still remembered as the Countess von Widerstand, is enjoying her Bahamian hideaway, now happily married and contemplating raising a family. Anna has just begun to believe that her arch-enemy, Lavrenty Beria, has at last abandoned the chase. But Beria has been remorselessly tracking her all this time.

Lois Meade's daughter was admittedly considering leaving her partner, Rob - but she never expected him to be found badly beaten and left for dead in a roadside ditch. When Rob tragically dies from his injuries without regaining consciousness, Inspector Cowgill has a murder investigation on his hands.

The triumphant end of the war has not allowed beautiful but deadly Anna Fehrbach, alias the Countess von Widerstand, to retire gracefully. Working for the SS her principal antagonist was the Soviet Union, and to Joseph Stalin and his henchman Lavrenty Beria she remains the most wanted of all war criminals.

It is seven years since a stake was driven through the heart of the infamous Count, and the Dracula was beheaded and allowed slowly to crumble to dust. Neither Jonathan and Mina Harker nor their companions can find any trace of the horrific events. But beneath the earth, Dracula's fierce soul lies in limbo.

Carly Paladino, an investigator for a San Francisco security firm, re-evaluates her life and decides to strike out on her own. Her first case involves the death of the daughter of an old and moneyed Pacific Heights family. A mysterious young man is arrested for the murder, but Carly suspects the real murderer is inside the Hanover mansion.

Englishwoman Clio lives in Paris. Twice-married and unhappy in love, she has now become a realist. What she craves above all is stability for her son, Alex, the light of her life. This means she should marry her lover, Philippe, a handsome cultured Frenchman with a large and conventional family.

Jay, the orphan boy, doesn't want to hurt anyone. He tries so hard not to. Yet he has a frightening secret hidden under the ancient ruin. Nurse Laura Parris is determined to protect the children in her care. After Laura meets Victor Brodman, a widower, she wonders if she can trust him enough to reveal Jay's disturbing past.

When 94-year-old Ernest Thayer receives a strange summons from one Tim Ferris, postmarked Balltown, Iowa, and promising to tell the whole story behind the infamous Bagley Bunch murders, his journalist's antennae are pricked. But Thayer's health is not up to making a flying visit to Los Angeles, so he calls upon his young protege, Hunt Liebling.

The Blue Knights are 'Black & Decker', aka Steve Decker and Dave Black, 'the blunt instrument of modern day policing'. White Cross is the rough Yorkshire estate where they are set upon by a pavement-stone wielding attacker. Decker is rushed to hospital where he tries, with Black's help, to recollect what happened and who was responsible.

Rose Paton doesn't think she'll be singing at second-rate pub The White Horse for much longer. After all, she's got good looks, youth, and talent. But when Marcus Bennley asks her to be his birthday present to his sister Marie - by singing at her party - she accepts. Is Rosie making a terrible mistake in entangling herself with the Bennleys?

On the night when rites are held to avert witchcraft, three bodies are found in bizarre circumstances, and for the rulers of Sparta, the timing is terrible. Hosting a trade delegation that has travelled all the way from the Black Sea, the last thing they want is for their delicate negotiations to be undermined by allegations of black magic.

Christmas, 1510; the Burren, West coast of Ireland. Mara, Brehon (investigating judge) of the Burren, has accepted the offer of marriage made by King Turlough Donn O'Brien. On the eve of marriage festivities, a man kneeling in prayer beside the tomb of an ancestor in the abbey church is battered to death. Who could have planned to kill the king?

Bea Abbot runs a domestic agency that doesn't 'do' murder. There's nothing sinister about Zander's request for Bea to accompany him on an errand to a grieving widow, but it's awkward because it was Zander who'd exposed the scam that his boss Denzil had been running on the Tudor Housing Trust... after which Denzil had, unexpectedly, died.