ANTHEA FRASER SERIES:

The Seven Stars

The Seven Stars

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

After fog forces her to spend the night in a country guesthouse called The Seven Stars, Helen Campbell reads her horoscope in the local paper. Little does she realise that by doing so she will dramatically change not only her own life, but the lives of everyone else living in the village. Ten days later, she returns to stay at The Seven Stars while attending a local course on antiques. Slow she finds herself increasingly involved in the lives of the people living there. As she arrived a girl was killed in a hit-and-run accident. But was it an accident? Or was it murder? A spate of robberies have targeted local country houses. Are they connected to the girl’s death? And what is the significance of the phrase which recurs in the horoscope column under ‘Tomorrow’s Birthday’? Whether or not it was written in the stars, Helen's stay at the guesthouse ensures that life will never be the same again... for any of them. ‘The Seven Stars’ is a gripping crime novel featuring Anthea Fraser's popular detective David Webb. Praise for Anthea Fraser: “A superbly crafted, riveting, page-turner of a read" Booklist “Ms Fraser is her dependable elegant, guileful self withholding the killer's identity till a dying fall" Sunday Times ANTHEA FRASER has written all her life but did not begin to take it seriously until after marriage, when she found herself at home with two small daughters and embarked on a correspondence course with the London School of Journalism. She wrote short stories before turning to novels of the supernatural, and then to crime. The Seven Stars is her twelfth crime novel. Praise for Anthea Fraser's books. 'A well-mannered, well-plotted and well-told story' Birmingham Post 'The book is a pleasure to read and savour' Woman Journalist 'Irresistible, all-too-human story' Dread Review of Mystery 'A well-structured book, with good balance between depiction of character and development of plot' Criminologist 'Sympathetic, well-executed book, in which full attention is paid to human feelings and failings' Yorkshire Post Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.From Kirkus ReviewsHelen Campbell's marriage to Andrew, an insurance claims adjuster is in trouble. Their two children are grown, and a restless Helen is thinking of renewing her old career in the antiques trade. Driving home one night from a visit to daughter Penelope, a university student, Helen is delayed by heavy fog and thankfully takes a room at The Seven Stars, a B&B along the way. As she's parking her car, a young woman runs out of the inn's doorway. Her body is found later that night--victim of a hit and run. Meanwhile, Chief Inspector David Webb of the nearby Shillingham police (The Gospel Makers, 1996, etc.) is trying to dredge up information from a botched attempt to break into Beckworth House- -one of a series of robberies of stately homes across the county, all of them marked by the theft of one or only a few not-always- valuable objects. Some days later Helen returns to Steeple Bayliss to take a two-week course on antiques, staying again at The Seven Stars, where, as on her first stay, she detects some odd cross- currents amongst owners Stella and Gordon Cain, Stella's sister Kate and brother-in-law Nicholas Warren; disquieting things, too, about their visitor Dominic Hardy--disturbing enough to drive Helen to the local police station, where, eventually, her total recall helps Webb solve a case in which the latest break-in has resulted in murder. Readable and fitfully intriguing, but undermined by too many coincidences, a clumsily absurd conspiracy, and an underlying motive literally not to be believed. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Next Door to Murder

Next Door to Murder

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

A Rona Parish Mystery - Journalist Rona Parish continues her popular series on local family businesses with a piece on the Willow furniture emporium. For once, there dont seem to be any skeletons in the Willow family cupboards. But when Louisa, the daughter of Ronas reserved elderly neighbours, comes to Rona with a plea for help, it seems there may be a dark secret closer to home, and all Ronas journalistic instincts are aroused . . .From Publishers WeeklyIn Fraser's leisurely sixth Rona Parrish cozy (after 2007's Rogue in Porcelain), the freelance journalist and her artist husband, Max Allerdyce, are used to knowing little about the tenants who come and go at the four-story Georgian house next door to their own in Marsborough. But when a reserved couple, Barbara and Keith Franks, and their adult daughter, Louise, become their new neighbors, Rona is intrigued to learn from Louise that she has no memory of her prior life in Canada due to an accident. Rona soon discovers that helping Louise reclaim her past is more exciting—and perilous—than her current assignment, writing about a family-owned furniture store for Chiltern Life magazine. Fraser's cozy goes down with a mild kick, like tea laced with a dash of brandy. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistFreelance journalist and biographer Rona Parish just can’t stay out of dangerous situations. Her last outing resulted in her witnessing a traumatic murder while she researched the owners of a ceramics firm. She’s barely recovered from the ordeal when her editor suggests a “nice, safe” assignment—profiling a local furniture merchant. But it’s not her research on the furniture firm that causes trouble. It’s Rona’s new next-door neighbors, an elderly couple with a thirtysomething daughter who suffers from a crippling case of amnesia. When Rona befriends the young woman and tries to help her, she has no idea that she will uncover a terrible secret. Set in a British village where everyone knows everyone else, the Rona Parish series perfectly captures everyday life in the small towns of the UK and portrays the sorts of problems and issues that are faced by modern families and career women everywhere. Yet it’s not just chick lit; there’s enough suspense and mayhem to appeal to all but the hardest-boiled mystery fans. --Emily Melton
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Unfinished Portrait

Unfinished Portrait

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

The new Rona Parish mystery - Rona Parish is asked to write a biography of reclusive artist Ellie by her concerned sister. Ellie has seemingly disappeared, and the mystery surrounding her whereabouts has fuelled a new interest in her work. But when Rona discovers that Ellie's closest friend committed suicide, Rona wonders whether Ellie, wracked by guilt over her friend's death, could have been driven to do likewise . . .
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Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

A gripping psychological mystery and a warm, sympathetic exploration of widowhood - Anna’s family hope that a South African safari holiday will help her to get over her beloved husband’s death. No one is more surprised than Anna herself when she finds herself strongly attracted to a fellow traveller, Lewis Masters, and despite her initial resistance, she is soon drawn into a new relationship. But back home, Anna’s journalist son Jonathan is being repeatedly contacted by a young woman asking for his help, even though she’s too frightened to say what is worrying her . . .About the AuthorFraser announced at the age of five that she wanted to be an author.
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Person or Persons Unknown

Person or Persons Unknown

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

Rona Parish's last assignment, a series of articles on the town of Buckford, is almost complete, when a young woman approaches her with a request to help her trace her natural parents. Rona's curiosity is aroused - not least because she discovers that the woman's birth mother had been murdered in her bath twenty-five years earlier.
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Home through the Dark

Home through the Dark

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

Ginnie was running away from a failed marriage. Driving away, her destination as yet undecided, she was forced off the road by another car driven by a man in a tearing hurry. She begins to make a new life in the seaside town of Westhampton, finding temporary jobs and living in a beautiful rented flat. She wants to forget her philandering actor husband and Ginnie quickly makes new friends. Then she begins to suspect that the driver of the car is one of the actors in the theatre group...and there is something sinister afoot.
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Island-in-Waiting

Island-in-Waiting

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

When Chloe visits the Isle of Man for the first time, she is perturbed to find that she 'recognizes' both landscapes and people she has never seen before. Nor can she account for her intuitive knowledge of the Island's history and legends, and as she becomes involved with the masters at her brother's school she comes to realize that one of them has a telepathic hold over her and is able to influence the strange and vivid dreams which have been disturbing her over the last few years.Old Granny Clegg's obscure warnings add to her uneasiness, and with dawning horror she discovers that the dreams are beginning to come true. But awareness of coming danger affords no protection and eventually, as she knows she must, Chloe finds herself alone in the mist facing an unseen enemy.
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Dangerous Deception

Dangerous Deception

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

Seeking time alone, Clare Laurie has come to the isolated Welsh hotel of Carreg Coed after breaking her engagement under a cloud of suspicion and scandal. But the atmosphere seems strangely oppressive, with all the residents absorbed in each other's lives. Then, Clare is drawn into a ruthless international conspiracy. Mistaken for one of the gang members, Clare hopes she can fool the others ... just long enough to alert the police.
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The Macbeth Prophecy

The Macbeth Prophecy

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

To the casual holidaymaker, Crowthorpe seemed a pretty Lakeland village, its stone circle just a prehistoric monument like any other. No outward sign proclaimed it the site of ancient rivalry, whose legacy of hatred lingered into the present day. Matthew and Philip Selby, however, though they thought themselves ordinary holidaymakers, proved not to be so. Two factors singled them out from the beginning: the fact that they were twins, and their lifelong phobia about crows. The village also reached out for Jason Quinn, a sophisticated TV journalist who gave no credence to the supernatural and was known for his scepticism. He too was drawn relentlessly into the smouldering whirlpool of suspicion and fear as the buried emotions of thousands of years finally erupted. Yet the terrifying outcome might, despite everything, have been averted, had not the gypsy girl at the fair made her fatal Macbeth Prophecy...
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Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

An intriguing mystery from this popular author - James Markham jilts his fiance for a woman about whom he appears to know very little. Callum Firbank has always been evasive about his childhood, and his wife realises she knows little about her husbands upbringing or family. Jill Irving has everything she could wish for, but she, too, has secrets in her past. What links these three very different people, and who is the mysterious stranger whose appearance in their lives seems to cause such terror?
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Pretty Maids All In A Row

Pretty Maids All In A Row

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

Actress Jessica Randal has been incapacitated by a broken leg, and both she and her husband of eight weeks, author Matthew Selby, think they will have a month of tranquility and convalescence when they rent Hinckley cottage near the rustic English village of Westridge. But a demented rapist is stalking the town, striking quickly, savagely and often, and always adding his own macabre touch to the act by forcing his terrified victims to recite nursery rhymes. When the body of Freda Cowley, missing owner of Hinckley cottage, is discovered with a nursery rhyme tucked into her pocket, it becomes apparent that the rapist is also a murderer, and the community, populated with well-meaning, sharp-eyed and astute citizens, draws together for support and protection and tries to make sure that Jessica, housebound and helpless, has someone with her when Matthew is out of town. Jessica is indeed at risk, for several bizarre incidents have drawn suspicion to her husband, and clues suggest she is next on the murderer's list. Fraser (A Shroud for Delilah has added a distracting and meaningless romantic subplot, but the book remains, till the end, a taut and truly shocking story
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The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

When a man's body is discovered in a pub car park, DCI Webb has a sense of deja vu. Some years previously, another body was found in almost identical circumstances and the killer has still not been caught. Not believing in coincidence, Webb is hopeful of clearing up both cases at the same time.
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David Webb 13 - One Is One and All Alone

David Webb 13 - One Is One and All Alone

Anthea Fraser

Mystery & Thrillers

When DCI Bennett remarries after the death of his wife, his family struggle to understand his new choice of partner. Una is a private, isolated woman, providing little in the way of companionship and preferring to live a very separate life to her husband. Soon after the wedding, Bennett’s old friend from the force, DCI Webb, also begins to wonder about Una. And as the two detectives work together on a series of violent shop raids, Bennett’s mood starts to sour. When two members of the Bennett family become victims of murder, and the cold-hearted Una seems to be inexplicably tangled up in the crimes,Webb is forced to investigate whether she should be a suspect. Very quickly, a baffling murder investigation is underway, complicated by the intricacies of family disputes and loyalties. And Webb faces one of the most traumatic cases of his career… 'One is One and All Alone' is a chilling crime thriller that is perfect for fans of Elizabeth George and Nikki French. Praise For Anthea Fraser: 'Another of her shrewd and sympathetic looks at contemporary life...A gripping, well-told murder mystery' - Western Morning News 'A well-mannered, well-plotted and well-told story' - Birmingham Post 'A well-structured book, with good balance between depiction of character and development of plot' - Criminologist 'An absorbing, page-turning read' - Woman Journalist 'Offers shrewd look at colour supplement version of country life' - Guardian ANTHEA FRASER has written all her life but did not begin to take it seriously until after marriage, when she found herself at home with two small daughters and embarked on a correspondence course with the London School of Journalism. She wrote short stories before turning to novels of the supernatural, and then to crime. Her novels include ‘The Seven Stars’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.**
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