Edward Marston

September 1907. George Dillman sets sail from Liverpool to New York on the Lusitania's maiden voyage. Posing as a passenger, Dillman is in fact an undercover detective hired by the Cunard Line to keep an eye out for petty crimes....

Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret are royal commissioners appointed to investigate irregularities that come to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book in the reign of William the Conqueror. They arrive in Canterbury to discover that the body of a young girl has been found....

Nicolas Picard is riding home from Exeter when he's attacked by a snarling wildcat. Yet, when the body is found, there are lacerations on his neck put there by a human hand....

Soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret lead a group of the king's finest commissioners into the war-torn lands of Yorkshire to settle land claims and compile the Domesday Book. One island of wealth and luxury remains in Yorkshire: the castle of merchant Aubrey Maminot....

November 1907. George Dillman and Genevieve Masefield sail from Liverpool to New York on the maiden voyage of the luxurious Mauretania....

When the engines finally met, there was a deafening clash and the Brighton Express twisted and buckled, tipping its carriages on to the other line. It was a scene of utter devastation....

A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be closer to home....

The ordered calm of Gloucester Abbey is shattered by the murder of one of the monks....

December 1917. Ada Hobbes has cleaned for Dr Tindall for many years and begins this frosty morning like any other day. But it turns out the house is not empty after all. The blood-covered George Tindall is sprawled across the floor....

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes....

Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit her Aunt Cassandra, who waits on the platform at Oxford station where the train terminates, to greet them. Only they never arrive....

Three powerful Norman lords and a Saxon thegn watch their horses competing in a race near Woodstock. When one of the riders is murdered during the race, suspicion falls on the Saxon....

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating....

The frontier zone of Archenfield in Herefordshire is a no-man's-land, which acts as a bulwark between Norman-controlled English soil and the Welsh border....

The small village of Maldon is controlled by the wealthy and rapacious FitzCorbucion family, led by Hamo FitzCorbucion, the lord of Blackwater Castle. When his eldest son, Guy, is found murdered, an enraged Hamo demands justice....

An exquisite silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff....

1860, Wimborne, Dorset. Rebecca Tullidge, miserably married to her callous husband, is having an affair. Much to her distress, she trips over her lover's dead body on the railway tracks....

Guy Fawkes Night, 1857. Joel Heygate is the popular stationmaster at Exeter St David's railway station - an impressive figure of a man replete with frock coat and top hat, bushy eyebrows and walrus moustache....

December 1860. Headed for the morning shift at the Swindon Locomotive Works is an army of men pouring out of terraced houses built by the GWR, a miniature town and planned community that aims to provide for its employees from cradle to grave....

Hugh d’Avranches, Earl of Chester, is enraged when his hawk is killed by an arrow in the Forest of Delamere. When two poachers are caught, he orders their execution, yet neither of them fired the arrow....