Ex-journalist Violet Brewster is keen to make a good first impression in her new community, having just moved to the small village of Merrywell. When Violet hears about the mystery of Helen Slingsby, who disappeared from the village forty years earlier, she decides to help uncover what happened. But despite Violet’s best efforts, she can find no trace of the missing woman.

Violet Brewster has just finished working on a project at the local retirement village, Maple Grange, when she receives a call that one of the residents, Phyllis Gibson, has passed away suddenly. Violet is surprised when she finds out that Phyllis left her a beautiful jewellery box in her will. When she goes to collect it, Maureen Bond, Phyllis’s best friend, tells Violet that Phyllis had become paranoid during her last days, and was convinced that someone was trying to kill her. When Maureen is pushed off her balcony, it becomes clear that something ominous is happening at Maple Grange.

As the Whitworth family begin renovations on their new home, their plans are brought to an abrupt end when they discover a body buried in the back garden. DI Isabel Blood and her team are called to investigate, but as she approaches Ecclesdale Drive, a feeling of unease settles in her gut. The property cordoned off is number 23. The house she used to live in as a child....

The young man with the shock of white-blond hair lay spread-eagled on the floor, surrounded by fallen books. His hand reached out to the scattered pages, as though he was trying to tell her something. But who is he? How did he come to be killed in Flora’s ordinary little bookshop? Flora finds out he was staying at the Priory Hotel, and when the gardener suddenly dies in its beautiful grounds only a few days later, she is certain that something untoward is happening in her quiet village by the sea.

Recently divorced and reluctantly retired, Julia Bird has fled London to enjoy idyllic rural life in the Cotswolds. Determined to have the perfect English garden, her first job is to tear down the old shed, where she unearths much more than she’d bargained for: a body, apparently buried for decades. But who could it be, and who killed them? The police draw a blank, and even the gossip-fest that is the local book club can’t remember anyone going missing in the village.