Showing results by author "M. C. Beaton"

Penelope Keith - who starred as Agatha Raisin in the popular BBC Radio 4 series - reads M. C. Beaton's entertaining murder mystery. Incomer Gloria French is at first welcomed in the Cotswold village of Piddlebury. She seems like a do-gooder par excellence, raising funds for the church and caring for the elderly. But she has a bad habit of borrowing things and not giving them back, so when she is discovered dead, poisoned by a bottle of elderberry wine, folk in the village don't mourn her passing too intently.

Meet Agatha Raisin, high-flying public relations boss turned village sleuth. After her many years of bullying and cajoling others, her early retirement to a picture-perfect village in the Cotswolds is a dream come true.

After pursuing him for nearly four years, Agatha is finally about to marry James Lacey, the handsome Colonel next door. But there's just one little problem.

After being nearly killed by both a hired hit man and her former secretary, Agatha Raisin could use some low-key cases. So when Robert Smedley walks through the door of her detective agency, determined to prove that his wife is cheating on him, Raisin Investigations immediately offers to help. Unfortunately for Agatha, Mabel Smedley appears to be the perfect wife: young, pretty and a regular volunteer at church.

After a romantic disappointment and an undeserved demotion, Scots village bobby Hamish Macbeth decides a week's holiday at the coastal village of Skag might be just the ticket. He's dead wrong, of course: the food is dire, and the man in the next room nags his wife so loudly and continuously that more than one person at the Friendly House bed-and-breakfast wishes him dead, though only Hamish is heard threatening him. When this chap's body is found floating in the river Skag, Hamish is the prime suspect.

Even though Agatha Raisin loathes Christmas panto, her friend, Mrs Bloxby, the vicar's wife, has persuaded her to support the local am dram society in their festive offering. Stifling a yawn at the production of Babes in the Wood, Agatha watches the baker playing an ogre strut and threaten onstage until a trapdoor opens, followed by a scream and silence! Surely this wasn't the way the scene was rehearsed. When it turns out the local baker had been murdered most horribly, Agatha puts her team of detectives on the case.

An unabridged reading of an Agatha Raisin mystery from M. C. Beaton, read by Penelope Keith. There may be trouble ahead...so will Agatha face the music? Can the feisty Agatha cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then walks in wealthy divorcee Catherine Laggat-Brown, and Agatha is given her first real case.

After six gruelling months back in London, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village of Carsely - and to the charms of her neighbour, James Lacey. True, James is less than thrilled to see her, but Agatha is soon distracted by a sensational murder. The victim, hiker Jessica Tartinck, spent her life enraging wealthy landowners by insisting on her walking club's right to hike over their properties. Now she has been found dead....

There’s not a cloud in Hamish Macbeth’s sky - just plenty of warm sunshine but not quite enough of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. But as eight hopeful members of the Checkmate Singles Club converge on Tommel Castle Hotel for a week of serious matchmaking, the clouds roll in. The four couples, carefully matched by dating director Maria Worth, immediately dislike one another. And the arrival of Maria’s gross, greedy business partner, Peta, kills the last vestige of romance. And as love goes out the window, murder comes in the door.

Penelope Keith - who starred as Agatha Raisin in the popular BBC Radio 4 series – reads M. C. Beaton’s eagerly-awaited murder mystery. Agatha Raisin has never been one for enforced holiday cheer, but her friendly little village of Carsely has always prided itself on its traditional Christmas festivities. However, this year Mr John Sunday has chosen Christmas as the time to crack down on what he sees as gross misconduct by everyone. But when Mr Sunday goes too far, he is soon found lying face down in the petunias, very much dead.

A therapist moved into the village of Carsely, and Agatha Raisin hated her. Not only was this therapist, Jill Davent, romancing Agatha's ex-husband, but she had dug up details of Agatha's slum background. Added to that, Jill was counselling a woman called Gwen Simple from Winter Parva, and Agatha firmly believed Gwen to have assisted her son in some grisly murders, although has no proof she had done so.

Life is not easy for the poor relations of England's upper crust, but fate and clever schemes bring them together. Lady Fortescue and Colonel Sandhurst hatch a plan: What if they were to transform her decrepit Bond Street home into a posh hotel, offering their guests the pleasure of being waited upon by nobility? With the help of other down-and-out aristocrats, they do just that, and London's newest hotel, the Poor Relation, is born.

James Harrison has recently moved to a restored hunting lodge in Sutherland with his gorgeous private nurse, Gloria Dainty. When Hamish visits Mr. Harrison to welcome him to the neighborhood, the old man treats him very rudely. Gloria apologises for her employer's behavior, and Hamish takes the plunge and invites her out for dinner. On the appointed evening, Hamish waits for Gloria at the restaurant. And waits. But Gloria never shows up.

Allotment wars! Lord Bellingham, Carsely's biggest landholder, has enraged locals by saying he is going to sell off their allotments to make way for a new housing development. So when he turns up dead, poisoned by antifreeze, nobody mourns his passing. On another fine summer's day, Agatha visits Carsley's allotments, where everything looks peaceful and perfect: people of all ages digging in the soil and working hard to grow their own fruit and veg.

Cotswolds inhabitants are used to inclement weather, but the night sky is especially foggy as Rory and Molly Devere, the new vicar and his wife, drive home from a dinner party in their village of Sumpton Harcourt. They strain to see the road ahead - and then suddenly brake, screeching to a halt. Right in front of them, aglow in the headlights, a body hangs from a gnarled tree at the edge of town. Margaret Darby, an elderly spinster, has been murdered - and the villagers are bewildered as to who would commit such a crime.

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime.

It’s springtime in the Highlands but storms are brewing for Hamish Macbeth. His life is going to pot. He has - horrors! - been promoted, his new boss is a dunce, and a sinister self-proclaimed gypsy and his girlfriend have parked their rusty eyesore of a van in the middle of the village. Hamish smells trouble and as usual he’s right. The doctor’s drugs have gone missing. Money vanishes. And neighbours suddenly become unneighbourly. Nobody wants to talk, either, so canny Hamish faces the delicate task of worming the facts out of the villagers. In the process he uncovers a story so bizarre that neither he nor the locals may ever be able to forget it.…

He was a hairdresser to dye for... The local ladies all deem Mr John a wizard, so when Agatha finds a few grey hairs on her head - and the rinse she tries at home turns her hair purple - she makes a beeline for the handsome Evesham hairdresser. And as well as sorting out her hair it soon becomes clear the charming man also has designs on her heart - but their budding romance is cut short when Mr John is fatally poisoned in his salon. Once again Agatha finds herself embroiled in a murder case.

Even the inhabitants of secluded Nethercote looked pityingly upon young Henrietta, the vicar's sister; her plain features seemed to almost guarantee her a solitary future. And yet she has a determined spirit and magnificent hazel eyes. So when her great-aunt Hester left her unexpected wealth, Henrietta set out to conquer London's glittering high society and confound them all.

Amazing news is spreading like wildfire across the Scottish countryside: the most famous of all Highland bachelors, police sergeant Hamish Macbeth, is planning to marry at last! Everyone in the village of Lochdubh adores Josie McSween, Hamish's newest constable and blushing bride-to-be. While locals think she is quite a catch, Hamish has a severe case of pre-nuptial jitters...after all, if it wasn't for the recent murder of a beautiful woman in a neighbouring village there wouldn't be a wedding in the first place.