Christmas Cracker

The Ghost Before Christmas by Katherine John

Inspector Dan Evans retired from the police force, returning to Wales to help manage the family holiday rental business. But there is one cottage no holidaymaker can sleep in for a single night: the farmhouse where Dan’s nephew, Alun, murdered his wife. Alun is serving a life sentence, but the body was never found. Do the dead who have never been laid to rest really walk at night?

Another Cup of Christmas by Jenny Kane

Pickwicks Café is preparing to host a special Christmas fundraiser for the hospital that looked after Scott, the cook and owner, after his terrible car accident. Waitress Megan is liaising with ward administrator Nick, as all the staff who helped with Scott’s recovery are invited. As the fundraiser takes up more and more of their lives, Megan and Nick contact each other more frequently, and their emails and calls start to develop into something more flirty. But can you really fall for someone you’ve never met?

The Mistletoe Mystery by Caroline Dunford

Edwardian heroine (and aristocrat’s granddaughter) Euphemia Martins has encountered some odd and dastardly deeds in her time, but her strange experiences at White Orchards, the grand country house of the Hon. Bertram Stapleford, (her sometime suitor and employer), are something else entirely. How exactly does a down-to-earth vicar’s daughter become embroiled in real-life tales of the supernatural?

When a Child is Born by Jodi Taylor

It's Christmas Day 1066 and a team from St Mary's is going to witness the coronation of William the Conqueror… Or so they think. However, History seems to have different plans for them, and when Max finds herself delivering a child in a peasant's hut, she can't help wondering what History is up to.

Death of a Pantomime Cow by Andrea Frazer

Carsfold has recently opened its new theatre and the Town’s Women’s Guild is to present its first live performances – the pantomime ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ – over Christmas.

DI Harry Falconer has managed to duck two days spent over the festive season in the Carmichael household by pleading other commitments, but treating the whole family, himself included, to tickets to the first performance, on Boxing Day.

But he seems to be able to do nothing straight forward, and when tragedy strikes in the very first Act, he is catapulted back into his professional role with a vengeance: and on a Bank Holiday, nonetheless.

Christmas Eve in the Workhouse by Catrin Collier

The shadow of the workhouse looms large over everyone in Pontypridd in the 1930s. The workhouse staff, Dr John, Dr Lewis, and Nurses Bethan Powell and Laura Ronconi try to bring cheer to the poor and dispossessed, while a newly orphaned child waits for a Christmas miracle.