PHIL RICKMAN

In a Victorian country-house hotel on the Welsh Border, ex TV producer Ben Foley hosts murder mystery weekends and nurtures his dream - to show beyond all doubt that this hotel is the mansion on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his famous Baskerville Hall. This intrigues young Jane Watkins, on her first weekend job, but her mother, the Rev. Merrily Watkins, exorcist for the local Diocese of Hereford, is unhappy about how Ben Foley proposes to prove his theory. As the days shorten and the weather worsens, Foley's dabbling uncovers more than he can handle. For the history of Stanner Hall is linked not only to the Victorian fascination with spiritualism and the legacy of a terrifying medieval exorcism but with a chain of death that proves far from fictional.

The village of Underhowle was on the brink of a new prosperity after half a century of decay, but now it seems destined for notoriety as the home of a serial killer. D.I. Francis Bliss, of Hereford CID, is convinced he knows where the bodies are buried, but diocesan Deliverance consultant Merrily Watkins - called in to conduct a controversial funeral - wonders if Bliss isn't blinkered by personal ambition. And are the killings in Underhowle really linked to possibly the most sickening mass-murders in British criminal history? Meanwhile, Merrily has more intimate problems: the need for discretion over her new relationship with the musician Lol Robinson; and the alleged angelic visitations on which many heap scorn. But it is Lol who follows an unexpected path into the mind of the confessed murderer, while Merrily tries to quell her own revulsion in an effort to scrub away the psychic stain left by a dead monster.

Merrily must unearth the mysteries of the decaying village of Underhowle, and tackle a particularly stubborn Detective Inspector who strays off course...Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman. - GuardianYoure looking at his inspiration. These are ones he wishes hed done, the ones he wishes hed got to first.After half a century of decay, the village of Underhowle looked to be on the brink of a new prosperity. Now, instead, it seems destined for notoriety as the home of a psychotic serial killer.DI Frannie Bliss, of Hereford CID, is convinced he knows where the bodies are buried, but Merrily Watkins wonders if Bliss isnt blinkered by personal ambition. Are the Underhowle deaths really linked to the legacy of Fred West and the most sickening cycle of killings in British criminal history?

Tudor intrigue, murder and the dark arts - the second in an acclaimed historical series starring Dr John DeeAll talk is of the End-time... and the dead are rising.At the end of the sunless summer of 1560, black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley and marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth. Did Dudleys wife, Amy, die from an accidental fall in a deserted house, or was it murder? Even Dr John Dee, astrologer royal, adviser on the Hidden and one of Dudleys oldest friends, is uncertain. Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his familys old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone, a crystal credited with supernatural properties.With Dee goes Robert Dudley, considered the most hated man in England. They travel with a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas. After the battle, many of the English bodies were, according to legend, obscenely mutilated. Now, on the same haunted hill, another dead man has been found, similarly slashed.Devious politics, small-town corruption, twisted religion and a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father.

A standalone supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries.December has the shortest days, the darkest nights... In the ruins of a medieval abbey on the Welsh Border, four young musicians start work on an album influenced by the sites bloody history. Its December 1980 - the night John Lennon will be murdered in New York. And therell be more horror before the sun rises and the session tapes are burned. Or are they? Years later, Moira, Dave, Tom and Simon are persuaded to return to the abbey to complete the recordings they thought had been destroyed. But the old tapes - and all the darkness they contain - have been restored. And its December again.A PHIL RICKMAN STANDALONE NOVEL

A PHIL RICKMAN STANDALONE NOVELA supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries.Though dead for two millennia, he remains perfectly preserved in black peat. The Man in the Moss is one of the most fascinating finds of the century.But, for the isolated Pennine community of Bridelow, his removal is a sinister sign. A danger to the ancient spiritual tradition maintained, curiously, by the Mothers Union.In the weeks approaching Samhain - the Celtic feast of the dead - tragedy strikes again in Bridelow. Scottish folk singer Moira Cairns and American film producer Mungo Macbeth discover their Celtic roots are deeper and darker than they imagined. And, as fundamentalist zealots of both Christian and satanic persuasions challenge an older, gentler faith, the village faces a natural disaster unknown since the reign of Henry VIII.Gripping throughout. Powerful, classic stuff. - The Times

Herefords Diocesan Exorcist must encounter a legacy of evil within the crumbling walls of an old hotel along with memories of murder...Merrily has become an ever more engaging protagonist, a passionate, flawed modern women every bit as concerned with the intricacies of crime as she is with demons that go bump in the night. - Geoffrey Wansell, Daily MailThere were certain phrases you could feel, like fingers up your spine. "Hattie Chancerys Room." Oh God . . .A crumbling hotel on the border of England and Wales has long been linked with the possible origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles The Hound of the Baskervilles and his obsession with contacting the dead. Fascinating for young Jane Watkins, flushed with the freedom of her first weekend job. But the sinister side soon becomes apparent to her mother, Merrily, diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Then come memories of a child who killed. And blood in the fresh snow.

The Parish Priest must solve the mystery of a young boys deathly fall from the Ludlow Castle ruins, and discovers a hidden obsession with the afterlife amongst the ancient streets...Compassionate, original and sharply contemporary. Rickmans crime series is one of the best around. - SpectatorIn the affluent, historic town of Ludlow, a teenage boy dies in a fall from the castle ruins. Accident or suicide? No great mystery - so why does the boys uncle, retired detective Andy Mumford, turn to Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins? More people will die before Merrily - her own future uncertain - uncovers a dangerous obsession with suicide, death and the afterlife hidden within these shadowed medieval streets.

Single mother and Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins must keep the peace in rural Hereford, quelling a modern witch hunt, and a killer with an old tradition to guard...Ancient history, violent deaths, feuds, intrigues and murder. A most original sleuth. - The TimesWhen a pagan couple buy a ruined church on the Welsh Border, theres an extreme reaction from the local fundamentalist priest. Is it a hate campaign or a nightmarish modern witch-hunt? Merrily Watkins is sent in to keep the lid on the cauldron and uncovers the sinister dynamics of the isolated village of Old Hindwell.

"Esta toma se encontró en la pared al lado de la chimenea. Se ha sugerido que podría devolverlo a su lugar correcto. Cuando una iglesia redundante es comprada por una pareja joven pagano, el ministro fundamentalista local reacciona con furia. En una comunidad aislada en la frontera galesa, una caza de brujas moderna comienza. Alegremente exorcista diocesano Watkins se espera que mantenga la tapa en la olla ... pero lo que ella descubre en serio pondrá a prueba sus creencias. Además, está el problema del procurador país que no quiere separarse de su esposa muerta. El misterio de las cinco iglesias antiguas todo dedicada a San Miguel, matador de dragones. Y un asesino con una vieja tradición de guardia ...

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill. Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city nightlife ...and drugs. When a dealer is found savagely murdered below the great earthen hillfort of Herefordshire Beacon, police ask: is it a ritual killing, a gangland disposal or a cry of outrage? As Merrily and the police follow separate paths towards the truth, Merrily's teenage daughter, Jane, faces the consequences of her own obsession with a possibly prehistoric site in their home village of Ledwardine. Until, on a night of frenzied violence, in a place at the centre of an ancient, universal mystery, the final, shocking connections are made.

December, and the river is rising. The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory. Within days it will be an island. There's no electricity. The church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. Only one man feels safer. An aggressively-atheist author has been moved, for his own safety, Rushdie-style, into a secluded house just outside the village. Fundamentalist Christians have hated him for years. Now he's offended the Muslims. Bad move. Meanwhile, archaeologists, assisted by Merrily's teenage daughter, Jane, are at work in Coleman's Meadow, unearthing an ancient row of standing stones which some people would rather stay buried. The atheist's temporary home is close to the site. And his young wife is becoming conspicuously agitated. Is it the fear of discovery - or the kind of fear that she, of all people, could never disclose? One thing is clear: the last person who's going to be welcome in that house is an exorcist. With the flood water washing up Church Lane towards the vicarage and the shop running out of cigarettes it looks like a cold and complex Christmas for Merrily Watkins in an ancient community forced to untangle its own history against the swirling uncertainty of the future.

In the ruins of a haunted medieval abbey, four musicians hope to tap into the site's dark history. The experience almost destroys them. Years later, the original group is forced to return to the abbey, to confront the old evil they discovered...