Most Popular Books by Minette Walters

Winner of the Edgar Award and the Macavity Award for Best Novel In prison they call her the sculptress: a grotesquely obese young woman convicted of cutting her mother and sister to pieces and rearranging their bodies on the floor like a jigsaw puzzle. She pleaded guilty to the crime, but no one has noticed that the facts don''t add up until Rosalind Leigh comes to visit the prisoner, hoping to get a book deal out of her story. The more fevered Rosalind''s pursuit of the truth, the closer she gets to the true source of the evil ascribed to the Sculptress in her cell.

In this acclaimed psychological mystery, Jinx Kingsley, a prominent photographer and millionaire’s daughter, wakes up in an exclusive hospital suffering from amnesia. Not only can she not remember the car accident that caused her memory loss, but she doesn’t remember that her impending wedding has been called off or that her former fiancé and his girlfriend have been brutally murdered in the same way her first husband had been ten years before. Now she must try to piece together her memories in order to determine her innocence. With deft psychological explorations and shocking twists, Walters brings the story to an awe-inspiring conclusion.

A masterful combination of suspense, mystery and psychology in short, another triumph.'' CANBERRA TIMES.A woman''s brutally damaged body washes up on a lonely beach. Twelve hours later, her three-year-old daughter is found, wandering abandoned twenty miles away from her mother.Why was Kate Sumner murdered, yet her child, a witness, allowed to live...

Called "a brilliant piece of psychological deconstruction" (London''s "Daily Mail"), the first American publication of this novel by the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Fox Evil" features a new design and trim size for comfortable reading. HC: Macmillan (UK).

Dr. Sophie Morrison visits a patient in a run-down housing project known as Acid Row, only to find herself being held hostage by a pedophile being hunted by an angry mob.

From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Sculptress and The Breaker comes a brilliant new novel. It is November 1978. The winter of discontent. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, rubbish piles in the streets – and somewhere in West London a black woman dies in a rain-soaked gutter. She was known as “Mad Annie” and was despised by her neighbours. Her passing would have gone unmourned and unnoticed but for Mrs. Ranelagh, the young woman who finds Annie as she dies and who believes – apparently against reason – that she was murdered. Whatever the truth about Annie – whether she was as mad as her neighbours claimed, whether she lived in squalor as the police said, whether she cruelly mistreated the many cats found starving in her house – something passed between the two women in the moment of death which binds Mrs. Ranelagh to Annie’s cause for the next twenty years. But why is she so convinced it was murder when, by her own account, Annie died without speaking? Why does the subject make her husband so angry that he refuses to talk about what happened that night? And why would any woman spend twenty years painstakingly uncovering the truth – unless her reasons are personal…? A complex puzzle of deceit and discovery, The Shape of Snakes is Minette Walters at her most intriguing. From the Hardcover edition.

With this stunning debut--a marvelous marriage of classic convention and contemporary sophistication--Minette Walters sets a new standard of excellence for the mystery novel. The three women living in seclusion at an elegant Hampshire country house have long been fodder for village gossip...even whispers of a witches'' coven. So when a faceless corpse of uncertain vintage is found in the Streech Grange ice house, Chief Inspector Walsh can''t wait to make a case of it. Lady of the manor Phoebe Maybury, still haunted by Walsh''s relentless investigation of her husband''s strange disappearance ten years ago, is calm. She and her two housemates--sensitive, charming artist Diana Goode and pretty, earthy Anne Cattrell--seem as puzzled as the police. But do they have something to hide? While Walsh strives to nail Phoebe for murder, sexy young Detective Sergeant McLoughlin turns his attention to the exasperating and magnetic Anne. Soon his inquiry and his impulses will draw him into a tangled thicket of love, loyalty, and deadly intrigue.

From the author of The Devil''s Feather comes a haunting psychological thriller about a scarred Iraq war veteran whose physical trauma may reflect the inner turmoil of a killer.Somewhere in the endless, deadly desert between Basra and Baghdad, Lieutenant Charles Acland''s convoy was attacked. Recovering in the hospital, Charles is crippled by migraines and suspicious of his doctors. He grows uncharacteristically aggressive, particularly against women. Rejecting cosmetic surgery, he moves to London. There he sinks into a quagmire of guilt and paranoia—until an outburst of irrational, vicious anger brings him to the attention of the local police, who are investigating three recent murders. Now under suspicion, Charles is forced to confront his issues before it''s too late, but the shadowy forces working against him—or in him—could be more than he can overcome.

As a plague descends on Medieval England, a courageous Lady must protect her land and people at all costs in this historical novel: "Enthralling" (Julian Fellowes, creator of The Gilded Age). England, 1348. When the Black Death arrives in Dorset, no one knows what manner of sickness it is or how it spreads and kills so quickly. The Church proclaims it a punishment from God, insisting that daily confession is their only hope for survival. But Lady Anne of Devilish has different ideas. With her trusted steward Thaddeus at her side—and her brutal husband absent—she gathers her serfs within the moated walls of Devilish and refuse entry to outsiders, including her husband. Bu in such a confined space, conflicts soon arise. Ignorant of the world outside, Lady Anne''s people wrestle with the terrible uncertainty of their futures. And as food stocks run low, they begin to wonder how long they can survive within. The moment will come when they must cross the moat . . . and encounter a world transformed in ways they can''t imagine.

Chilling psychological suspense with "exceptional punch" from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Dark Room ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review). It seems like a respectable British home, occupied by the Songolis, an upstanding family of African immigrants. But hidden within the cellar is Muna—a teenage girl who cooks for them, cleans for them, endures brutal abuse from them . . . and is powerless to escape. Then one day, the Songolis'' ten-year-old son fails to come home from school, and Scotland Yard arrives at the house to investigate. While they look into the boy''s disappearance, Muna must play the role of beloved daughter. She suddenly has a real bedroom, with sunlight, and real clothing to wear. But she must continue to keep quiet—and hide the fact that she has learned how to speak English. Even as the police are watching, her secret life of enslavement goes on. But Muna is hatching a plan—and her acts of rebellion and revenge will be more terrifying than this family could have imagined—in this dark, twisting tale that represents "contemporary crime writing at its absolute peak" (Val McDermid).

A chilling tale of prejudice, ambition and cunning as villagers react to a brutal double murder, this was Minette''s first - and to date only - novella. ''Few crime writers are in the same league as Minette Walters.'' CANBERRA TIMES In a small Hampshire village, Irish labourer Patrick O''Riordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patrick''s parents and cousin, who report incidents of vicious threats and violence. But friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham remains convinced that Patrick has fallen victim to a prejudiced investigation and, putting her own position within the bigoted community in serious jeopardy, stands firmly by his family in defence of the O''Riordan name. Days before the trial, terrible secrets about the O''Riordans'' past are revealed to Siobhan, and the family''s only supporter is forced to question her loyalties. Could Patrick be capable of murder after all? Could his parents'' tales of attacks be devious fabrications? And if so, what other lies lurk beneath the surface of their world?

General Adult. When Mathilda Gillespie, a wealthy English matron, is found dead, a medieval instrument of torture over her head, the ensuing investigation implicates one of her few friends, her physician and main beneficiary, Sarah Blakeney. Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Reprint.

A blistering new thriller about the horrors of war and the struggle to survive in the face of pure evil. Foreign correspondent Connie Burns is hunting a British mercenary that she believes is responsible for the rape and murder of five women in Sierra Leone in 2002. Two years later she finds him training Iraqi police in Baghdad. Connie is determined to expose his crimes, but then she is kidnapped and released after three days of unspeakable torture. Silently, she returns to England and attempts to isolate herself, but it soon becomes apparent that the horrors of the world and her own nightmarish past aren’t so easy to escape from.

When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, dressed only in nightclothes and with blood stains on the ground near her body, the finger of suspicion points at her wealthy, landowning husband, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A Coronerâs inquest gives a verdict of ânatural causesâ but the gossip surrounding James refuses to go away. Why? Because heâs guilty? Or because resentful women in the isolated Dorset village where he lives rules the roost? Shenstead is a place of too few people and too many secrets. Why have James and Ailsa cut their children out of their will? What happened in the past to create such animosity within the family? Any why is James so desperate to find his illegitimate grandchild? Friendless and alone, his reclusive behavior begins to alarms his London-based solicitor, Mark Ankerton, whose concern deepens when he discovers that James has become the victim of a relentless campaign which accuses him of far worse than the death of his wife. Allegations which he refuses to challenge....Why? Because theyâre a motive for murder....?

Survivors of the Black Death face new dangers as they seek safety and freedom in the New York Times–bestselling author''s sequel to The Last Hours. England, Winter, 1348. As the Black Death continues its devastating course across England, the quarantined people of Develish question whether they are the only survivors. Guided by their beloved young mistress, Lady Anne, they wait, knowing that when their dwindling stores are finally gone, they will have to leave the safety of their moated walls. But first, to prepare for the wasteland outside, one courageous man must venture out alone. Thaddeus Thurkell, a free-thinking, educated serf, goes in search of supplies and news. A compelling leader, he and his companions quickly throw off the shackles of serfdom and set their minds to ensuring Develish''s future—and freedom for its people. But what use is freedom that cannot be gained lawfully? When Lady Anne and Thaddeus conceive an audacious plan to secure her people''s independence, neither foresees the life-threatening struggle over power, money and religion that follows . . .

Atmosphere, imagination and narrative power of which few other writers are capable The Times

Short though this novella may be, it contains all the compressed tension and unsettling ambience that we find in Minette''s wide repertoire -- a chicken farm can be a dangerous place.