In the Summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden to the bloody battlefield.

December, 1142. A brother of Shrewsbury Abbey suffers a fall that almost kills him. He makes a shocking deathbed confession to Brother Cadfael. When the man recovers Cadfael accompanies him on an arduous journey to redeem his past sins.

Product DescriptionThe knocker hung on a very special door--heavy oak, with a late-Gothic arch, and apparently a late-Gothic curse. The door was moved from an old abbey to the village church, and legend held that sinners who seized the knocker had their hands burned. But Gerry Bracewell didn't die of burns . . .

Product DescriptionAs a favour to his girlfriend Tossa's beautiful but erratic filmstar mother, Dominic Felse agrees to escort a teenage heiress to her father in India. But travelling with the spoilt, precocious Anjili is no sinecure -- and the task of delivering her back to her family proves less than easy. Dominic and Tossa find themselves embroiled in a mystery that swiftly and shockingly becomes a murder investigation. For behind the colourful, smiling mask of India that the tourist sees is another country -- remote, mysterious -- and often shatteringly brutal... About the AuthorEllis Peters gained worldwide praise and recognition for her crime fiction and for her meticulous recreations of monastic life in the twelfth century in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.

From Publishers WeeklyPeter's 17th mystery featuring Brother Cadfael finds the 12th-century monk at his most sober and reflective, but his detecting talents are as dazzling as ever. When a newly tilled field recently given to the Benedictine abbey yields the hastily buried body of a young woman, Brother Cadfael takes a keen and immediate interest in the situation. Ruald, the former tenant of the land, entered the abbey as a novice a year earlier, abandoning his beautiful, young and extremely resentful wife, Generys. She has since mysteriously disappeared. Though it seems likely that the body is hers, Ruald is quickly cleared of suspicion via an unlikely source. Sulien Blount, a monk fleeing homeward from the devastating civil war near his own abbey, has solid proof that Generys was recently seen alive. When a second suspect, an itinerant peddlar, is arrested in connection with the murder, Sulien is again able to clear him. Brother Cadfael, deeply troubled, feels that Sulien knows much more than he is saying. An unusual air of melancholy pervades this novel as war, illness and human frailties take their tolls on the weary citizens of Shrewsbury. Created with Peters's consummate skill, Brother Cadfael's world is here seen through a darker glass. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review'A pleasing and unusual mixture of suspense and historical fiction.' EVENING STANDARD

In the battle of Lincoln, 1141, the Sheriff of Shropshire is captured by the Welsh forces of the Empress Maud. The county proposes to exchange him for a young Welsh nobleman. But when the Sheriff is murdered only Brother Cadfael can save the captive from retaliation.