The barrel should have contained books - instead it held treasure and a severed head...Gil Cunningham and his old acquaintance, Glasgow merchant Augie Morison, expecting a delivery of books from the Low Countries, report the gruesome substitute to the Provost, and at the inquest the next morning Morison is accused of the murder and imprisoned. He appeals to Gil, who sets out with his friend and future father in law Maistre Pierre, the French master-mason

The warden of St Serf's has been found dead in the almshouse garden. He appears to have been killed on the previous night but there are those who are convinced he was present at that morning's service, The elderly residents, the almshouse nurse and Humphrey, her deranged favourite, have all been set against one another by the dead man's scheming - and then there is the discarded mistress and almshouse ghost to consider.

At the May Day dancing at Glasgow Cross, Gil Cunningham sees not only the woman who is going to be murdered, but her murderer as well. Gil is a recently qualified lawyer whose family still expect him to enter the priesthood. When he finds the body of a young woman in the new building at Glasgow Cathedral he is asked to investigate, and identifies the corpse as the runaway wife of cruel, unpleasant nobleman John Semphill. With the help of Maistre Pierre, the French master-mason, Gil must ask questions and seek a murderer in the heart of the city.

When the peat-cutters came to report the dead man, Gil Cunningham was up in the roof-space of his mother's house, teaching his new young wife swordplay. They believe the corpse to be that of a local missing man. His wife and the widow who runs the local coalmine are sure the body belongs to someone else, but then they find themselves accused of having killed him by witchcraft. And if the corpse is not the missing man, who is it? Gil and Alys try to get to the heart of the matter.

“And you are telling me,” said Gil Cunningham, “that David Drummond vanished away forty years ago and is now returned, seemingly not a day older?” “That’s about the sum of it,” agreed Sir William Stewart. In Sir William’s remote part of Scotland it seems almost possible that a young boy could have been stolen away by the fairies and returned forty years later, no older – and if he isn’t Davie Drummond, who is he? And then he suffers a succession of near-fatal ‘accidents’.

Although he was watching closely when the mummer was poisoned, it took Gil Cunningham several days and three more poisonings to work out how it was done. Danny Gibson and Nanty Bothwell, rivals for the affections of Agnes Renfrew, the apothecary's pretty daughter, are also good friends.

Tied to St Mungo's Cross by the cathedral to be cured of her madness overnight by the saint, the young woman is found in the morning beaten and strangled, still tied to the cross. But is she who she seems to be? And who would flout the saint's protection like this? Gil Cunningham must trace the dead woman and find her enemies, track down the thieves and murderers and identify the watchers in the shadows, particularly the elusive fourth person who holds the secret of what happened that night. Questioning cathedral staff and apprentice boys, pilgrims and tradesmen, he uncovers only more puzzles.

Salisbury, 1226. A young pregnant woman is found tangled in reeds in the river Avon, her identity a mystery. Grieving widow Ela Longespée is determined to succeed her husband as sheriff of Salisbury, and quickly takes charge of the investigation. She soon finds herself in the thick of a neighborhood scandal and a struggle to maintain her authority. With multiple suspects, can she identify the true killer?

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.

Oxford, Spring 1353. When young bookseller Nicholas Elyot discovers the body of student William Farringdon floating in the river Cherwell, it looks like a drowning. Soon, however, Nicholas finds evidence of murder. Who could have wanted to kill this promising student? As Nicholas and his scholar friend Jordain try to unravel what lies behind William's death, they learn that he was innocently caught up in a criminal plot.

Ralph Delchard, a soldier who fought at the Battle of Hastings, and Gervase Bret, a talented lawyer, have been commissioned by William the Conqueror to look into irregularities brought to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book. A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster stalking the town. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be a little closer to home....

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.

It's 1194, and Sir Faucon de Ramis, the shire's newly appointed keeper of the pleas, must do his duty and make an official declaration of the cause of a miller's death. Saddled with a clerk who names Faucon his "penance", the shire's first crowner must thread the tangled relationships between the sheriff, the village of Priors Holston, and the priory that once ruled it. As a simple task takes a turn to the political, what seems obvious isn't, and what appears safe turns out to be more dangerous than he could imagine.

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?