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Rebecca Tope

Following a personal tragedy, florist Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown has moved to the Lake District to be nearer her parents. But her peace is shattered when, at a wedding, the bride's brother is found brutally murdered. As the florist of the wedding and one of the last people to talk to Mark Baxter alive, Simmy gradually becomes involved with the relatives. When events take another sinister turn, Simmy finds herself at the heart of a murder investigation. The chief suspects are the groom and his closely knit band of bachelor friends. They are all intimidating, volatile and secretive but which one is a killer?

Julia Franklin

Soundings

Lake District

The Windermere Witness

After an eventful year, Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown is adjusting to life in Windermere, running her florist shop and trying to put her tragic past behind her. But just when Simmy thinks her life is quietly coming together, it begins to unravel at the seams. With the delivery of a bouquet of flowers to an elderly lady - complete with mysterious message attached - old secrets come creeping into the light. When another old woman is found murdered in her own home, Simmy is drawn into the centre of a murder investigation. With the prime suspect naming Simmy as his alibi, the unfortunate florist knows her peaceful life in the Lake District is about to be shaken once again.

Caroline Lennon

The Ambleside Alibi

“Rich in psychological insight . . . Tope is particularly skilled in creating interesting and unique characters.” –Deadly Pleasures 

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and business at Persimmon “Simmy” Brown’s flower shop is booming. But when Simmy fulfills a string of anonymous delivery orders, she is startled to realize that each contains a secretly menacing message for the recipients. When one of the people who receives a bouquet disappears, it seems that her worst fears have been confirmed. 

As if that isn’t enough, Simmy’s friend Kathy turns up, on the trail of her wayward daughter Joanna, who she fears has grown too close to one of her university tutors. When Kathy attempts to reason with her daughter she finds that Joanna’s older lover may be even more dangerous than she had imagined. With both Kathy and Joanna in peril, Simmy and her friends find themselves caught up in a web of deception, blackmail and murder . . .

Witness Impulse

The Coniston Case

A huge funeral for Windermere's popular resident, Barbara Dodge, is taking place and florist Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown and her new assistant, Bonnie Lawson are busy compiling wreaths in preparation. There's word of a series of sinister dognappings occurring in nearby Troutbeck and whilst taking a walk up Wansfell Pike, Simmy and her father, Russell, stumble on a dog, strangled to death - it's not long before Simmy reluctantly finds herself caught up in a murder investigation...

The Troutbeck Testimony

Winter has arrived in the town of Windermere, and has bought with it the death of Frances Henderson, the best friend of Persimmon “Simmy” Brown’s mother. Simmy must cope with the loss of an important figure from her childhood, as well as the confusion at being bequeathed something in Frances’s will. When Frances’s husband is violently murdered, Simmy must face the fact that the family she was once so close to as a child, holds some dark secrets. Keen to keep out of the investigation, Simmy must not only face these personal dilemmas, but deal with Ben Harkness and Bonnie Lawson’s enthusiasm for solving crimes, as well as her father’s worsening dementia, and her own mother’s grief for her best friend.

The Bowness Bequest

Simmy Brown has a lot on her mind. Not just keeping her florist business afloat, her father’s failing health, the challenge of developing a long-term relationship with Christopher, but also the approach of Mother’s Day, a busy and painful day for her. But in taking an order for a retirement party in Staveley, she is pulled into her most challenging investigation. When a daughter starts accusing her own mother of murder, Simmy, Ben and Bonnie find themselves taking different sides of the investigation. With her relationships under strain, Simmy is tried on all fronts. However, she has to learn to leave her own concerns behind to discover just who the killer is.

The Staveley Suspect

Returning from a much-needed holiday, Persimmon “Simmy” Brown discovers that life in the Lake District is, as ever, far from relaxing. Before she can enjoy the idea of being the future Mrs Chris Henderson, her fiancé discovers the body of his friend, antique dealer Jonathan Woolley, brutally strangled in a house in Grasmere. 

Enlisting the help of her friends and amateur detectives Ben and Bonnie, the investigation appears to ask more questions than it answers as historical grudges against the dead man are revealed. It seems that many people had a reason for wanting him dead. But with Chris's increasingly evasive and odd behaviour, Simmy begins to wonder if he is more involved in the murder than he is saying. How can she put her trust in a man with something to hide?

The Grasmere Grudge

Simmy Brown had hoped that her autumn would be less frantic than usual to give her a chance to enjoy her pregnancy, her upcoming nuptials, and some time looking for a new house in the Patterdale area of the Lake District. But it is not to be… When one of the lodgers at her parents’ B&B dies in her arms after seemingly being poisoned, she becomes embroiled in a complex investigation, headed up by her friend DI Moxon. It is clear the victim had some connection to a controversial new building project near Patterdale and Simmy’s ideas of a quiet run up to Christmas are cruelly dashed.

The Patterdale Plot

Spring has brought many new beginnings into the world of Persimmon ‘Simmy’ Brown. Not only has her baby arrived, but she and her fiancé Christopher have moved to the historic village of Hartsop—and their forthcoming nuptials are only a short month away. But when a former acquaintance of Christopher’s reminds him of an undertaking made a decade previously that he hasn't fulfilled, their lives soon take a sinister turn. Yet even with a young baby to consider Simmy cannot ignore her instinct to investigate, especially when the murder has a personal link to her soon-to-be husband. Assisted by her would-be detective friend Ben, can Simmy puzzle out this reckoning from the past and protect her family?

The Ullswater Undertaking

Persimmon 'Simmy' Brown's wedding day to Christopher Henderson has arrived on a glorious summer's day in the pretty Lake District village of Threlkeld. While the day passes off without undue calamity, later when most of the guests have departed, a young man is found nearby, possibly the victim of a vicious attack. The mystery of the attack is complicated by pressure on police resources. Was it an accident or something far more sinister? Speculation is rife as to what precisely happened and a chilling suspicion develops into a theory that might be impossible to prove.

The Threlkeld Theory

Set in the picturesque town of Askham, near Ullswater, the story opens with the funeral of Humphrey Craig, the builder who converted Simmy's new house in Hartsop. The following day, when Simmy goes back to look at the grave and the flowers on it, she meets two women, Lindsay Wilson, an academic in her late twenties who is writing a thesis on Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son, and Pauline Parsons, a local matriarch aged 90. Just 24 hours later, Mrs Parsons is found dead on Askham Fell and Simmy is summoned to Penrith police station. She is told that she has been identified as the prime suspect . . . will DI Moxon be able to help Simmy out of this unscathed?

The Askham Accusation

Two days before an auction of the contents of High Gates House in Borrowdale, Christopher Henderson bumps into Jennifer Reade, the heir to the entire estate, and the expected recipient of the proceeds of the house clearance sale. She discovers a dead man in the cellar of the house but threatens and cajoles Christopher into remaining silent about it until after the auction to avoid complications and delays. The auction begins but is soon halted by the police with the news that a murder has been committed. Simmy, Christopher's wife and amateur sleuth, applies herself to the mystery of the deaths but not everyone is as they appear and Simmy will have to contend with a ruthless and determined killer in her fight for the truth.

Lake District - The book series

Lake District - The book series

Lake District books in order

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