James Runcie

While Len and Violet glide across the dance floor, Violet's husband George dwells on the war of almost 10 years ago. Back at Len's home his wife and young son are fighting for their lives in the flood that almost engulfed Canvey island in 1953.

Diego de Godry arrives in the New World in search of treasure - he finds love, chocolate, and the elixir of life. Denied by his lover, he and his dog Pedro search the world to recapture what he first experienced in Mexico. His search is a journey through time and the history of chocolate.

As the three Henderson brothers – Jack, Douglas and Angus – head toward their childhood home in East Fortune for their annual summer gathering, they steel themselves against sibling rivalry, parental expectation and the vulnerability that comes with being with those who know you best.

1726. Eleven-year-old Stefan Silbermann, a humble organ-maker's son, has just lost his mother and is sent to Leipzig to train as a singer in the St Thomas Church choir.

Stefan's talent draws the attention of the Cantor - Johann Sebastian Bach. Eccentric, obsessive and kind, he rescues Stefan from the miseries of school by bringing him into his home as an apprentice. Soon Stefan feels that this ferociously clever, chaotic family is his own. But when tragedy strikes, Stefan's period of sanctuary in their household comes to a close.

Something is happening, though. In the depths of his loss, the Cantor is writing a new work to be performed for the first time on Good Friday. As Stefan watches the work rehearsed, he realises he is witness to the creation of one of the most extraordinary pieces of music that has ever been written.

It is 1938, and eighteen-year-old Sidney Chambers is dancing the quickstep with Amanda Kendall at her brother Robert's birthday party. No one can believe, on this golden evening, that there could ever be another war. Returning to London seven years later, Sidney has gained a Military Cross, and lost his best friend on the battlefields of Italy. Carrying a terrible, secret guilt, must decide what to do with the rest of his life. But he has heard a call: constant, though quiet, and growing ever more persistent. Sidney must now negotiate his path to God: the course of which, much like true love, never runs smooth.

Archdeacon Sidney Chambers is beginning to think that the life of a full-time priest (and part-time detective) is not easy. So when a bewitching divorcee in a mink coat interrupts Sidney's family lunch asking him to help locate her missing son, he hopes it will be an open and shut case... Book 5 of the series.  Book 5 of series.

The loveable full-time priest and part-time detective, Canon Sidney Chambers, continues his sleuthing adventures in 1960's Cambridge. Sidney is adjusting to married life and gaining more experience in his job. But things don't always go smoothly and he finds that he has to deal with sins and the forgiveness of them - his own and other people's, almost on a daily basis.  Book 4 of series.

The loveable full time priest and part time detective Canon Sidney Chambers, working in tandem with the increasingly exasperated Inspector Geordie Keating, are called on to investigate a series of suspicious events starting with the unexpected fall of a Cambridge don from the roof of King's College Chapel. Book 2 of series.

It is May 1971 and Archdeacon Sidney Chambers is walking in a bluebell wood with his daughter Anna, when they stumble upon a body. Thrust into another murder investigation, Sidney discovers a world of hippies and psychedelic plants, where permissive behaviour seems to hide something darker. Endeavouring to fit his clerical duties around the demands of sleuthing, Sidney continues to reflect on the divine mysteries of love, life and faith.  Book 6 of series.

The loveable full-time priest and part-time detective, Canon Sidney Chambers, continues his sleuthing adventures in 1960's Cambridge. As well as attempting to stop a serial killer who has a grievance against the clergy, Sidney wrestles with the problem of evil, attempts to fulfill the demands of Dickens - his faithful Labrador, and contemplates, as always, the nature of love. Book 3 of series.

Sidney Chambers, vicar of Grantchester and honorary canon of Ely Cathedral, is an unconventional clerical detective. He can go where the police cannot. Together with his roguish friend, inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty.  Book 1 of series.

James Runcie's wife Marilyn Imrie died in August 2020. Their thirty-five year marriage had been miraculously happy - until, in the last two years of Marilyn's life, she descended into the pain and humiliation of motor neurone disease.

In the wake of her death, Runcie stumbled in the dark. How do you make sense of the decline and death of the most alive person you have ever met? And how do you go about building a life worth living in their absence?

In Tell Me Good Things, Runcie tells the story of Marilyn's illness and death while painting a vivid portrait of her life and their marriage. And during that first year of loss, he awakens to the strange paradox of grief: that the way to survive Marilyn's death is to understand how very good she was at living.