Ann Cleeves

Ann Cleeves is well known for her 'Vera', 'Shetland', and 'Two Rivers' crime series, all of which have been adapted into hit TV shows. She was presented with the CWA Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2017, and was appointed an OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours List for services to reading and libraries. This collection includes full-cast dramatisations of the first two 'Shetland' novels featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, as well as three short stories and a discussion with the bestselling author. Raven Black - Midwinter in Shetland, and a young woman is found strangled in a snow-covered field. Suspicion falls on elderly loner Magnus Tait - but Detective Jimmy Perez has a hunch the solution is not that simple. Starring Grant O'Rourke. White Nights - It is midsummer on the island, a time of white nights where the sun never quite leaves the sky. When a distressed stranger disrupts an art exhibition claiming amnesia, and is later found hanged, it seems a clear case of suicide. But Jimmy Perez has other ideas... Starring Steven Robertson.

'The Soothmoothers' - The tensions between three travellers on a business trip to Shetland spark a local woman's interest. By dawn the next day, DI Jimmy Perez is on the scene, investigating a violent crime. Read by Marnie Baxter. 'Secrets of Soil' - Written in collaboration with forensic soil scientist Lorna Dawson, this specially-commissioned short story sees Shetland detective Willow Reeves returning to her childhood home on the Scottish island of North Uist to confront a dark secret from her past. Read by Lesley Hart. 'The Queen of Mystery' - Attending the Malice Domestic crime convention in Bethesda, Maryland, award-winning mystery writer Stella Monkhouse fears her star is starting to wane... Read by Joanna Tope. Phil Williams - Ann Cleeves talks to the Radio 5 Live presenter about the inspiration for her work, and why she's keen to encourage a national passion for reading.

When a woman's body is discovered at the Fair Isles bird observatory, with feathers threaded through her hair, the islanders react with fear and anger. Shetland Detective Jimmy Perez soon realises that there's a killer on the island just waiting for the opportunity to strike again...  Book 4 of series.

One Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide and a flood of peaty water smash through an uninhabited croft house. In the wreckage, Jimmy Perez finds the body of a woman wearing a red silk dress. When it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit the house, Perez knows he must find out who she was and how she died.  Book 7 of series.

When the body of Bella Furness is found at the isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, it appears she has committed suicide - a verdict her friend Rachael finds impossible to accept. Only when the next death occurs does another woman enter the picture - the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope...  Book 1 of series

The darkest nights can hide the deadliest secrets . . . Driving home during a swirling blizzard, Vera Stanhope's only thought is to get there quickly. But with the snow driving down heavily, she becomes disorientated and loses her way, eventually stumbling on another car abandoned on the road. With the driver's door open, Vera assumes the driver has sought shelter but is shocked to find a young toddler strapped in the back seat.

Afraid they will freeze, Vera takes the child and drives on, arriving at Brockburn, a run-down stately home she immediately recognizes as the house her father Hector grew up in. Inside Brockburn a party is in full swing, with music and laughter to herald the coming Christmas. But outside in the snow, a young woman lies dead and Vera has a new case. Could she be the child's mother and, if she is, what happened to her?  Book 9 of series

For vicar's wife Dorothea Cassidy, Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea's last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases a lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and even her close family have their secrets. It is not until a second body is discovered that Ramsay starts to understand how Dorothea lived ? and why she died.  Book 3 of series.

When the body of journalist Jerry Markham is found in a traditional Shetland boat, down at the Marina, young Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted in to head up the investigation. Since the death of his fiancée, Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his interest in this new case is stirred and he decides to help the inquiry.  Book 5 of series.

DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation so she has more tolerance for them than most. When one of them goes missing she feels duty-bound to find out what happened. But her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . .  Book 5 of series

Margaret Krukowski is fatally stabbed. Why would anyone want to harm this reserved, elegant lady? Then, just days later, a second woman is murdered. Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope finds herself searching clues that keep revolving around one street. Why are the residents of Harbour Street so reluctant to speak?  Book 6 of series

North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder - Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed. His daughter Eve is a glassblower, and the murder weapon is a shard of one of her broken vases.

Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.

Then another body is found - killed in a similar way. Matthew finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home . . .  Book 2 of series.

On the Northumberland coast, Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water, and covered with wild flowers. Vera Stanhope and her team must work quickly to find this dramatist, this killer who is making art out of death.  Book 3 of series

Who hanged the headmaster in the playground on the night of the school Halloween Party? Almost everyone in Heppleburn either hated or feared the viper-tongued Harold Medburn. Inspector Ramsay is convinced it was the headmaster's wife but Jack Robson, the school caretaker, is determined to prove her innocence. With the help of his daughter, Patty, Jack digs into the secrets of Heppleburn, and uncovers a cesspit - of lies, adultery, blackmail and madness.  Book 1 of series.

In North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, he lost his family too. Now he's back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region; a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose.

A body has been found on the beach near to Matthew's new home: a man with the tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death. Finding the killer is Venn's only focus, and his team's investigation will take him straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.  Book 1 of series.

This case was different from anything Vera had ever worked before. Two bodies, connected but not lying together. All the two victims have in common is a fascination with moths. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped here.  Book 7 of series.

A striking collection of eight short stories, by bestselling crime writer Ann Cleeves. They are all set on islands off the coast of the UK, and feature cases for both DI Jimmy Perez on Shetland, and DI Willow Reeves on Uist in the Outer Hebrides.

When a teenage girl is murdered on Shetland the locals suspect Magnus Tait, a loner, but the police are determined to open out the investigation. Soon everyone is locking their doors at night fearful of the killer in their midst.  Book 1 of series.

When an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident, Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson - his own colleague, Sandy Wilson. Then there's another death and Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop the killer from striking again...  Book 3 of series.

When prison inmate and former police officer John Brace says he's willing to give up information about a long-dead wheeler dealer, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope knows that she has to look into his claims. But in opening up this cold case, Vera's past collides dangerously with the present. Is she ready for what it will reveal?  Book 8 of series.

When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals ligature marks around the victim's throat - death is never that simple...  Book 4 of series.

There is some doubt about the guilty verdict of a murder that happened 10 years before in an East Yorkshire village, and now it would seem that the killer is still at large. Inspector Vera Stanhope builds up a picture of a community afraid of itself and of outsiders.  Book 2 of series.

A group of old university friends leave London and travel to Shetland to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends. But, one of them, Eleanor, disappears, apparently into thin air. When her body is discovered lying in a small loch, Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate.  Book 6 of series.

Too Good To Be True is a gripping Quick Read from Ann Cleeves, featuring Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez from the bestselling Shetland series.

When young teacher Anna Blackwell is found dead in her home, the police think her death was suicide or a tragic accident. After all, Stonebridge is a quiet country village in the Scottish Borders, where murders just don't happen.

But Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez soon arrives from far-away Shetland when his ex-wife, Sarah, asks him to look into the case. The local gossips are saying that her new husband, Tom, was having an affair with Anna. Could Tom have been involved with her death? Sarah refuses to believe it - but needs proof.

Anna had been a teacher. She must have loved kids. Would she kill herself knowing there was nobody to look after her daughter? She had seemed happier than ever before she died. And to Perez, this suggests not suicide, but murder . . . Book 9 of series.

It's mid-summer in Shetland, when the sun never sets. When a mysterious Englishman is found hanging from a rafter in a boathouse on the jetty, a clowns mask on his face, Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that this is a local murder. But at this crazy time of the year nothing is quite as it seems.  Book 2 of series.

Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate.  Book 8 of series.