"A judicious mixture of puzzle, excitement, and terror."―P.D. James When a murder takes place in a secluded tower at Blessed Eleanor's Convent in Sussex and the victim is an old school friend, Britain's most popular TV reporter Jemima Shore finds herself in the middle of a disturbing puzzle. The dead woman, a nun, was to inherit one of the largest fortunes in Britain. Jemima walks into the eye of a worldly storm of fear ― and the more she learns, the clearer it becomes that more lives, including her own, are being threatened. Quiet as a Nun was a PBS Mystery! television presentation.
As Jemima Shore, Investigator, arrives at Inverness Station for a Highland holiday, the sun is shining. Paradise, she thinks. But at that moment, she hears a "All this way for a funeral." So begins an adventure far removed from Jemima's visions of heather-covered hills, crystal-clear streams, romantic men in kilts, fairy-tale castles. Instead she is plunged into the strange world of the aristocratic Beauregard family with its tensions, jealousies and violence. The setting is the Wild Island itself, sometimes enchanting but too often frighteningly remote, the streams, not silvery, but brown and sinister; her holiday home with its disturbing influence; the people -- none of them quite what they seem.
Here is Jemima Shore at her cleverest and Antonia Fraser at the top of her form. Each of Antonia Fraser’s four Jemima Shore mysteries has enlarged the audience for that redoubtable and unpremeditated sleuth. This new one is set against a theatrical background and shows all the narrative skills that have marked the works of its distinguished author along with an ever-increasing quality of suspense. It is the chilling story of Christobel, a beautiful and profligate actress, who thought she could just come back, repent, and resume with impunity the life she had deserted.
"With deft, wry prose and a credible plot, Fraser holds our interest and leaves us clamoring for more Jemima Shore mysteries."― Publishers Weekly In this tale Jemima is reluctantly shooting a TV exposé ― "Golden Lads and Girls" ― on the exotic lifestyles of overprivileged undergraduates. Among them is Lord Saffron, the wealthy, twenty-year-old heir to the former foreign secretary. When a confession by a dying midwife throws Saffron's birth and bloodline into doubt, Jemima's interest in the documentary perks up considerably. Then a student is murdered, drawing Jemima into a case that will demand the utmost of her skills of detection.
A gourmet collection of Antonia Fraser's short stories of suspense and mystery. There are five Jemima Shore tales, including her first case, which took place when she was fifteen and still at her convent school, the school featured later in Jemima's career in Quiet as a Nun . Jemima is at her sparkling best as she solves the case of the Parr children in a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands and elegantly deals with the case of the missing bride on a romantic Venetian honeymoon. Nor is she afraid to get wet at the Holland Pools where in-laws feud and plot. Relatives are also closely involved in the murder at Arcangelo's Salon, where Jemima has her hair done.... Among other riches are four "true crime" stories and four mysteries, ending with a sophisticated tale about a group of friends holidaying in Tuscany.
When an animal rights group kidnaps Princess Amy on the eve of her royal wedding, television commentator Jemima Shore is on the case
When "Handsome Dan" Meredith plans to convert his stately Elizabethan mansion into an exclusive country club, his family, including Decimus Meredith--the ghost of the dashing, seventeenth century Cavalier poet, soldier, and viscount--has strong objections. Reprint. PW. NYT. K.
Internationally bestselling author Antonia Fraser finds murder and mayhem in the most incongruous places, from sunny island paradises to the opera, in these nine superb short stores—four featuring Jemima Shore, investigative reporter. Rescued from freezing London by an assignment in the West Indies, Jemima Shore looks forward to sunshine and rum punch, and maybe a little moonlight and romance. Instead she finds herself embroiled in the heated politics of an all-too-extended family in the title story. An impromptu recitation of the ballad “The Tragedy of Sir Patrick Spens” sparks another tragedy in the hallowed halls of academe in “The Blude-Red Wine.” Antonia Fraser proves herself equally at home exploring the dark hearts and lethal secrets on the other side of the law. In “Out for the Countess,” a jealous wife thrills to the beauty of an operatic tale of betrayal and suffering, while engineering an equally dramatic revenge for the lovers who wronged her. Literate, sophisticated, deliciously witty, these nine stories are a welcome addition to the sleuthing exploits of Jemima Shore and an introduction to other, shadier characters Antonia Fraser creates with great zest.
When the wayward lady Imogen Swain summons journalist Jemima Shore to her home, Jemima once again finds herself in the thick of love affairs--old and new--intrigue, and betrayal. For the colorful Lady Imogen kept diaries documenting her passionate affair with a rising young politician who has since risen to high ranks in the government. Increasingly eccentric as the years have passed, Lady Imogen now threatens to reveal details of the affair, and of the subsequent and unsolved disappearance of a young journalist. Jemima's meeting with Lady Imogen is the first step in a sinister series of events which will remind the reader why Antonia Fraser is the reigning queen of murder--British style!