In this mystery in the award-winning series featuring a twelfth-century Benedictine monk, Brother Cadfael must travel to the heart of a leper colony to root out the secret behind a savage murder. Setting out for the Saint Giles leper colony outside Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has more pressing matters on his mind than the grand wedding coming to his abbey. But as fate would have it, Cadfael arrives at Saint Giles just as the nuptial party passes the colony's gates. When he sees the fragile bride looking like a prisoner between her two stern guardians and the bridegroom-an arrogant, fleshy aristocrat old enough to be her grandfather-he quickly discerns this union may be more damned than blessed. Indeed, a savage murder will interrupt the May-December marriage and leave Cadfael with a dark, terrible mystery to solve. Now, with the key to the killing hidden among the lepers of Saint Giles, the monk must ferret out a sickness not of the body, but of a twisted soul.

Students Experiences of e-learning in Higher Education helps higher education instructors and university managers understand how e-learning relates to, and can be integrated with, other student experiences of learning. Grounded in relevant international research, the book is distinctive in that it foregrounds students experiences of learning, emphasizing the importance of how students interpret the challenges set before them, along with their conceptions of learning and their approaches to learning. The way students interpret task requirements greatly affects learning outcomes, and those interpretations are in turn influenced by how students read the larger environment in which they study. The authors argue that a systemic understanding is necessary for the effective design and management of modern learning environments, whether lectures, seminars, laboratories or private study. This ecological understanding must also acknowledge, though, the agency of learners as active interpreters of their environment and its culture, values and challenges.

Students Experiences of e-learning in Higher Education reports research outcomes that locate e-learning within the broader ecology of higher education and:

• Offers a holistic treatment of e-learning in higher education, reflecting the need for integrating e-learning and other aspects of the student learning experience
• Reports research on students experiences with e-learning conducted by authors in the United States, Europe, and Australia
• Synthesizes key themes in recent international research and summarizes their implications for teachers and managers.

Christmas Eve. While the world sleeps, snow falls gently from the sky, presents await under the tree ... and murder is afoot. In this collection of ten classic murder mysteries from the best crime writers in history, death and mayhem take many festive forms, from the inventive to the unexpected. From a Santa Claus with a grudge to a cat who knows who killed its owner on Christmas Eve, these are stories to enjoy - and be mystified by - in front of a roaring fire, mince pie to hand.

In the twelfth century, merchants gather at a summertime fair-but when one of them is found dead in a river, a crime-solving monk must step in. St. Peter's Fair is a grand, festive event, attracting merchants from across England and beyond. There is a pause in the civil war racking the country in the summer of 1139, and the fair promises to bring some much-needed gaiety to the town of Shrewsbury-until the body of a wealthy merchant is found murdered in the river Severn. Was Thomas of Bristol the victim of murderous thieves? And, if so, why were his valuables abandoned nearby? Brother Cadfael, that shrewd but kindly monk, offers to help the merchant's lovely niece Emma. But while he is searching for the killer, Thomas of Bristol's wares are ransacked and two more men are murdered. Emma almost certainly knows more than she is telling-as others will soon realize. Cadfael desperately races to save the young girl, knowing that in a country at war with itself, betrayal can come from any direction, and even good intentions can kill.

It's the middle of summer. On Cornish sea-fronts, happy children grip melting ice-creams. In the south of France, sunlight filters through leaves as families picnic in the shade. And in the fashionable resorts of the Mediterranean, the beautiful people sun themselves on picture-postcard beaches.

And in those long, hot summer nights ... murder walks abroad. Away from familiar surroundings, and as the temperature rises, old grudges come to the surface, new hatreds reach boiling point - and clever minds start to make dangerous plans. These ten classic mysteries, from some of the finest crime writers, prove that no matter where you travel to - there's no rest for the wicked.

Christmas is a time of goodwill to all men ... or is it? As the nights draw in, throw another log on the fire and settle back into your armchair to enjoy this collection of ten classic Christmas mysteries, in which crime's best known sleuths, from Rebus to Holmes and Cadfael to Father Brown, uncover murder and mayhem galore. Whether it's a Christmas goose with a surprising secret cargo, a murdered pantomime dame, or a killer who departs the scene of the crime without leaving a single footprint, these stories will puzzle and delight in equal measure. And along the way, there'll be enough carols and Christmas pudding, mistletoe and mulled wine, to warm the heart of a stone-cold killer ... perhaps.

In 1137 the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the remains of Saint Winifred for his Benedictine order. Brother Cadfael is part of the expedition sent to her final resting place in Wales, where they find the villagers passionately divided by the Benedictines' offer for the saint's relics. Canny, wise and all too worldly, Cadfael isn't surprised when this taste for bones leads to bloody murder. The leading opponent to moving the grave has been shot dead with a mysterious arrow, and some say Winifred herself dealt the blow. Brother Cadfael knows that a carnal hand did the killings, but he doesn't know that his plan to unearth a murderer may dig up a case of love and justice, where the wages of sin may be scandal - or his own ruin.

Many universities around the world are finding that the structures and processes they have put in place to further their educational missions are being tested by rapidly changing circumstances. These changes involve new pedagogies, new course designs, new technologies and updating of the physical campus; reflecting diversifying student needs, growing student numbers, increasing competition and more demanding stakeholder expectations. The Education Ecology of Universities examines these issues, starting with the challenges identified by university leaders who have responsibility for education, digital and campus planning. Sharing an analysis of in-depth interviews with more than 50 leaders, it identifies a range of conceptual and procedural gaps that undermine the full development and alignment of education, digital and campus strategies. The second half of the book provides practical ideas for taking a more holistic - indeed ecological - approach to understanding and improving university learning environments. Setting out a case for a new applied science of educational ecology, this book offers foundational concepts and theoretical perspectives, introducing methods for analysing and evaluating teaching and learning ecosystems. It will be of interest to anyone who wants better ways of understanding how local systems function and can be improved. It is a must-read text for all leaders and researchers in education, and indeed for anyone concerned with the future of higher education.

This integrated collection of perspectives on the spaces of teaching and learning uses 'learning space' to place educational practice in context. It considers the complex relationships involved in the design, management and use of contemporary learning spaces. It sheds light on some of the problems of connecting the characteristics of spaces to the practices and outcomes of teaching and learning. The contributions show how research into learning spaces can inform broader educational practices and how the practices of teaching, learning and design can inform research. The selection of chapters demonstrates the value of gathering together multiple sources of evidence, viewed through different epistemological lenses in order to push the field forward in a timely fashion. The book provides both a broad review of current practices as well as a deep-dive into particular educational and epistemological challenges that the various approaches adopted entail. Contrasts and commonalities between the different approaches emphasise the importance of developing a broad, robust evidence-base for practice in context. This is the inaugural book in the series Understanding Teaching-Learning Practice.

Brother Cadfael discovers a murder amid the wreckage of Shrewsbury Castle in this mystery series featuring "a colorful and authentic medieval background" (Publishers Weekly). In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden into a battlefield of passions, deceptions, and death. Not far from the safety of the abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal to the empress to hang as traitors. With a heavy heart, Brother Cadfael agrees to bury the dead, only to make a grisly discovery: one extra victim that has been strangled, not hanged. This ingenious way to dispose of a corpse tells Brother Cadfael that the killer is both clever and ruthless. But one death among so many seems unimportant to all but the good Benedictine. He vows to find the truth behind disparate clues: a girl in boy's clothing, a missing treasure, and a single broken flower . . . the tiny bit of evidence that Cadfael believes can expose a murderer's black heart.