On a rain-swept hillside, hounds from the local foxhunt discover the body of a well-dressed man. At that exact moment, an anonymous caller reports the same body . . . lying half a mile away.

It's only the first in a series of baffling clues as Ben Cooper and Diane Fry--partners and rivals on the detective force --plunge into a case involving horses, spectacular wealth, and a mysterious "plague village" where a centuries-old outbreak of Black Death has been transformed into a modern tourist attraction.

As the spring rain falls and the body count rises, Cooper and Fry's investigation twists back to the recent past. A killer lurks in the shadows there--a killer now hiding in plain sight . . .

Atmospheric and ingenious, packed with suspense and secrets, The Kill Call is an unforgettable thriller from an unforgettable writer.

Set in and around the dark, misty canals of Lichfield, Stephen Booth's incredible new novel is awash with mystery. When council officer Chris Buckley is approached by an odd old man demanding help in healing a decades-old family rift, he sends the stranger away. But then the old man is murdered, and the police arrive on the Chris's doorstep asking questions to which he has no answers. As Chris begins to look into the circumstances of the murder, he uncovers a deadly secret in the silt and mud of the local canals that he'll realise was better kept buried. PRAISE FOR STEPHEN BOOTH 'Makes high summer as terrifying as midwinter' Val McDermid 'A modern master' Guardian 'Crime writing of the finest quality' Daily Mail 'Ingenious plotting and richly atmospheric' Reginald Hill 'A first-rate mystery' Sunday Telegraph

Dealing mainly with the works of William Shakespeare, the essays in Close Readings without Readings reflect Stephen Booth's lifelong interest in uncovering the ways great literature works upon readers. As the book's title suggests, the author does not aim to create new or novel interpretations or to uncover the political agendas of literary works, but to notice language patterns-repetitions, analogies, correspondences, echoes, overtones-and other ways in which the choice and the arrangement of words affect readers. For Booth, close reading is a practice of attentiveness. He notices how, why, and in what ways Shakespeare's works affect his readers. Whether readers agree with the premises of a literary work or not, they subject themselves, knowingly or not, to its effects. For Booth, what we value in literature is the experience. He has devoted his own work to recognizing the nature, process, and functions of reading literature, and to teaching others to do the same. Recent years have seen Booth's efforts recognized by volumes dedicated both to close reading and to his achievements as editor, scholar, critic, and teacher.

Dealing mainly with the works of William Shakespeare, the essays in Close Readings without Readings reflect Stephen Booth's lifelong interest in uncovering the ways great literature works upon readers. As the book's title suggests, the author does not aim to create new or novel interpretations or to uncover the political agendas of literary works, but to notice language patterns-repetitions, analogies, correspondences, echoes, overtones-and other ways in which the choice and the arrangement of words affect readers. For Booth, close reading is a practice of attentiveness. He notices how, why, and in what ways Shakespeare's works affect his readers. Whether readers agree with the premises of a literary work or not, they subject themselves, knowingly or not, to its effects. For Booth, what we value in literature is the experience. He has devoted his own work to recognizing the nature, process, and functions of reading literature, and to teaching others to do the same. Recent years have seen Booth's efforts recognized by volumes dedicated both to close reading and to his achievements as editor, scholar, critic, and teacher.

This volume, examining the ways in which Shakespeare's plays are designed for hearers as well as spectators, has been prompted by recent explorations of the auditory dimension of early modern drama by such scholars as Andrew Gurr, Bruce Smith, and James Hirsh. To look at the dynamics of hearing in Shakespeare's plays involves a paradigm shift that changes how we understand virtually everything about them, from the architecture of the buildings, to playing spaces, to blocking, and to larger interpretative issues, including our understanding of character based on players' responses to what they hear, mishear, or refuse to hear. Who Hears in Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen is comprised of three sections on Shakespeare's texts and performance history: "The Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern Stage"; "Metahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off"; and "Transhearing: Hearing, Whispering, Overhearing, and Eavesdropping in Film and Other Media." Chapters by noted scholars explore the complex reactions and interactions of onstage and offstage audiences and show how Shakespearean stagecraft, actualized on stage and adapted on screen, revolves around various situations and conventions of hearing-soliloquies,, asides, avesdropping, overhearing, and stage whispers. In short, Who Hears in Shakespeare? enunciates Shakespeare's nuanced, powerful stagecraft of hearing. The volume ends with Stephen Booth's afterword, his inspiring meditation on hearing that considers Shakespearean "audiences" and their responses to what they hear-or don't hear-in Shakespeare's plays.

An atmospheric new Fry and Cooper thriller for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill. On a rain-swept Derbyshire moor, hounds from the local foxhunt find the body of a well-dressed man whose head has been crushed. Yet an anonymous caller reports the same body lying half a mile away. Called in to investigate the discovery, detectives DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper become entangled in the violent world of hunting and hunt saboteurs, horse theft and a little-known sector of the meat trade. As Fry follows a complex trail of her own to unravel the shady business interests of the murder victim, Cooper realizes that the answer to the case might lie deep in the past. History is everywhere around him in the Peak District landscape - particularly in the 'plague village' of Eyam, where an outbreak of Black Death has been turned into a modern-day tourist attraction. But, even as the final solution is revealed, both Fry and Cooper find themselves having to face up to the disturbing reality of the much more recent past.

The second in the series set in the Derbyshire Peak District, Dancing with the Virgins is a tense psychological follow-up to Stephen Booth's acclaimed debut Black Dog. 'The body of the woman sprawled obscenely among the stones... She looked like a dead woman, dancing.' The ring of cairns known as the Nine Virgins has stood on the windswept moors of Derbyshire for centuries. Now, as winter closes in, a tenth figure is added - a body - and a modern tragedy is added to the dark legend that surrounds the stones. There's no shortage of suspects, each with their own guilty secret, but what DS Fry and DC Cooper lack is any kind of motive. As they search separately for answers, it seems the reasons for the strange behaviour of the moor's inhabitants may lie somewhere in the past, in a terrible crime yet to be discovered...

Dark, intense and utterly compelling, 'Black Dog' was an extraordinary first novel from a writer who has rapidly become the most promising crime author to emerge in the genre in years. 'Where Cooper stood was remote and isolated... but the smell that lingered under the trees was of blood' The long hot Peak District summer came to an end when they found Laura Vernon's body. But for local policeman Ben Cooper the work has just begun. His community is hiding a young girl's killer and a past as dark as the Derbyshire night. It seems Laura was the keeper of secrets beyond her years and, in a case where no-one is innocent, everyone is a suspect. But Cooper's local knowledge and instincts are about to face an even greater challenge. The ambitious DC Diane Fry has been called in from another division, a woman as ruthless as she is attractive...

A dark psychological thriller featuring Diane Fry and Ben Cooper, in which a small community is ripped apart by arson and murder. 'Ingenious plotting and richly atmospheric' - Reginald Hill. An assassination in the night - an open window and three bullets from the darkness - the victim a harmless middle-aged woman. But can she really be quite as innocent as she seems? The death of Rose Shepherd swarms with questions - unlike the deaths of a woman and her two children in a house fire. A tragedy, yes, but an everyday one. Then DS Fry discovers a link between the two cases, a link that crosses the borders between nations, between right and wrong, between madness and sanity. She and Ben Cooper discover why some people are scared to live - and others are fated to die...

Set in and around the dark, misty canals of Lichfield, Stephen Booth's incredible new novel is awash with mystery. When council officer Chris Buckley is approached by an odd old man demanding help in healing a decades-old family rift, he sends the stranger away. But then the old man is murdered, and the police arrive on the Chris's doorstep asking questions to which he has no answers. As Chris begins to look into the circumstances of the murder, he uncovers a deadly secret in the silt and mud of the local canals that he'll realise was better kept buried. PRAISE FOR STEPHEN BOOTH 'Makes high summer as terrifying as midwinter' Val McDermid 'A modern master' Guardian 'Crime writing of the finest quality' Daily Mail 'Ingenious plotting and richly atmospheric' Reginald Hill 'A first-rate mystery' Sunday Telegraph

Guilt, sacrifice and redemption in a freezing Derbyshire winter in this tense psychological thriller from the acclaimed author of 'Black Dog'. 'The sun had dropped over the edge of Irontongue Hill so that the snow-covered moor was in shadow ... but Marie Tennent would never see the dawn.' Marie's was not the only body lying undiscovered under the Peak District snow that January morning - nor the first. In 1945, the wreckage of a bomber was found on the Hill, full of dead crewmen. The missing pilot was declared responsible, but why would a decorated hero desert? The only other survivor refuses to talk. A young Canadian woman has arrived to uncover the truth - the pilot was her grandfather. DC Ben Cooper is intrigued. Perhaps he can help? To his boss DS Fry, investigating two frozen bodies found on the moors, her colleague's interest is entirely unprofessional. But the past has a way of influencing the present and before either knows it, a long-cold trail in the dead of winter has grown dangerously hot ...

An atmospheric new Fry and Cooper thriller for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill A May Bank Holiday in the Peak District is ruined by the tragic drowning of an eight-year-old girl in picturesque Dovedale. For Detective Constable Ben Cooper, a helpless witness to the tragedy, the incident is not only traumatic, but leads him to become involved in the tangled lives of the Neilds, the dead girl's family. As he gets to know them, Cooper begins to suspect that one of them is harbouring a secret - a secret that the whole family might be willing to cover up. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry has a journey of her own to make - a journey back to her roots. As she finds herself drawn into an investigation of her own among the inner-city streets of Birmingham, Fry realises there is only one person she can rely on to provide the help she needs. But that man is Ben Cooper, and he's back in Derbyshire, where his suspicions are leading him towards a shocking discovery on the banks of another Peak District river.

Set in and around the dark, misty canals of Lichfield, Stephen Booth's incredible new novel is awash with mystery. When council officer Chris Buckley is approached by an odd old man demanding help in healing a decades-old family rift, he sends the stranger away. But then the old man is murdered, and the police arrive on the Chris's doorstep asking questions to which he has no answers. As Chris begins to look into the circumstances of the murder, he uncovers a deadly secret in the silt and mud of the local canals that he'll realise was better kept buried. PRAISE FOR STEPHEN BOOTH 'Makes high summer as terrifying as midwinter' Val McDermid 'A modern master' Guardian 'Crime writing of the finest quality' Daily Mail 'Ingenious plotting and richly atmospheric' Reginald Hill 'A first-rate mystery' Sunday Telegraph

An escaped convict threatens more than the summer tourist trade in the gripping fifth thriller featuring Detectives Fry and Cooper. 'Today was the day Detective Constable Ben Cooper was supposed to have died. For practical purposes, he was already dead.' Fourteen years ago Mansell Quinn was jailed for murdering his mistress. Now he has escaped and is on the run, hiding amongst the Peak District's many summer tourists. When Quinn's ex-wife is found dead, DC Cooper and his tough boss DS Fry suspect it is only a matter of time before another victim is found. And Cooper - as the son of Quinn's arresting officer - is high on the list. As they desperately search the case files for clues and the death toll rises, darker possibilities emerge. Are the killings the work of a deranged killer who cannot be found - or a desperate man, wrongly convicted?

Detectives Fry and Cooper return in another supremely atmospheric Peak District thriller, perfect for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill Building work at an isolated farm has unearthed more than just the usual remains... two human are discovered, seemingly buried years apart. With little forensic evidence to go on, Detectives Diane Fry and Ben Cooper have to look back into the farm's history, where they uncover decades of abuse of migrant workers. Is the truth to be found somewhere in this piteous history? Or does the answer lie elsewhere, hidden in the ground, and still waiting to be discovered?

A death in the family-from-hell bring Detectives Fry and Cooper to a remote and unfriendly rural community in their fourth psychological thriller. 'And as it grew dark, Withens became almost entirely silent. Except for the screaming.' A small village in the Peak District, Withens is troubled by theft and vandalism, mostly generated by local family-from-hell, the Oxleys. Now it is the focus of a murder investigation - a man's body has been found on the bleak moors nearby, and the man is an Oxley. To crack the case, DC Ben Cooper must break open the delinquent clan. His boss, DS Diane Fry, is also in Withens. Grim new evidence has turned up in the case of a missing student but her parents refuse to believe she could be dead. The darkness in Withens's heart is growing. And things are only going to get nastier...

Bones where there should be none and a chilling warning of an imminent killing challenge Detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry in their sixth novel. "This death will be a model of perfection. The details will be precise, the conception immaculate, the execution flawless..." When a caller taunts the police with talk of a 'dead place' and the threat of an imminent killing, most think it's a sick hoax. But Detective Diane Fry is sure there's a murderer at work. And when the voice calmly invites them to meet the 'flesh eater', Fry fears it may be too late. Meanwhile, her colleague DC Ben Cooper is investigating Derbyshire's first case of body snatching, entering the macabre world of those whose lives revolve around the deceased and their disposal. But does an obsession with death make for a killer? And what horrors will greet them when they finally find the dead place?

'Dramatic . . . gripping' The Times The dramatic, gripping new Cooper & Fry crime thriller from bestseller Stephen Booth sees the stunning Peak District prove fatal for one walking party. They knew the danger, but they went anyway... "Almost before she'd stopped breathing, a swirl of mist snaked across her legs and settled in her hair, clutching her in its chilly embrace, hiding her body from view. It would be hours before she was found." The mountain of Kinder Scout offers the most incredible views of the Peak District, but when thick fog descends there on a walking party led by enigmatic Darius Roth, this spectacular landscape is turned into a death trap that claims a life. For DI Ben Cooper however, something about the way Faith Matthew fell to her death suggests it was no accident, and he quickly discovers more than one of the hikers may have had reason to murder their companion. To make things worse, his old colleague DS Diane Fry finds herself at centre of an internal investigations storm that threatens to drag Cooper down with it. 'Makes high summer as terrifying as midwinter' Val McDermid 'Crime writing at its finest' Daily Mail 'A modern master' Guardian 'A first rate mystery Sunday Telegraph 'Ingenious Plotting and richly atmospheric' Reginald Hill