Ellis Peters

The "irresistible" and "compelling" first novel in the historical mystery series featuring a Welsh Benedictine monk in the twelfth century (The Washington Post).
A Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in western England, Brother Cadfael spends much of his time tending the herbs and vegetables in the garden—but now there's a more pressing matter. Cadfael is to serve as translator for a group of monks heading to...

When an obnoxious Nazi landworker is murdered in the small village of Comerford, Sergeant George Felse faces one of the toughest investigations of his career It is 1952, and the shadow of World War II still lies over the green fields of the small village of Comerford on the Welsh borders. When ex-prisoner of war Helmut Schauffler is murdered, local policeman Sergeant George Felse has his work cut out: Schauffler was Nazi to the core and the majority...

"Winter arrived early in 1142, bringing with it a heavy snowfall. The safety of the guest-hall roof at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul comes into jeopardy, and the brothers are called upoin to effect repairs. But the icy and treacherous conditions are to prove near fatal for Brother Haluin. He slips from the roof and crashes to the ground, sustaining terrible injuries-- grave enough for him to want to make his deathbed confession....

In October of 1142, a local landlord gives the Potter's Field to the local clergy. The monks begin to plow it, and the blades turn up the long tresses of a young woman, dead over a year. Then the arrival of a novice who fled from an abbey ravaged by civil war in East Anglia complicates life even further for Brother Cadfael.

In the autumn of 1140 the Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury finds its new novice, Meriet Aspley, a disturbing presence. Meek and biddable by day, his sleep is rent by nightmares so violent as to earn him the nickname of "Devil's novice." Can Meriet be involved in the nearby disappearance of a superior prelate? As events take a sinister turn, it falls to Brother Cadfael to detect the truth behind the young man's predicament.