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الاستماع والقراءة

Phil Rickman

A school girl possessed by evil spirits and a savage murder; Merrily is once again drawn into the deadly tangle of deceit and mystery in rural Herefordshire...
Lies, cover-ups, danger and the unexplainable. The pace is fast and plot twists await the reader around every corner. Even sceptics will shudder. - Publishers Weekly
'Black poles against the pale night . . . like a site laid out for a mass crucifixion.'
A summer of oppressive heat in Herefordshire's hop-growing country, where the river flows as dark as beer. A converted kiln is the scene of a savage murder. When the local vicar refuses to deal with its aftermath, diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins is sent out to a village with a past as twisted as the hop-bines which once enclosed it.

Corvus

Merrily Watkins Series

The Cure of Souls

Merrily must unearth the mysteries of the decaying village of Underhowle, and tackle a particularly stubborn Detective Inspector who strays off course...
'Few writers blend the ancient and supernatural with the modern and criminal better than Rickman.' - Guardian
'You're looking at his inspiration. These are ones he wishes he'd done, the ones he wishes he'd got to first.'
After half a century of decay, the village of Underhowle looked to be on the brink of a new prosperity. Now, instead, it seems destined for notoriety as the home of a psychotic serial killer.
DI Frannie Bliss, of Hereford CID, is convinced he knows where the bodies are buried, but Merrily Watkins wonders if Bliss isn't blinkered by personal ambition. Are the Underhowle deaths really linked to the legacy of Fred West and the most sickening cycle of killings in British criminal history?

The Lamp of the Wicked

Hereford's Diocesan Exorcist must encounter a legacy of evil within the crumbling walls of an old hotel along with memories of murder...
'Merrily has become an ever more engaging protagonist, a passionate, flawed modern women every bit as concerned with the intricacies of crime as she is with demons that go bump in the night.' - Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail
'There were certain phrases you could feel, like fingers up your spine. "Hattie Chancery's Room." Oh God . . .'
A crumbling hotel on the border of England and Wales has long been linked with the possible origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and his obsession with contacting the dead. Fascinating for young Jane Watkins, flushed with the freedom of her first weekend job. But the sinister side soon becomes apparent to her mother, Merrily, diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Then come memories of a child who killed. And blood in the fresh snow.

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

The Parish Priest must solve the mystery of a young boy's deathly fall from the Ludlow Castle ruins, and discovers a hidden obsession with the afterlife amongst the ancient streets...

'Compassionate, original and sharply contemporary. Rickman's crime series is one of the best around.' - Spectator
In the affluent, historic town of Ludlow, a teenage boy dies in a fall from the castle ruins. Accident or suicide? No great mystery - so why does the boy's uncle, retired detective Andy Mumford, turn to Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins?
More people will die before Merrily - her own future uncertain - uncovers a dangerous obsession with suicide, death and the afterlife hidden within these shadowed medieval streets.

The Smile of a Ghost

THE 11th INSTALMENT IN THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES
The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it.
Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back the Regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself... and is coming close to a breakdown.
Meanwhile, the scattered communities along the Welsh border have their own crisis. With recession biting deep, urban crime has spilled into the countryside and old barbaric evils are revived. When a wealthy landowner is hacked to death in his own farmyard, the senior investigating officer, DI Frannie Bliss is caught in the backlash, his private life in danger of exposure.
With the framework of her own world beginning to crack, Merrily Watkins is persuaded to venture into areas where neither a priest nor a woman is welcome... to unearth secrets linked with the border's pagan past. Secrets which she knows can never be disclosed.

The Secrets of Pain

The 12th instalment in the Merrily Watkins series
When a man's body is discovered near the picturesque town of Hay-on-Wye, his death appears to be 'unnatural' in every sense. Merrily Watkins, priest, single mother and exorcist, is drafted in to investigate.

A man's body is found below a waterfall. It looks like suicide or an accidental drowning - until DI Frannie Bliss enters the dead man's home. What he finds there has him consulting Merrily Watkins, the Diocese of Hereford's official advisor on the paranormal.
It's nearly forty years since the town of Hay-on-Wye was declared an independent state by its self-styled king. A development seen at the time as a joke. But the pastiche had a serious side. And behind it, unknown to most of the townsfolk, lay a darker design, a hidden history of murder and ritual magic, the relics of which are only now becoming visible.
It's a situation that will take Merrily Watkins - on her own for the first time in years and facing public humiliation over a separate case - to the edge of madness.

The Magus of Hay

The Diocesan Exorcist for Hereford must reveal the haunting presence of Susan Lulham...
First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night. - Daily Mail
The angular, modernist house was an unexpected bargain for Zoe and Jonathan Mahonie - newcomers to the city of Hereford and apparently unaware that the house's pristine, white interior walls had been coated with the lifeblood of a previous owner.
How is Merrily Watkins, Diocesan Exorcist for Hereford, to know if Zoe Mahonie is lying or deluded when she claims that the wrathful Susan Lulham is still in residence?
Then comes another bloody death.
Who is the real killer?
A MERRILY WATKINS SERIES NOVELLA

The House of Susan Lulham

The discovery of centuries old human bones; a haunted 12th century house; a medieval legend spawning a modern cult... Merrily must piece together a most insidious mystery.
'No-one in the business deals with the spooky stuff better.' - Crime Review UK
'She dragged herself back up, holding her scraped hands inside the sleeves of her parka like paws. As she came to her knees, a sound like laughter was chopped up by the wind, and the woman was back . . .'
A legend of the undead, still seductive, still deadly. A storm unearths a medieval corpse in the old city of Hereford, and the past returns to menace diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins.

Friends of the Dusk

Merrily Watkins is the most singular of crime fiction protagonists... As ever [Rickman]'s supremely skillful at teasing out the menace that lies behind English folk customs and legends and weaving them into a compelling contemporary narrative. - Mail on Sunday
IN THE DARK HEART OF THE COUNTRYSIDE...
When Aidan Lloyd's bleak funeral is followed by a nocturnal ritual in the fog, it becomes all too clear that Aidan, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace.
Aidan's hidden history has reignited an old feud, and a rural tradition begins to display its sinister side.
It's already a fraught time for Merrily Watkins, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Suddenly there are events she can't talk about as she and her daughter Jane find themselves potentially on the wrong side of the law.
In the city of Hereford, DI Frannie Bliss, investigating a shooting, must confront the apparent growth of organised crime, also contaminating the countryside.
On the Welsh border, the old ways are at war with the modern world. As the days shorten and the fog gives way to ice and snow, a savage killing draws Merrily Watkins into a conflict centred on one of Britain's most famous medieval churches, its walls laden with ancient symbolism.
Midwinter of the Spirit, televised last year to worldwide critical acclaim, was the first novel to reflect the reality of exorcism in modern Britain. All of a Winter's Night is the 15th episode in this electrifying series.

All of a Winter's Night

'Brilliantly eerie' PETER JAMES
'Engrossing and beautifully dark . . . a cracking good read' JO BRAND
'A most original sleuth' THE TIMES
Welcome to the River Wye: a place of poetry, historic obsession... and occult murder.
The curious death of an estate agent is being investigated by detective David Vaynor who, before joining the police, studied the famous 18th century poet William Wordsworth. As Vaynor is discovering, the dark paganism that changed Wordsworth's life still lingers on the banks of the River Wye today - and there are some killings even the police can't approach...
Enter Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum, and diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Called away from her local hauntings, Merrily finds herself confronting the riverside ghosts who, as Wordsworth puts it, 'promote ill purposes and flatter foul desires'. In the ancient heart of the Wye Valley, a buried grudge is about to come to light.
*Book 16 in the Merrily Watkins series - now a critically acclaimed ITV drama starring Anna Maxwell-Martin!*
More praise for Phil Rickman
'Cleverly illuminates the darkest corners of our imagination' John Connolly
'The layers, the characters, the humour, the spookiness - perfect' Elly Griffiths
'First rate crime with demons that go bump in the night' Daily Mail
'No one writes better of the shadow-frontier between the supernatural and the real world' Bernard Cornwell