London, 1591. Nicholas Shelby, physician and reluctant spy, returns to his old haunts on London's lawless Bankside. But when the queen's spymaster Robert Cecil asks him to investigate the dubious practices of a mysterious doctor from Switzerland, Nicholas is soon embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not just the life of an innocent young patient but the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth herself. With fellow healer and mistress of the Jackdaw tavern Bianca Merton again at his side, Nicholas is drawn into a dangerous world of zealots, charlatans and fanatics.

Oxford, 1583. Giordano Bruno, a radical thinker fleeing the Inquisition, is sent undercover to Oxford to expose a Catholic conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth. But he has his own secret mission at the University, which must remain hidden at all costs. When a series of hideous murders are committed, Bruno is compelled to investigate. What he finds makes it brutally clear that the Tudor throne itself is at stake....

Banff in the 1620s. A man staggering down the street. He appears drunk, but he's been poisoned. The victim, and apothecary's apprentice, is discovered dead in Alexander Seaton's house, a fallen minister whose life lies in tatters after his affair with the Laird's daughter is discovered and he is cast out of the kirk in disgrace. When his friend is accused of the apprentice's murder, Alexander sets out to solve the crime and clear his friend's name.

Three gripping tales from number one best seller S. J. Parris. The Secret Dead: during the summer of 1566, a girl’s body is found within the walls of a Neapolitan monastery. Novice monk Giordano Bruno has a habit of asking difficult questions, but this time his investigations may lose him his place in the Dominican Order - or deliver him into the hands of the Inquisition. Also includes The Academy of Secrets and The Dead of Winter.

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.

London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.

Ralph Delchard, a soldier who fought at the Battle of Hastings, and Gervase Bret, a talented lawyer, have been commissioned by William the Conqueror to look into irregularities brought to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book. A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster stalking the town. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be a little closer to home....

Summer, 1658, and the Republic may finally be safe: the combined Stuart and Spanish forces have been heavily defeated by the English and French armies on the coast of Flanders, and the king's cause appears finished. Yet one final, desperate throw of the dice is planned. And who can stop them if not Captain Damian Seeker? The final gripping book in this acclaimed and award-winning series of historical thrillers. Will Seeker's legacy endure?

To escape a lifetime of poverty, mercenary Sir Benedict Palmer agrees to one final, lucrative job: help King Henry II's knights seize the traitor Archbishop Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. But what begins as a clandestine arrest ends in cold blooded murder. And when Fitzurse, the knights' ringleader, kidnaps Theodosia, a beautiful young nun who witnessed the crime, Palmer can sit silently by no longer.

England, 1176. Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York. The case appears straightforward. A suspect is under lock and key in the local prison, and the angry villagers are demanding swift justice. But when more bodies are discovered, certainty turns to doubt - and amid the chaos it becomes clear that nobody is above suspicion.

harles II is well established at White Hall Palace, his mistress at hand in rooms over the Holbein bridge, the heads of some of the regicides on public display. London seethes with new energy, freed from the strictures of the protectorate, but many of its inhabitants have lost their livelihoods. One is Thomas Chaloner, a reluctant spy for the feared secretary of state, John Thurloe, and now returned from Holland in desperate need of employment. 

When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers’ wake, bringing Native American goods - and a skrayling ambassador – to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I’s capital? Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is appointed to the ambassador’s bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems.

It is 1650 and a baby lies raw and cold, dead before it even drew breath. A young servant girl, terrified and alone, is accused of its murder and sent to the gallows. Protesting her innocence in the chill air of a December morning, Anne Green is hanged. Moments later, her lifeless body is lifted down from the scaffold and carried to the College of Physicians for brutal dissection.

February 1355: Oxford explodes in one of the most serious riots of its history. Fearing for their lives, the scholars flee, and some choose the University at Cambridge as their temporary refuge. But they don't remain safe for long. Within hours of their arrival, the first of their number dies, followed quickly by a second. When Matthew Bartholomew begins to investigate the deaths, he uncovers evidence that the Oxford riot was not a case of random violence, but part of a carefully orchestrated plot.

Saker appears to be a simple priest, but in truth he's a spy for the head of his faith. Wounded in the line of duty by a Lascar sailor's blade, the weapon seems to follow him home. Unable to discard it, nor the sense of responsibility it brings, Saker can only follow its lead. The dagger puts Saker on a journey to distant shores, on a path that will reveal terrible secrets about the empire, about the people he serves, and destroy the life he knows.