Ann Cleeves

Author Information
Ann Cleeves's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    44 Books (5 Series)
  • First Book:
    June 1986
  • Latest Book:
    September 2024
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Full Series List in Order

A Detective Matthew Venn Novel

1 - The Long Call (Sep-2019)
2 - The Heron's Cry (Sep-2021)
2.5 - The Girls on the Shore (Jan-2022)
3.5 - The Raging Storm (Sep-2023)

Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones

1 - A Bird in the Hand (Jun-1986)
2 - Come Death and High Water (Jun-1987)
3 - Murder in Paradise (Feb-1989)
4 - A Prey to Murder (Feb-1989)
5 - Sea Fever (Oct-1991)
6 - Another Man's Poison (May-1993)
7 - The Mill on the Shore (Sep-1994)
8 - High Island Blues (Jun-1996)

A Shetland Mystery

1 - Raven Black (Jun-2007)
2 - White Nights (Sep-2008)
3 - Red Bones (Sep-2009)
4 - Blue Lightning (Feb-2010)
5 - Dead Water (Feb-2014)
6 - Thin Air (May-2015)
7 - Cold Earth (Apr-2017)
8 - Wild Fire (Sep-2018)

Stephen Ramsey

1 - A Lesson in Dying (Mar-1990)
2 - Murder in My Backyard (Aug-1991)
3 - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (Mar-1992)
4 - Killjoy (Mar-1995)
5 - The Healers (Oct-1995)
6 - The Baby Snatcher (1997)

A Vera Stanhope Mystery

1 - The Crow Trap (1999)
2 - Telling Tales (Feb-2006)
3 - Hidden Depths (Sep-2007)
4 - Silent Voices (May-2013)
5 - The Glass Room (Feb-2012)
6 - Harbour Street (Dec-2015)
7 - The Moth Catcher (Oct-2016)
8 - The Seagull (Sep-2017)
8.5 - Frozen (Aug-2020)
9 - The Darkest Evening (Sep-2020)
10 - The Rising Tide (Sep-2022)
11 - The Dark Wives (Sep-2024)

Book List in Order: 44 titles

  • A Bird in the Hand

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 1

    In England's birdwatching paradise, a new breed has been sighted -- a murderer... Young Tom French was found dead, lying in a marsh on the Norfolk coast, with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck. One of the best birders in ...

  • Come Death and High Water

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 2

    Was it a case of murder by committee at the Gillibry Island Bird Observatory Trust? The members of the executive committee had gathered for a typical weekend of amiable wrangling and serious bird-watching. They had hardly expected Charlie Todd, w...

  • Murder in Paradise

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 3

    The honeymoon was over... and Jim and his English bride, Sarah, had come home to Kinness to settle down. But first there was to be one huge celebration for the newlyweds, with the whole island present. And before the party was over, there would be a...

  • A Prey to Murder

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 4

    Eleanor Masefield could be very difficult to handle, but murdering her seemed a bit extreme.... It was Eleanor Masefield's own idea to sponsor an Open Day at her beautiful Gorse Hill Hotel -- a celebration designed to raise funds for the protectio...

  • A Lesson in Dying

    Stephen Ramsey - 1

    HEADMASTER HAROLD MEDBURN WAS DEAD, AND NOBODY IN THE VILLAGE REGRETTED IT. Appropriately, it was on the evening of the village Halloween party that Medburn's body, dressed in academic cap and gown, was found swinging from the school's rusty netba...

  • Murder in My Backyard

    Stephen Ramsey - 2

    NO ONE IN HEPPLEBURN HAS A BAD WORD TO SAY 4 ABOUT ALICE PARRY... ...But here she is, murdered in her own backyard on a bitter St. David's Eve. And when detective Stephen Ramsay starts asking questions in the village, a more ambiguous picture begins...

  • Sea Fever

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 5

    The birdwatching weekend in Cornwall is memorable -- even without the murder. Miracle of miracles, the small band of fanatical birdwatchers aboard the Jessie Ellen -- among them detective George Palmer-Jones -- sights a seabird that has never been...

  • A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

    Stephen Ramsey - 3

    Vicars' wives do not usually get themselves murdered... ... especially when they are as vibrant and caring as beautiful Dorothea Cassidy. But murdered she unquestionably was; and from the outset Inspector Stephen Ramsay is hard put to figure out why...

  • Another Man's Poison

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 6

    Ursula Ottway may have outlived her time, but she's still a tough old bird. When she finds her beloved cats and some protected wildfowl dead of illegal poison, she angrily threatens to expose her landlord, politician Marcus Grenville, as an anti-p...



  • The Mill on the Shore

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 7

    When Jimmy Morrissey, England's celebrated conservation conscience, kills himself with an overdose of antidepressants, the whole country mourns with his grieving widow. But private investigators Molly and George Palmer-Jones are convinced that what l...

  • Killjoy

    Stephen Ramsey - 4

    FOR SOME REASON PEOPLE ARE A LITTLE AFRAID OF GABRIELLA PASTON. Is it because she's too beautiful, too talented, too self-confident? In the middle of rehearsals for her first big show at the arts center, eighteen-year-old Gabriella is murdered...a...

  • The Healers

    Stephen Ramsey - 5

    IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT AND ERNIE BOWLES IS STEPPING OUT-- TO DIE. Ernie's big fantasy is that his blind date with a blonde divorcee will end with the two of them back at the farm, cozily shacked up. Alas, Sunday morning finds Ernie on the cold kitchen ...

  • High Island Blues

    Goerge & Molly Palmer-Jones - 8

    IN A BIRD-WATCHER'S PARADISE, MURDER COMES HOME TO ROOST. Among the birders from around the world gathered for the dazzling spring avian migration on the Texas coast are three old friends from England -- Rob, Mick, and Oliver -- celebrating the tw...

  • The Baby Snatcher

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    Stephen Ramsey - 6

    When fifteen-year-old Marilyn Howe turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay's doorstep he has little choice but to invite her in. Marilyn and her mother, Kathleen, are a familiar sight around Heppleburn, a strangely inseparable couple. But K...

  • The Crow Trap

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy
    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 1

    Three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey on the Northumberland countryside. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal.... For team leader Rachael Lambert the project is the perfect oppor...

  • The Sleeping and the Dead

    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Peter Porteous fled the pressures of big city crime to be a small town cop ... But he soon finds out there's no getting away from murder. When water levels drop in a summer drought, Cranwell Lake reveals a thirty-year-old secret -- a body stabbed in...

  • Burial of Ghosts

    Twenty-five-year-old Lizzie Bartholomew has had more than her fair share of troubles. Abandoned as a baby, she spent her childhood moving between foster homes. Now she is running away from her past ...For Lizzie, a holiday in Morocco seems to be the ...

  • Telling Tales

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 2

    It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still a...

  • Raven Black

    A Shetland Mystery - 1

    Long a celebrated crime writer in Britain, Ann Cleeves' fame went international when she won the coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger for this amazing suspense novel, Raven Black. Like Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse or Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks, Cleev...



  • Hidden Depths

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 3

    Julie stared at him, submerged beneath the bath water, his hair rising like fronds of seaweed towards the surface. She couldn't see his body because of the flowers... A hot summer on the Northumberland coast and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a...

  • White Nights

    A Shetland Mystery - 2

    It's midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws an elaborate party to launch an exhibition of her work at The Herring House, a gallery on the beach...

  • Red Bones

    A Shetland Mystery - 3

    When a young archaeologist discovers a set of human remains, the locals are intrigued. Is it an ancient find -- or a more contemporary mystery? Then an elderly woman is fatally shot and Ann Cleeves's popular series detective Jimmy Perez is called in....

  • Blue Lightning

    A Shetland Mystery - 4

    In the fourth book of Ann Cleeves’ critically acclaimed series set in the Shetland Islands, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez brings his fiancée home to Fair Isle, a birder’s paradise, where strangers are viewed with suspicions and distrust. When ...

  • The Glass Room

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 5

    From Ann Cleeves -- New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows -- comes The Glass Room. “Ann Cleeves is one of my favorite mystery writers.” -- Louise Penny DI Vera Stanhop...

  • Silent Voices

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 4

    Ann Cleeves has thrilled readers everywhere with her critically acclaimed mystery series set in the Shetland Islands, which began with the award-winning Raven Black. Now, Cleeves is back with another compelling mystery series (set in Northumberland, ...

  • The Mysteries of Shetland

    CWA Diamond Dagger winner Ann Cleeves’s Shetland Island series has long been beloved both by fans who have been intrigued by Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez from the very first page, and recent converts drawn in by the brilliant BBC series Shetl...

  • Dead Water

    A Shetland Mystery - 5

    Ann Cleeves returns to her critically acclaimed Shetland Island series with this stunning mystery featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, who readers will remember from Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning. When the body of a journalist ...

  • Thin Air

    A Shetland Mystery - 6

    A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Shetland to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends. But, one of them, Eleanor, disappears―apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights an...

  • Shetland

    Ann Cleeves' bestselling series of crime novels, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, and now also adapted for a major BBC television series, draw their inspiration from the place in which they take place: Shetland. An archipelago of more than 100 island...



  • Harbour Street

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 6

    Harbour Street is the next spellbinding installment in Ann Cleeves' series of crime novels about Vera Stanhope, played in the TV detective drama VERA by Brenda Blethyn. As the snow falls thickly on Newcastle, the shouts and laughter of Christmas r...

  • The Moth Catcher

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 7

    Life seems perfect in the quiet community of Valley Farm. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist, to look after the place while they’re away. But his dead bo...

  • Cold Earth

    A Shetland Mystery - 7

    In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the main road and sweeps down to the sea. At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and water smash through a house in...

  • The Seagull

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 8

    A visit to her local prison brings DI Vera Stanhope face to face with an old enemy: former detective superintendent, and now inmate, John Brace. Brace was convicted of corruption and involvement in the death of a gamekeeper -- and Vera played a key p...

  • Wild Fire

    A Shetland Mystery - 8

    Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husba...

  • The Long Call

    A Detective Matthew Venn Novel - 1

    From Ann Cleeves―bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows―comes the first in a gripping new series, told with deep compassion and searing insight. In North Devon, where two rivers con...

  • Frozen

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 8.5

    As New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves' popularity explodes in print and on TV, this gripping e-short, "Frozen," will introduce readers to the inimitable DI Vera Stanhope.For once, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope is managing to have a good day of...

  • The Darkest Evening

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 9

    From Ann Cleeves―New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows―comes the stunning new Vera Stanhope novel. On the first snowy night of winter, Detective Inspector Vera Stanh...

  • Too Good to Be True

  • The Heron's Cry

    A Detective Matthew Venn Novel - 2

    New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves returns with The Heron's Cry, the extraordinary follow-up to The Long Call, soon to be a major TV series, alongside her two hit TV shows Shetland and Vera. North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with to...



  • The Girls on the Shore

    A Detective Matthew Venn Novel - 2.5

    A USA Today Bestseller!Ann Cleeves -- New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows -- returns with a darkly delicious short story, "The Girls on the Shore", featuring DI Matthew V...

  • The Woman on the Island

    New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves returns with a delicious short story featuring DCI Vera Stanhope as a young woman, and also including an excerpt from the next Vera Stanhope novel, The Rising Tide."Ann Cleeves is one of my favorite mystery write...

  • The Rising Tide

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 10

    From Ann Cleeves -- New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows -- comes the stunning tenth Vera Stanhope novel, The Rising Tide, a powerful novel about guilt, betrayal, and the ...

  • The Raging Storm

    A Detective Matthew Venn Novel - 3.5

    Ann Cleeves—New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—returns with The Raging Storm, the extraordinary third installment in the Matthew Venn series.Fierce winds, da...

  • The Dark Wives

    A Vera Stanhope Mystery - 11

    As New York Times bestseller Ann Cleeves's beloved Vera series explodes in popularity in print and on TV, this stunning eleventh book explores the web of secrets surrounding a young man's death.The man’s body is found in the early morning light by ...

Award-Winning Books by Ann Cleeves

The Long Call
2019 Agatha Award -- Contemporary Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ann Cleeves has published 44 books.

The next book by Ann Cleeves, The Dark Wives, will be published in September 2024.

The first book by Ann Cleeves, A Bird in the Hand, was published in June 1986.

Yes. Ann Cleeves has 5 series.
Author Series
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