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  • Bibliography:
    46 Books (2 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1951
  • Latest Book:
    March 2016
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About the Author

Ellis Peters (a pen name for Edith Pargeter) was born in 1913 in Shropshire, England, where she still lives. The author or over a dozen mysteries and historical novels, she decided in 1977 to combine the two pursuits and launch her series of Brother Cadfael mysteries. To date, the series contains more than twenty books.

Full Series List in Order

A Brother Cadfael Mystery

1 - A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977)
2 - One Corpse Too Many (May-1980)
3 - Monk's Hood (1980)
4 - Saint Peter's Fair (Nov-1981)
5 - The Leper of Saint Giles (1981)
6 - A Virgin in the Ice (1982)
7 - The Sanctuary Sparrow (Oct-1983)
8 - The Devil's Novice (May-1984)
9 - Dead Man's Ransom (1984)
10 - The Pilgrim of Hate (1964)
11 - An Excellent Mystery (Jun-1986)
12 - The Raven in the Foregate (Nov-1986)
13 - The Rose Rent (Jun-1987)
14 - The Hermit of Eyton Forest (Mar-1988)
15 - The Confession of Brother Haluin (1988)
16 - The Heretic's Apprentice (Mar-1990)
17 - The Potter's Field (Oct-1990)
18 - The Summer of the Danes (Jun-1991)
19 - The Holy Thief (1992)
20 - Brother Cadfael's Penance (Dec-1994)
21 - A Rare Benedictine (1988)
The Assize of the Dying (Sep-1991)
The Benediction of Brother Cadfael (Nov-1992)

An Inspector George Felse Mystery

1 - Fallen into the Pit (1951)
2 - Death and the Joyful Woman (1962)
3 - Flight of a Witch (1964)
4 - A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs (1965)
5 - The Piper on the Mountain (1966)
6 - Black Is the Color of My True Love's Heart (1967)
7 - The Grass Widow's Tale ()
8 - The House of Green Turf (1969)
9 - Mourning Raga (Mar-1970)
10 - The Knocker on Death's Door (Jun-1971)
11 - Death to the Landlords (1972)
12 - City of Gold and Shadows (1973)
13 - Rainbow's End (1978)

Book List in Order: 46 titles



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    A DEADLY LOSS OF INNOCENCE... All the school boys of Comerford look up to Chad Wedderburn, a classics master who was a hero of the Resistance in World War II. But they are puzzled by his unwavering stand against all violence. And when he is blamed...



  • The reading of the will of legendary diva Antonia Byrne turns out to hold some unpleasant surprises for her nearest and dearest: one way or another, none of them get quite what they are expecting. And when a quirk of Fate maroons the mourners in a t...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Alfred Armiger had laid his clever, vulgar hands on a beautiful old Tudor house and turned it into The Jolly Barmaid -- the latest addition to his chain of super road-houses. Then someone lays their hands on Armiger: he is found brutally beaten to de...



  • 'Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool. A clever fool -- perhaps -- but a fool just the same' RAYMOND CHANDLER Ever since its creation in 1953, the Crime Writers' Association has celebrated and champione...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    The Feast of St. Winifred draws many a hopeful pilgrim to the Abbey. Some, the stricken who seek a miracle, make their way to Brother Cadfael's herbarium for the relief the good Benedictine can give them. Like Ciaran, a youth who has vowed to walk th...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    "There is a kind of beauty that produces wolf whistles, and another kind of beauty that creates silence all about it, taking the voices out of men's mouths and the breath out of their throats." Annet Beck's beauty is of the second order and it wor...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    “Shed here no tears. No Saint could die More Blessed and Comforted than I” read the epitaph composed by Jan and Morwenna Treverra before their quiet deaths centuries ago. But the pious portrait of content they conjured fragments when permission ...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    CZECH INTO MURDER... The death of unpopular Herbert Terrell seems accidental--although this expert mountain climber plunged off a mere hill in Czechoslovakia. The saddest part of the tragedy is that no one cares, not his ex-wife, his step daughter...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    "Black, black, black is the colour of my true-love's heart! His tongue is like a poisoned dart, The coldest eyes and the lewdest hands..." The brilliantly talented singer Liri Palmer is obviously sending a message to someone in the audience. V...






    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    MAGGIE --rich, beautiful, and young. She was a famous opera singer with many admirers, but no long had ever touched her heart. After a near-fatal car crash, a voice from the past haunted her; somewhere at some time, she had wronged someone -- destro...



  • Dominic Felse and his girlfriend escort a young girl through India and investigate a murder in this mystery from the bestselling author of Fallen Into the Pit. When his girlfriend’s beautiful but erratic film-star mother, Chloe, calls to ask a favo...



  • The knocker hung on a very special door -- oak, heavy, with a late-Gothic arch, and apparently a late-Gothic curse. Then the door was moved from an old house, once an abbey, to the village church. Legend held that sinners who seized the knocker had t...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    While on vacation in India, Dominic Felse investigates the violent deaths of two landowners Landlords are never popular, and there is little mourning when the greedy, ruthless Mahendralal Bakhle is blown up on his boat on the beautiful Periyar Lake. ...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    When Alan Morris disappears, his great niece Charlotte regrets never having got to know her archaeologist great uncle better. And, in an attempt to remedy that deficiency, she goes to visit the Roman site of Aurae Phiala, on the Welsh border, that he...



  • Cats and crime make an irresistible combination in this second volume of Mystery Cats. Bestselling author Lilian Jackson Braun uses her favorite breed, the Siamese, to chill us with a tale of a sinister violin-playing villain who gets his comeuppance...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    In the remote Welsh mountain village of Gwytherin lies the grave of Saint Winifred. Now, in 1137 the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the sacred remains for his Benedictine order. Native Welshman Brother Cadfael is sent on th...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    When an antiques mogul is murdered in an English village, there are many suspects and very few tears, making it a difficult case for Superintendant Felse. The sleepy village of Middlehope is suddenly jerked into life by antiques mogul Arthur Rainbow...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    Gervase Bonel, with his wife and servants, is a guest at the Shrewsbury Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul when he is suddenly taken ill. Luckily, the abbey boasts the services of the shrewd and kindly Brother Cadfael, a skilled herbalist. Cadfael h...



  • In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden into a battlefield of passions, deceptions, and death. Nor far from the safety of the abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, ...






    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    Setting out for the Saint Giles leper colony outside Shrews-bury, Brother Cadfael has more pressing matters on his mind than the grand wedding coming to his abbey. Yet as fate would have it, Cadfael arrives at Saint Giles just as the nuptial party pa...



  • St. Peter's Fair is a grand, festive event, attracting merchants from miles around--each one eager to sell luxurious clothing, fine wines, or treasures of silver and gold. But on the eve of the Fair one such merchant, Thomas of Bristol, is found w...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    In the brutally cold winter of 1139, Brother Cadfael, amateur detective extraordinaire, is called to a neighboring priory to help a wounded traveler. The sheriff instructs Cadfael to be on the lookout for a pair of orphans, a brother and sister, a...



  • When Liliwin, a poor birdlike young minstrel, reaches the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul only a few steps ahead of a wildly angry mob, the brothers offer him forty days' sanctuary. Then Brother Cadfael, herbalist and amateur detective, learns th...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    The civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud is raging, and in the fierce Battle of Lincoln, Gilbert Prestcote, sheriff of Shropshire, is taken prisoner. But his captors have also lost a man of value -- headstrong young Elis ap Cynan is delive...



  • Outside the pale of the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in September of the year of our Lord 1140, a priestly emissary for King Stephen has been reported missing. But inside the pole, what troubles Brother Cadfael is a proud, secretive nineteen-...



  • Their own abbey in Winchester burned to the ground, Brothers Humilis and Fidelis come to Brother Cadfael's abbey seeking refuge. Before his tonsure, Humilis was a brave Crusader, and received a dreadful wound fighting to save Jerusalem. His long ride...



  • When the beloved Father Adam dies, Abbot Radulfus recommends the young priest Ailnoth for the parish of Holy Cross, known as the Foregate. Ailnoth has much to recommend him, but his zeal and lack of pity quickly alienate him from his flock. So much s...



  • A late spring in 1142 brings dismay to the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, for there may be no roses by June 22nd. On that day the young widow Perle must receive one white rose as rent for the house she has given to benefit the abbey or the cont...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    "Brother Cadfael sprang to life suddenly and unexpectedly when he was already approaching sixty, mature, experienced, fully armed and seventeen years tonsured." So writes Ellis Peters in her introduction to A RARE BENEDICTINE--three vintage tales of ...






    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    Winter arrived early in 1142, bringing with it a heavy snowfall. The safety of the guest-hall roof at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul comes into jeopardy, and the brothers are called upon to effect repairs. But the icy and treacherou...



  • The year is 1142, and all England is in the iron grip of civil war. And within the sheltered cloisters of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, there begins a chain of events no less momentous than the political upheavals of the outside wo...




  • In the summer of 1143, William of Lythwood returns to Shrewsbury in a coffin ... his pilgrimage at last at an end. William's young attendant, Elave, accompanies the body and sets about trying to secure a burial place on the grounds of the Abbey of Sa...



  • The year is 1143 and this is the seventeenth chronicle of Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury. Once again, the gentle monk is forced to leave the tranquility of his herb garden and use his knowledge ...



  • In the summer of 1144, a strange calm has settled over England. The armies of King Stephen and Empress Maud, the two royal cousins contending for the throne, have temporarily exhausted each other. On the whole, Brother Cadfael considers peace a bl...



  • A perfect pair of crimes... When Louis Stevenson is found guilty of murder, he leaves the dock loudly proclaiming his innocence. And he delivers, too, a chilling invitation to the four men responsible for his conviction: ‘You four, I summon to meet...



    • / Historical Mystery
    • Buy Buy

    In the chill, rainy autumn of 1144, two groups of visitors seek the hospitality of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, and Brother Cadfael fears trouble has come in with them. Among the first arrivals is Brother Tutilo, a young Benedictine with a gu...



  • An omnibus volume containing the first two chronicles of Brother Cadfael, the remarkable medieval detective, features A Morbid Taste for Bones and One Corpse Too Many, as well as photographs and text from Cadfael Country. 17,5...



  • An English hitchhiker disrupts a criminal’s plans in this caper gone wrong from the Edgar Award"winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.   On the road to a new town and a new life, William Banks is grateful to Alf, the somewhat ...






  • For Brother Cadfael in the autumn of his life, the mild November of our Lord's year 1145 may bring a bitter--and deadly--harvest. England is torn between supporters of the Empress Maud and those of her cousin Stephen. The civil strife is about to jeo...



  • A troubled English boy sets out to uncover the truth about his father’s death, from the Edgar Award"winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.   Following the death of his father at an archaeological dig in Greece, young Crispin Al...



  • Shropshire is Ellis Peters' county, the world of her medieval mysteries. In this book she takes the reader into the heart of the county, describing the Roman Road and revealing her connections with the town of Shrewsbury and the setting of the Benedi...



  • English teens on vacation in Italy are caught up in a murderous conspiracy, from the Edgar Award"winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.   On a train ride across Northern Italy, a quartet of young English tourists en route to Veni...



    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Murder is committed in "Aunt Helen", a story of blind obsession and psychological suspense that starts with what looks suspiciously like the perfect crime. A vintage tale of murder most foul from the bestselling pen of Ellis Peters....



    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    A famous composer’s post-WWII homecoming is marred by death threats in a gripping tale of suspense from the Edgar Award"winning creator of Brother Cadfael.   Three decades ago, a teenaged Lucas Cornith joined the Austrian Resistance, helping...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Ignored on her birthday by her husband and son, Bunty Felse takes herself out to celebrate -- and finds herself in mortal danger. On the eve of her forty-first birthday, Bunty Felse is overcome with depression. The weather is dreary; her only child, ...


Award-Winning Books by Ellis Peters

Death and the Joyful Woman
1963 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ellis Peters has published 46 books.

Ellis Peters does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Holiday With Violence, was published in March 2016.

The first book by Ellis Peters, Fallen into the Pit, was published in January 1951.

Yes. Ellis Peters has 2 series.