The figure of the stranger is in serious need of revision, as is our understanding of the society against which the stranger is projected. Under conditions of globalization, inside/outside markers have been eroded and conventional indicators of 'we-ness' are no longer reliable. We now live in a gene[...]

A body is found in a chicken run ...Based on the true story of the 'chicken farm murder' which took place in Blackness, Crowborough, East Sussex in December, 1924. Norman Thorne was found guilty of the murder of Elsie Cameron, but even at the time of his execution there were doubts about his guilt. [...]

When a local councillor and an anthropologist re-investigate the controversial murder conviction of a mentally retarded 20-year-old, they're unprepared for the disturbing facts that come to light--and the personal demons with which they must come to terms.[...]

'It was evident, if there were no other entrance to the ice house, that the body had at some point traversed this thorny barrier ...The big question was, how long ago? How long had that nightmare been there?' The people of Streech village had never trusted the three women living up at the Grange -- [...]

'It was the smell that Mrs Powell noticed first. Slightly sweet. Slightly unpleasant. It shocked her badly to find a dead man in the corner, his head slumped on his knees.' Who was Billy Blake, other than a homeless alcoholic who wandered the streets? Why was he found dead from starvation in one of [...]

November 1978. Britain is on strike. The dead lie unburied, rubbish piles in the streets - and somewhere is West London a black woman dies in a rain-soaked gutter. Her passing would have gone unmourned but for the young woman who finds her and who believes - apparently against reason - that Annie wa[...]

In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his grandmother - the one person who understood and protected him. Less than three years later he is dead, driven to suicide by isolation and despair. A fate befittin[...]

I wonder if I should keep these diaries under lock and key. Jenny Spede has disturbed them again ...What does she make, I wonder, of an old woman, deformed by arthritis, stripping naked for a young man? The pills worry me more. Ten is such a round number to be missing ...Mathilda Gillespie's body wa[...]

In the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O'Riordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patrick's parents and cousin, who repor[...]

Everyone knows Olive Martin, the huge and menacing woman who was found five years ago with the carved-up bodies of her mother and younger sister. Everyone knows how she pleaded guilty to murder at her trial. And everyone knows not to anger the Sculptress even now that she is safely locked in prison [...]