Cath Staincliffe Books in Order

Single-parent private eye Sal Kilkenny agrees to find a missing young man and ends up deep in Manchester's criminal underworld. A strong, grounded start to the series, full of grit, heart, and righteous anger.

What begins as a routine job for Sal Kilkenny turns into a darker case with violent consequences. This early series entry mixes private-eye legwork with the sharp human detail that defines the books.

A stalked divorcee and a frightened teenage boy bring Sal Kilkenny two very different cases during a summer of fear in Manchester. As bomb shock and personal panic spread, both investigations grow more dangerous.

Sal Kilkenny is hired to trace a woman disinherited decades earlier while working nights with a neighborhood nuisance team on a tense Manchester estate. Old secrets and present-day anger soon collide with deadly force.

An apparent suicide does not sit right with Sal Kilkenny, especially when the dead woman was terrified of heights. What looks simple at first opens into a darker picture of neglect, silence, and city secrets.

In 1960 Manchester, three young unmarried women are sent to St Ann's mother and baby home to give birth in shame and secrecy. The daughters they lose will shape all their lives for decades.

Sal Kilkenny is asked to trace poison-pen letters and check out a neighborhood for nervous homebuyers, jobs that seem ordinary enough. Then a freezing Manchester spring turns ugly, and both cases tip toward violence.

Newly promoted DCI Janine Lewis is six months pregnant when her first murder case lands on her desk. With a deputy head teacher dead and the main suspect missing, she has to lead the inquiry while her own life is in pieces.

On her second day back from maternity leave, DCI Janine Lewis sees a schoolgirl struck down in a hit and run. A body in the river soon points to a bigger case, and Janine must juggle three deaths and a fragile home life.

Two disappearance cases land on Sal Kilkenny's desk at once, a missing wife and mother, and a vanished asylum seeker. As she follows both trails through Manchester, the personal stakes rise alongside the danger.

Deborah helps her terminally ill husband die, then finds herself on trial for murder. Moving between court and memory, this is a tender, troubling novel about love, grief, and the price of honoring someone's last wish.

Sal Kilkenny finds an abandoned baby on her doorstep just as a client asks her to revisit a murder conviction. As the confession starts to unravel, Sal is pulled into a case that hits painfully close to home.

Set during the Manchester riots of August 2011, this short work follows a teenager and a middle-aged woman caught in the same night of chaos. It looks past the headlines to the fear, anger, and aftermath.

A compact, award-winning crime story with Cath Staincliffe's usual focus on ordinary lives and sudden consequence. Short, sharp, and unsettling, it leaves a lot of damage in a small space.

When teenager Cassie Mallion disappears in the Lake District, her grieving family are hounded by the press. Years later, revelations about illegal media intrusion force them to relive the loss all over again.

Four strangers witness the shooting of a teenage boy, and each must decide whether telling the truth is worth the risk. Staincliffe focuses on fear, pressure, and the real cost of standing up in court.

A teenage girl is found murdered in her flat, and her devastated mother is sure the boyfriend is to blame. Rachel Bailey joins forces with Janet Scott in a case that tests both their instincts and their partnership.

One brief act of violence on a bus leaves a young man dead and several families shattered. Told through witnesses and parents on both sides, it asks what courage, guilt, and justice look like after the worst happens.

Three bodies are found at a Manchester inn, and the missing husband has taken his two young sons with him. Scott and Bailey race to find a desperate man before he makes one last, terrible choice.

A sunny family barbecue ends in disaster when Naomi Baxter causes a fatal crash that kills a nine-year-old girl. In the long run-up to trial, guilt, memory, and divided loyalties tear two families apart.

Manchester has spent nine days searching for missing three-year-old Sammy Wray when a child's body is found in a sewer. DCI Janine Lewis leads a harrowing case where every new answer makes the loss even harder to bear.

An avenging nurse carries out secret acts of revenge in the name of giving others a second chance. Short and unsettling, it is a dark character study with a sting in the tail.

Four years after her daughter's murder, Ruth Sutton writes to the man she believes did it. Her letters become a fierce, intimate search for truth, justice, and the hard edge between revenge and forgiveness.

A fire in an abandoned chapel reveals a man shot twice, drawing Scott and Bailey into a community already close to breaking point. As another building burns, the case turns into a test of loyalty, nerve, and judgment.

When respected GP Don Halliwell is shot outside his surgery and colleague Fraser McKee vanishes, DCI Janine Lewis faces a case full of rivalries and hidden grudges. The deeper she digs, the murkier both men's lives become.

When Lori Maddox goes missing in Chengdu, her separated parents travel from Manchester to China to search for her themselves. What begins as a desperate hunt becomes a painful unraveling of family history and buried truths.

Passengers on a Manchester to London train are thrown into terror when one man boards carrying a deadly rucksack. Staincliffe follows the attack and its aftermath through a group of ordinary strangers.

After transgender teenager Allie Kennaway is beaten to death on prom night, a Manchester investigation exposes prejudice, grief, and the desperate things parents will do to protect their children. Sharp, painful, and deeply human.

Lifelong friends Lydia and Bel have made very different choices about motherhood, but both are tested when Lydia's adopted daughter Chloe grows dangerously out of control. A tense family drama about love, blame, and the cracks that spread over years.

A collection of short crime stories that shows Staincliffe working in compact form, from sly social observation to sudden violence. The pieces are brisk, varied, and rooted in ordinary lives under pressure.

When a newborn baby is found dead and her mother disappears, DI Donna Bell and DC Jade Bradshaw face a wall of lies in a struggling Manchester community. It is a humane, angry mystery about poverty, family, and the damage people hide.

Schoolgirl Scarlett is abducted by the father she never expected to see again, a man already on the police most-wanted list. The chase races across the Derbyshire Peaks, pulling other damaged lives into its path.

When a skeleton is found in a cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales, detectives Leo Donovan and Shan Young reopen the disappearance of Vicky Mott, missing since 1997. The beautiful landscape hides old fear, stubborn lies, and a killer still close by.

In 1960 Manchester, Joan, Megan, and Caroline are sent to a mother and baby home and forced to give up their daughters. Years later, the past comes back, and each woman must face what was taken from her.

Teenager Tyler Prasad is shot while heading to an eco protest, and Donovan and Young find no shortage of suspects in the surrounding shooting estates and country-house luxury. The Dales are blazing with class tension, secrets, and risk.