Leigh Russell Books in Order

A travelling fair arrives in Ashton Mead, bringing colour, noise and an unwelcome tragedy when a young woman plunges from the Ferris wheel. The village turns on the fairground workers and on Emily’s new friend Dana, so Emily and Poppy race to prove Dana’s innocence before tempers boil over.

When Alice Lewis, niece of Geraldine’s childminder, is murdered after earlier pleas for help went unanswered, the case becomes painfully personal. As Geraldine digs into Alice’s complicated private life, she realises someone is watching her investigation and may be willing to kill again to keep the truth hidden.

In a shabby apartment block, a man lies dead at the foot of the stairs and whoever moved his body is lying. DI Ariadne Moralis leads the case while new mother Geraldine Steel is drawn back into danger, as missing women, shifting stories and rising bodies turn suspicion toward everyone.

A chic French patisserie opens in Ashton Mead just before Christmas, upsetting trade at Hannah’s cosy tea shop. When the new baker is murdered and Hannah is arrested, Emily and Poppy dig through jealous rivalries, festive tensions and small-town grudges to clear their friend’s name.

A wealthy businessman is found shot and dumped in a river, leaving his ambitious children and much younger girlfriend vying for his fortune. When the girlfriend is murdered and Geraldine’s own baby is kidnapped, she must split her focus between catching a killer and saving her child.

Asked as a favour to check on a friend’s missing girlfriend, Geraldine initially assumes the young woman has simply run off. Then a body appears on a suburban pavement, covered in earth as though buried alive, and the case spirals into a desperate search before another woman vanishes.

Emily’s feud with bullying neighbour Silas Strang erupts when he threatens to take Poppy away from her. After a very public argument, Silas is found murdered and Emily becomes the police’s prime suspect. With help from friends Hannah and Toby, she must find the real killer before gossip and evidence close in.

When schoolgirl Cassie is found dead in nearby woods after accusing a teacher of assault, the evidence all points toward the man whose career and marriage are collapsing. Geraldine is unconvinced and, after Cassie’s best friend is murdered, must decide whether they are chasing a serial killer or playing someone else’s game.

After her boyfriend walks out, Emily inherits her great aunt’s cottage in the village of Ashton Mead on the condition she cares for an unknown pet. The pet turns out to be lively puppy Poppy, and when a neighbour’s child disappears, Emily and Poppy follow a trail of village secrets into real danger.

Life in Ashton Mead seems settled until Emily discovers the body of a local woman in the river. Suspicion quickly falls on her reclusive neighbour Richard, but as Emily and Poppy probe his past and the dead woman’s secrets, they uncover motives that leave Emily herself in the killer’s sights.

A quiet man is suffocated in his home and forensic tests reveal DNA from a stranger. Geraldine arrests a suspect yet doubts his guilt, especially after a witness provides an alibi. When a second murder follows his release, she must face the possibility she freed a killer.

A wheelchair user is strangled in her flat and her son Eddy is swiftly charged. His story collapses and even his supposed girlfriend denies knowing him, but Geraldine is not convinced he had the brains to plan such a crime. As more bodies appear, she races to uncover who is hiding behind Eddy’s lies.

In a famine-ravaged future where a male-dominated council controls every aspect of life, teenage Rachel is forced into a government programme that drugs girls to make them fertile and compliant. Escaping the regime, she discovers that survival outside the city walls comes with its own dangers and hard choices.

Life with fellow detective Ian Peterson looks hopeful for Geraldine until a drug syndicate fixates on her family and a sadistic killer begins targeting women on York’s streets. Abducted and cut off from help, she must outwit both criminals and a psychopath to survive.

When a sex worker dies in York, Geraldine’s investigation is overshadowed by Ian Peterson’s unexplained disappearance. Unbeknownst to her, he has gone undercover to infiltrate the gang threatening her life. As more women are murdered, their separate investigations converge in a deadly confrontation.

On a freezing night a baby disappears from her cot and suspicion falls on the child’s absent father. Geraldine senses there is far more behind the kidnapping than a custody dispute, and a shocking discovery turns the search into a dangerous battle driven by vengeance.

After soldiers attack her Jewish community in sixteenth century Lithuania, Abigail escapes both the massacre and her abusive husband. She builds a fragile new life in Venice’s ghetto and falls in love again, only for the past to return and threaten her happiness amid persecution and suspicion.

A homeless man is strangled and left in the street, a killing that seems both brutal and senseless. When another body appears and a toxic triangle of lovers and lies emerges, Geraldine must decide who to trust in a case where every motive seems tainted.

Louise enjoys a comfortable life as the headmaster’s wife until a journalist claims her charismatic husband is cheating. Curiosity about the alleged mistress curdles into an online campaign of spite, and when the other woman is found dead, Louise realises she may have trapped herself in a crime she did not intend.

A series of apparently random street attacks leaves men dead and the city on edge. Senior officers blame a gang of muggers, but Geraldine believes a single, deliberate murderer is behind the violence and risks her career to prove it before she becomes the next target.

Police write off Mark Abbott’s hanging as suicide, but his sister insists he was murdered. As more members of the family vanish and the evidence turns murkier, Geraldine follows a trail that leads straight into the hands of an adversary deadlier than any she has faced.

Julie thinks her marriage is ordinary until she uncovers her husband’s long-running affair. When she later discovers his body at home and the police treat her as the prime suspect, Julie must pick apart layers of betrayal and jealousy to reveal who really killed him before she loses everything.

In her first major case back in York, Geraldine faces a killer selecting victims from a loose-knit group whose shared past hides old grudges. As witnesses keep dying and public fear grows, she must rebuild her damaged reputation while stopping a murderer who plans carefully and kills without remorse.

Lucy travels to Rome to follow up on a cold missing-persons case involving a young man named Dominique. What begins as routine research soon pits her against a criminal gang hunting the same man, turning the city’s backstreets into a deadly maze where she might become the next to disappear.

Spending Christmas Eve alone in York, Geraldine agrees to help when a man collapses at a bustling winter fair. It soon becomes clear he has been murdered, not struck by illness, and she must trace a killer hiding in holiday crowds before anyone else dies.

An unremarkable man is shot dead in a side street, followed by another inexplicable killing. As Geraldine tracks links between seemingly random victims, the investigation exposes a dangerous criminal network and forces her to confront unsettling truths about her own family history.

Hoping a holiday in the Seychelles will clear her head, Lucy Hall instead discovers that her father is entangled in a dangerous secret from his past. As threats close in on her family in what should be a tropical paradise, she digs into old crimes someone is desperate to keep buried.

Settled into a new job in Paris, fledgling investigative reporter Lucy is chasing a promising tip when her flat is ransacked and her visiting friend Nina vanishes. With the police dismissive and her informant dead, she has to track a ruthless enemy who believes she holds something worth killing for.

Two people are murdered in quick succession and a single suspect’s alibi begins to crumble under scrutiny. With her newly discovered twin sister complicating her personal life, Geraldine has to decide whether to trust the forensics or her instincts before the killer strikes again.

A killer prowls York’s streets with a medieval axe, leaving victims slaughtered at random and no forensic traces behind. Under intense pressure, Ian and his team struggle to link the murders, until a faint pattern suggests a motive that is far more personal than anyone expected.

During a packed race meeting at York, a man plunges to his death in front of horrified crowds. Was it suicide or murder? As more victims die in disturbingly similar circumstances, Ian must untangle high-profile secrets while knowing the killer is watching the investigation unfold.

A businessman is beaten to death and all eyes turn to his widow and her secret lover. When the couple’s young son is kidnapped, Geraldine must decide how much of her own closely guarded secrets she is willing to risk to bring a manipulative killer to justice.

A glamorous soap actress dies in a violent car crash and the driver of the other vehicle disappears. When another young star is killed in eerily similar circumstances, Geraldine begins to suspect a calculated pattern, even as the hunt puts her own sergeant’s life on the line.

When Henry’s wife is found stabbed, he hires a sex worker to give him a false alibi. Her subsequent murder, followed by another brutal killing, convinces newly promoted DS Ian Peterson that a calculating serial offender is silencing anyone who can expose him.

A wealthy businessman is hacked to death and suspicion falls on his wife and her younger lover. When other men die in similar fashion and the only solid lead is DNA linking two women, one dead and one in prison, Geraldine fears a serial killer is at work.

Two young Black women are found murdered in North London, their teeth removed in the same disturbing way. Under media pressure and rising community tensions, Geraldine follows a trail of forensic clues that point toward a predator the press call the Dentist.

Headmistress Abigail Kirby is found mutilated in woodland and her teenage daughter vanishes, apparently with a friend she met online. As bodies mount and the missing girl’s trail grows cold, Geraldine faces a serial killer whose brutality is becoming personal.

After a man dies in a gas explosion, Geraldine’s team suspect arson, but the case darkens when a local criminal is savagely beaten and a key witness dies in a hit and run. She must untangle arson, revenge and lies before more people die.

Newly arrived in the supposedly quiet town of Woolsmarsh, DI Geraldine Steel is thrown into a hunt for a killer stalking young women in the local park. When a terrified witness draws the murderer’s attention, Geraldine races to stop another attack.