Robert Barnard Books in Order

An aging professor has bored academic audiences for decades with the same lecture, including a stop at Drummondale University in Australia. Soon after, he is found brutally murdered, and academic pettiness turns deadly.

A critical study of Charles Dickens that traces recurring images, patterns, and thematic concerns across the novels. It is an academic Barnard book, focused on close reading rather than crime or satire.

A radio documentary planned in the village of Twythching stirs up social feuds, poison-pen letters, and finally murder. Inspector George Parrish has to untangle local grudges that were never quite as small as they looked.

A conference on the role of the modern church brings bishops, clergy, and religious thinkers together under one roof. Murder is not on the agenda until a brother is found dead in his cell.

Bombastic contralto Gaylene Ffrench is such a menace to the Northern Opera Company that her electrocution inspires little grief. Superintendent Nichols has a stage full of suspects, all with excellent reasons to want her gone.

Two women linked to the dead writer Walter Machin have spent years guarding his memory and avoiding one another. A planned literary tribute brings fire, murder, and the buried secret at the heart of his legacy.

Bestselling mystery writer Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs dies at his birthday celebration, leaving behind a bitter family and a missing unpublished manuscript. Inspector Meredith enters a household where inheritance and hatred go hand in hand.

Barnard's appreciative study of Agatha Christie looks at the craft behind her puzzles and the reasons her fiction works so well. It is criticism written by a novelist who understood detective stories from the inside.

Perry Trethowan's estranged aristocratic father is found dead on a torture device of his own making. Forced back into a family he dislikes, Perry must sort humiliation, inheritance, and old malice into a workable murder case.

A naked corpse emerges from the snow after months in the Arctic city of Tromsø, and no one can even say who the victim is. Inspector Fagermo's search uncovers blackmail, espionage, and cold-blooded murder.

Lill Hodsden bullies her husband, smothers her sons, and blackmails her lovers, making herself hated all over Todmarsh. Barnard wastes no time showing why so many people might welcome her death.

Princess Helena may be far from the throne, but scandal clings to her and her circle. When friends and lovers begin dying, Perry Trethowan must contain both a killer and the kind of royal embarrassment institutions dread.

Barnard uses the traditions of British schooling as the target for a blackly comic mystery. Failed pedants, bureaucratic absurdity, and educational pomposity all come under pressure once the satire turns toward murder.

A Yorkshire breakdown leads Perry Trethowan to a retired schoolteacher with what may be an unpublished Brontë manuscript. When she is attacked and the document disappears, literary excitement turns into a stubborn and dangerous mystery.

A working-class Londoner unexpectedly becomes the twelfth Earl of Ellesmere and only wants rid of the estate. When he is found dead after a family gathering, greedy heirs and seedy connections crowd the suspect list.

A concise survey of English literature from Chaucer to the modern period, aimed at students beginning serious study. Barnard highlights major writers and key works while linking literary history to criticism and close reading.

In conservative Hexton-on-Weir, even long-settled residents can still count as outsiders. When the church fair becomes the setting for murder, local grudges and small-town exclusions prove far more dangerous than they first appear.

Simon Thorn was evacuated during the Blitz and never reclaimed, and as an adult in London he begins recognizing streets he should not know. His search for his origins leads back to nightmares and a wartime secret.

Four corpses in the studio of a soft-porn magazine leave Perry Trethowan facing a case with no obvious motive. His search leads from Soho sleaze to the darker edges of body-building, vanity, and exploitation.

A conscientious Tory MP is pulled from the Thames, and the easy verdict of accident or suicide will not satisfy Superintendent Sutcliffe. As a by-election begins, Barnard turns party politics into a steadily dirtier murder inquiry.

A conference of romantic novelists is not Perry Trethowan's natural habitat, and a corpse in frothy pink only makes matters worse. Behind the sentimentality, Barnard finds professional rivalry, pose, and murderous bad taste.

A bedridden novelist's papers become the center of a family struggle when an illegitimate daughter arrives to write an exposing biography. Then a famous actress is murdered, and Idwal Meredith must untangle old grudges and buried secrets.

In 1936, new governess Sarah Causeley finds village life at Hallam House less peaceful than it seems. A hateful campaign against the family escalates until a killer leaves something worse than croquet mallets on the lawn.

At the Ketterick arts festival, an amateur production and a mystery opera are meant to provide cultured entertainment. Instead a murder interrupts the program, and Charlie Peace must work out which performer turned deadly offstage.

A first collection of fifteen mystery stories, mixing grim comedy with darker turns. Barnard moves from social satire to sudden violence, with standouts like the title tale, "The Woman in the Wardrobe," and "Breakfast Television".

When rough, notorious Jack Phelan plans to buy into an isolated row of respectable houses, panic grips Wynton Lane. Barnard turns class fear, snobbery, and neighborhood outrage into a social comedy with very dark consequences.

Retired MP Peter Proctor sets out to write dull memoirs and instead becomes obsessed with the unsolved 1950s murder of his friend Timothy Wycliffe. The deeper he digs into Belgravia's old secrets, the uglier the past looks.

Biographer Lydia Perceval is strangled in a village full of old hurts and newer resentments. Charlie Peace and Mike Oddie have to pick through family tensions, local gossip, and a suspicious stranger to find the killer.

A literary fellowship gathers in a Yorkshire village to celebrate the late novelist Susannah Sneddon and profit from her legend. When the event's promoter is bludgeoned to death, Charlie Peace finds vanity and scholarship equally suspect.

In 1842, governess Frances Weyland arrives at Elmstead Court and is drawn into a household ruled by subtle tyranny. Hidden passions, private writings, and a sinister servant push the proper Victorian surface toward murder.

Set in London in 1820, this alternate-history mystery imagines Mozart alive, elderly, and drawn into the scandals around George IV and Caroline of Brunswick. Political gossip soon hardens into a murder case.

After their mother dies in childbirth, the Heenan children try to hide their father's growing madness from the world. Curiosity from outsiders and pressure from within the family turn secrecy into a dangerous game.

Rosemary Sheffield's loss of faith is awkward enough for her parish, then a body turns up after the church fete. Charlie Peace and Mike Oddie must decide whether a spiritual crisis has opened the door to murder.

In 1830, an aging Mozart is asked to teach the young Princess Victoria. Court intrigue, family struggle, and a suspicious death soon convince him that his royal pupil may be in real danger.

Seventeen short mystery stories about seemingly ordinary people discovering how close they may be to murder. The title piece follows a young woman who keeps marrying old men and acquires a worrying taste for widowhood.

Two teenagers vanish from the same school, yet no one can explain what connects them. When Charlie Peace finds them working at a hostel for the homeless, his decision to leave them there begins to look dangerously complicated.

Sarah Jane Fearing grows up inside a powerful banking family whose great house hides debt, resentment, and impossible expectations. When her beloved uncle's disastrous choices drag the family toward murder, the whole structure begins to crack.

A nearly naked young man is found behind a Haworth restaurant, and his identity is only the first puzzle. Charlie Peace soon finds himself inside a needy artistic circle where admiration, rivalry, and manipulation have turned poisonous.

A newly successful junior minister receives a grubby card asking who he really is, and the question will not go away. His search for his origins leads back to an old political scandal, a murder, and fresh threats to his life.

An illustrated biography of Emily Brontë that traces her life at Haworth, the Gondal writings, the poems, and the making of Wuthering Heights. Barnard also explores how her experience shaped the novel's fierce emotional force.

An elderly woman moves into a nursing home and immediately begins stirring up trouble. Barnard turns the setup into a sharp, darkly funny short mystery, with the kind of ending that lingers after the last page.

Actress Caroline Fawley enjoys her glamorous new life in a Yorkshire village until a young man who resembles her wealthy boyfriend appears at her door. Then the boyfriend vanishes, and a body turns up not long after.

A scandal around Father Pardoe, a teenage mother, and parish money gives journalist Cosmo Horrocks the story of his career. Then murder arrives, and the gossip-ridden parish of St Catherine's starts shedding dangerous secrets.

A rising radio star finds a child's skeleton in the attic of his new Leeds home. The discovery sends him back to a half-buried summer in 1969, while Charlie Peace digs into memories someone never wanted disturbed.

As elderly literary grand dame Bettina Whitelaw begins writing her memoirs, the Australian outback childhood she escaped starts to close in again. When her former housekeeper is attacked, memory becomes a source of real danger.

Novelist Graham Broadbent is heading to a school reunion when a twenty-year-old woman arrives and claims to be his daughter. The shock tips him into a web of deception, memory, and personal danger he is badly equipped to manage.

Merlyn Cantelo returns to Leeds to inherit the house of the aunt who once rescued him from a damaged childhood. Her old warnings about violence begin to make sense as buried family truths start turning deadly.

An A to Z reference guide to the Brontë family, their works, characters, settings, and the people and places around them. It is built for browsing, checking facts, and digging deeper into Brontë history.

When Felicity Peace's difficult father moves into her Yorkshire village, trouble follows fast. Rumors swirl, a body is found, and Felicity herself may be under suspicion, leaving Charlie dangerously close to a case he cannot ignore.

Soon after burying her mother, Eve McNabb receives a letter hinting at an old illicit passion and a family history she never understood. Following that clue draws her toward vanished parents, dangerous questions, and a very live past.

A disliked soap star dies in what looks like a road accident, then an anonymous letter suggests murder. Charlie Peace must sort through actors, grudges, and performance tricks before the drama on set turns deadly again.

On his mother's deathbed, Kit Philipson learns he was adopted and that his real name may be Peter Novello. His search into a childhood abduction in Sicily uncovers memories, hidden loyalties, and secrets people would kill to protect.

A late collection of Barnard's short fiction, ranging from murderous ministers and scheming cardinals to sinister portraits and old Mr Mozart himself. The stories are varied, compact, and darker than they first appear.

Felicity Peace is pleased to join the trust board of Walbrook Manor, until feuding families and old archives begin yielding dangerous secrets. When a wrecked car and human remains surface nearby, Charlie and Felicity find the past is still lethal.

A facsimile reprint of an early collection of moral miscellanies in prose and verse. Essays, reflections, and poems are arranged for improving reading, the sort of book meant to educate, edify, and fill a quiet evening.

A facsimile of an early poetic collection, gathering reflective and devotional verse under an elaborate nineteenth-century title. It offers a glimpse of older literary tastes, with nature, morality, and formal language at the center.