Ellis Peters

Outside the pale of the Abbey of Saint Peters and Saint Paul, in September of the year of our Lord 1140, a priestly emissary for King Stephen has been reported missing...

On a spring evening in 1140 Shrewsbury, the midnight matins at the Benedictine abbey suddenly reverberate with an unholy sound—a hunt in full cry....

After years of studying with the Bishop, young Father Ailnoth has come to take over the parish of Holy Cross. But soon Ailnoth's true nature surfaces - harsh, cold-hearted, and merciless - and someone lures him from his home and murders him. Who in Shrewsbury would kill a priest on Christmas Day?...

The year is 1142, and all England is in the iron grip of civil war.....

When a fatal draught of Monk's Hood turns up in the dinner plate of a guest at the Shrewsbury abbey, fingers point at half a dozen likely suspects, including an abashed and bewildered Cadfael.....

Civil war continues to blaze in the autumn of 1139. Amid the uncertainty and peril of the moment two noble children make their escape, headed for Shrewsbury. But for reasons no one knows, the young fugitives never reach their destination...

This is the eleventh chronicle of Brother Cadfael, of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury....

Cadfael's return to his Welsh homeland for a visit proves a rather discomfiting homecoming when an honorable nobleman turns up in a patch of forest with an arrow embedded in his chest....

Meriet Aspley, a young novitiate, causes havoc at the Shrewsbury monastery when his violent nightmares cause him to scream his anguish in the dead of night, earning him the nickname, Devil's Novice...

Civil war over England's throne leaves a legacy of violence, and the murder of a knight....

The day after a Gothic door is returned to its original place in the Mottisham village church, two men are found dead....

Heresy, murder, and the contents of a mysterious treasure chest challenge Brother Cadfael—12th-century herbalist, sleuth, and sometime cupid—in his 16th chronicle....

The winter of 1139 will disrupt Brother Cadfael's tranquil life in Shrewsbury with the most disturbing events. Raging civil war has sent...

Gervase Bonel, with his wife and servants, is a guest of Shrewsbury Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul when he is suddenly taken ill. Luckily, the Abbey boasts the services of clever and kindly Brother Cadfael, a skilled herbalist. Cadfael hurries to the man's bedside, only to be confronted by...

As England's civil war draws to a close, two travelers arrive at Cadfael's herbarium door: the dark-eyed Ciaran who has vowed to walk unshod as a kind of penance....

Shortly after he inherits the powerful position of Lord of Eaton, 10-year-old Richard Ludel disappears from Shrewsbury Abbey, where he had been a student. Did he run away or was he kidnapped? Brother Cadfael suspects the hermit of Eyton Forest, a mysterious man rumored to have holy powers, knows...

Brother Cadfael accompanies a crippled young monk on his journey of penance - a path that leads them into a web of old jealousy, deceit - and death....

A late spring in 1142 has the Abbey monks dismayed, for there may be no roses by June 22nd....

While Brother Cadfael has bent Abbey rules, he has never broken his monastic vows—until now. Word has come to Shrewsbury of a treacherous act that has left 30 of Empress Maud's knights imprisoned during England's dynastic war between two grandchildren of William the Conqueror.

In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden to the bloody battlefield. Not far from the safety of the Abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its 94 defenders loyal to the empress to hang as traitors. With a...