**The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves sees the return of Detective Jimmy Perez**
When a violent storm descends upon the Orkney Islands, the body of Archie Stout is left behind in its wake. An unusual murder weapon, a Neolithic stone bearing ancient inscriptions, is found discarded nearby. Archie was a popular, larger-than-life character, making his death a shocking blow to the community.
Detective Jimmy Perez, no stranger to the complexity of human nature and the darkness it can harbour, is soon on the scene. He counted Archie as a childhood friend, making this case more personal than most. Now living in Orkney with his partner Willow and their son, Perez is soon drawn into the lives of the islanders, many of whom carry secrets. Dark secrets that could have led to the man's murder.
Here, in these ancient lands where history runs deep, Perez must discern the truth from legend before a desperate and dangerous killer strikes again.
"Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter to look after the place while they're away. But he is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley. DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene with her detectives Holly and Joe. When they look round the attic of the big house, Vera finds the body of a second man. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped here ... The Moth Catcher will be episode three of ITV's Vera series 6, coming in 2016"--
Discovering the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, Inspector Vera Stanhope, hoping that she has uncovered a simple natural-causes death, subsequently finds strangle bruises that reveal that the victim was murdered.
In the fourth book of Ann Cleeves' critically acclaimed series set in the Shetland Islands, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez brings his fiancée home to Fair Isle, a birder's paradise, where strangers are viewed with suspicions and distrust. When a woman's body is discovered at the island's bird observatory, the investigation is hampered by a raging storm that renders the island totally isolated. Jimmy has to find clues the old-fashioned way, and he has to do it quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the chance to strike again.
In the aftermath of a young archaeologist's discovery of human remains that may be modern, Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate a case that is further complicated by the subsequent murder of an elderly woman.
Bella Sinclair throws a party to launch an exhibition of her work and to introduce the paintings of Fran Hunter. When a mysterious Englishman bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where hes come from, then is found hanging from a rafter in a boathouse the next day, Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that this is a local murder. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bellas musician nephew is murdered too. But the detectives relationship with Fran Hunter clouds his judgement. And this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.
Raven Black begins on New Year's Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.
