books in order

Kate Ellis Books In Order

Wesley Peterson Books In Publication Order

  1. The Merchant’s House (1998)
  2. The Armada Boy (1999)
  3. An Unhallowed Grave (1999)
  4. The Funeral Boat (2000)
  5. The Bone Garden (2001)
  6. A Painted Doom (2002)
  7. The Skeleton Room (2003)
  8. The Plague Maiden (2004)
  9. A Cursed Inheritance (2005)
  10. The Marriage Hearse (2006)
  11. The Shining Skull (2007)
  12. The Blood Pit (2008)
  13. A Perfect Death (2009)
  14. The Flesh Tailor (2010)
  15. The Jackal Man (2011)
  16. The Cadaver Game (2012)
  17. The Shadow Collector (2013)
  18. The Shroud Maker (2014)
  19. The Death Season (2015)
  20. The House of Eyes (2016)
  21. The Mermaid’s Scream (2017)
  22. The Mechanical Devil (2018)
  23. Dead Man’s Lane (2019)
  24. The Burial Circle (2020)
  25. The Stone Chamber (2021)

Joe Plantagenet Books In Publication Order

  1. Seeking The Dead (2008)
  2. Playing with Bones (2009)
  3. Kissing the Demons (2011)
  4. Watching the Ghosts (2012)
  5. Walking by Night (2015)

Inspector Albert Lincoln Books In Publication Order

  1. A High Mortality of Doves (2016)
  2. The Boy Who Lived with the Dead (2018)
  3. The House of the Hanged Woman (2020)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Devil’s Priest (2006)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. The Mole Catcher’s Daughter (2017)
  2. Top Deck (2017)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Dark & Merciless Things (2012)

Standalone Plays In Publication Order

  1. Dick of Devonshire (2020)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Starlings & Other Stories (2015)
  2. Many Deadly Returns (2021)

Wesley Peterson Book Covers

Joe Plantagenet Book Covers

Inspector Albert Lincoln Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Standalone Plays Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Kate Ellis Books Overview

The Merchant’s House

Kate Ellis’s wonderfully addictive series of West Country-set crime novels feature Wesley Peterson, one of Devon’s first black detectives A black policeman from the Met might expect to meet some resistance, when he’s transferred to a West Country seaside town&151;but, for DS Wesley Peterson, it’s like coming home. One of the first people he bumps into is an old friend&151;Neil is heading an archaeological dig at a Tudor merchant’s house, and Wesley has to tear himself away to become involved in a major search for a missing child. The tension is mounting when a body is found&151;but to Wesley’s relief it is turned up at Neil’s dig and is more than 400 years old. It seems to be a tragic murder nonetheless, for the bones are those of a strangled young woman and a newborn baby. When another, more recent body is found, the circumstances surrounding the child’s disappearance become more complex, and Wesley is increasingly convinced that the age-old motives of jealousy, sexual obsession, and desperate longing for a child are behind the crimes&151;ancient and modern&151;that he must solve soon if further tragedy is to be averted.

The Armada Boy

An American veteran of the D Day landings on a sentimental journey with his old unit to their base is the last body archaeologist Neil Watson expects to find in the ruins of an old chapel. Neil turns to his old friend from student days, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, for help. Ironically, both men are looking at an invading force Wesley the World War II American veterans, and Neil a group of shipwrecked Spaniards reputed to have met a sticky end at the hands of outraged locals as they limped from the wreckage of the great Armada in 1588. Local memories prove retentive and Wesley is soon caught up in 50 year old accusations, resentments, and romances. Wesley’s case grows more perplexing, while Neil uncovers a tragic story from the distant past. More than 400 years apart, two strangers in a strange land have died violently. Wesley is running out of time to find out why.

An Unhallowed Grave

When the body of a middle aged woman is found hanging from a yew tree in Stokeworthy Churchyard, the police suspect foul play. But the victim is an unlikely one. Pauline Brent was the local doctor’s receptionist, respected and well liked. She seems to have no real enemies and yet someone killed her. Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, a black detective recently transferred to the quiet, West Country English village, is determined to discover the truth and, once again, it is history that provides him with a clue. For Wesley’s archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, has excavated an ancient corpse at a nearby dig: a woman who had been buried at a crossroads, on unhallowed ground. It appears that the body is that of the same woman whom local legend has it was publicly executed in the churchyard centuries before.A chilling echo of the fifteenth century lynching, Pauline Brent’s death forces Wesley to consider the possibility that the killer also knows the tree’s dark history. Has Pauline been ‘executed’ rather than murdered and if so, for what crime?To catch a dangerous killer, Wesley has to discover as much as he can about the victim. But Pauline Brent appears to have been a woman with few friends, no relatives, and a past she has tried carefully to hide…

The Funeral Boat

When young Carl Palister unearths a skeleton on a Devon smallholding, DS Wesley Peterson and his boss Gerry Heffernan are called in to investigate. Heffernan is convinced that the remains are those of Carl’s father, a local villain who vanished from the Tradmouth area three years before. Wesley isn’t so sure he discovers evidence that suggests the skeleton is a good thousand years older than they first thought. A keen amateur archaeologist, Wesley is intrigued by the possibility that this is a Viking corpse, buried in keeping with ancient traditions. But he has a rather more urgent crime to solve the disappearance of a Danish tourist. At first it appears that Ingeborg Larsen may just have gone away for a few days without telling her landlady, but Wesley finds disturbing evidence that the attractive Dane has been abducted. Gerry Heffernan believes that Ms. Larsen’s disappearance is linked to a spate of brutal local robberies and that Ingeborg witnessed something she shouldn’t have. But is her disappearance linked to far older events? For it seems that this may not have been Ingeborg’s first visit to this far from quiet West Country backwater…

The Bone Garden

The ancient gardens of Earlsacre Hall are being excavated by a local team of historians in preparation for plans to recreate the gardens in their former glory. But the dig is called to a halt when two bodies are discovered under a stone plinth. More than 300 years old and buried on top of one another, there is every indication that one of the corpses had been buried alive. Despite the intriguing circumstances, DS Wesley Peterson has little time to indulge in his hobby for archaeology: a man has been found brutally stabbed to death in a trailer at a popular vacation site. There are no clues to the dead man’s identity except for a newspaper cutting about the restoration of Earlsacre. Soon after, the body of local solicitor Brian Willerby is found during a game of village cricket. The postmortem reveals that his death was caused by being struck by a hard ball several times with some force. Now Wesley must decipher the connection between Earlsacre and the murders before any more victims arise.

A Painted Doom

Teenager Lewis Hoxworthy discovers a disturbing painting in a medieval barn that excites archaeologist Neil Watson, who is excavating an ancient manor house nearby. When former rock star Jonny Shellmer is found shot in the head in Lewis’s father’s field and Lewis himself goes missing after contacting a man on the internet, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson suddenly faces one of his most intriguing cases yet. Is Jonny’s death linked to Lewis’s disappearance? And does Jonny’s best known song, ‘Angel,’ contain a clue? It soon becomes clear to Neil that the painting a portrayal of hell and judgment more than half a millennium old holds the key to the mystery. As events reach a terrifying climax, Wesley has to act swiftly in order to save a young life.

The Skeleton Room

When workmen converting former girls’ boarding school, Chadleigh Hall, into a luxury hotel find a skeleton in a sealed room, DI Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan are called in to investigate. Within minutes they have a second suspicious death on their hands a team of marine archaeologists working on a nearby shipwreck have dragged a woman’s body from the sea, and it becomes clear that her death was no accident. The dead woman’s husband may be linked with a brutal robbery of computer equipment, but Wesley soon discovers that the victim had secrets of her own. As he investigates Chadleigh Hall’s past and the woman’s violent death, matters are further complicated for Wesley when a man wanted for a murder appears on the scene, a man who may know more about Wesley’s cases than he admits.

The Plague Maiden

When a letter arrives at the police station addressed to a chief inspector Norbert, it causes quite a stir. Though Norbert has long since moved on, the letter claims to have evidence that the man convicted of murdering the Reverend Shipbourne during the course of a robbery in 1991 is innocent. Despite having a full case load-including investigating a series of vicious attacks on a local supermarket chain-detective Wesley Peterson is forced to follow up on the letter writer’s claims. Meanwhile archaeologist Neil Watson is excavating a site in Pest Field when he discovers a mass grave that leads him to conclude that the site-earmarked for development-houses an ancient medieval plague pit. More disturbing is the discovery that the grave is home to a more recent resident.

A Cursed Inheritance

The brutal massacre of the Harford family at Potwoolstan Hall in Devon in 1985 shocked the country and passed into local folklore. And when a journalist researching the case is murdered twenty years later, the horror is reawakened. Sixteenth century Potwoolstan Hall, now a New Age healing centre, is reputed to be cursed because of the crimes of its builder, and it seems that inheritance of evil lives on as DI Wesley Peterson is faced with his most disturbing case yet. As more people die violently, Wesley needs to discover why a young woman has transformed a dolls house into a miniature reconstruction of the massacre scene. And could the solution to his case lie across the Atlantic Ocean, in the ruined remains of an early English settlement in Virginia USA? When the truth is finally revealed, it turns out to be as horrifying as it is dangerous.

The Marriage Hearse

Wesley Peterson looks to classic literature for clues to a contemporary murder When Kirsten Harbourn is found strangled and naked on her wedding day, DI Wesley Peterson makes some alarming discoveries. Kirsten was being pursued by an obsessed stalker and she had dark secrets her doting fianc knew nothing about. But Kirsten’s wasn’t the only wedding planned to take place that day. At Morbay register office a terrified young girl made her wedding vows, and a few days later her bridegroom was found dead in a seedy seaside hotel. As Wesley investigates he suspects that the groom’s death and his bride’s subsequent disappearance might be linked to Kirsten’s murder. Meanwhile the skeleton of a young female is found buried in a farmer’s field, a field that once belonged to the family of Ralph Strong, the Elizabethan playwright whose The Fair Wife of Padua is to be performed for the first time in 400 years. Is this bloodthirsty play a confession to a murder committed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I? Or does it tell another story, one that might cast light on recent mysteries?

The Shining Skull

Little Marcus Fallbrook was kidnapped in 1976 and when he never returned home, his grieving family assumed the worst. Then, thirty years later, teenage singing star Leah Wakefield disappears and DI Wesley Peterson has reason to suspect that the same kidnapper is responsible. And another abductor is at work in the area a man who tricks blonde women into a bogus taxi and cuts off their hair. Has Leah fallen prey to the man the newspapers call ‘The Barber’ or has she suffered a more sinister fate? But then Marcus Fallbrook returns from the dead. And when DNA evidence confirms his identity, the investigation takes a new twist. Meanwhile, archaeologist, Neil Watson’s gruesome task of exhuming the dead from a local churchyard yields a mystery of its own when a coffin is found to contain one corpse too many a corpse that may be linked to a strange religious sect dating back to Regency times. Wesley has his hands full elsewhere slowly, Marcus Fallbrook begins to recover memories that Wesley hopes will lead him to cunning and dangerous murderer. But he is about to discover that the past can be a very dangerous place indeed.

The Blood Pit

Never has DI Wesley Peterson witnessed such a bizarre crime scene. The victim, Charles Marrick, has been murdered, his body drained of blood. Described by those who knew him as ‘evil’, it seems that Wesley isn’t going to have any shortage of suspects ? until a popular local vet is murdered in an identical fashion…
and a third body is discovered many miles away. And when Wesley’s archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, starts getting disturbing anonymous letters written in gory detail about macabre events at a medieval abbey ? which Neil fears are being sent by the killer Wesley is looking for ? Wesley wonders whether there could be a connection between all these deaths and Neil’s letters. And could Neil himself be in danger? As the sinister truth unfolds, both Wesley and Neil are forced to face tragedy and shocking revelations…
and a killer who bears the scars of past sins.

A Perfect Death

When a woman is burned to death in Grandal Field in Devon, it seems like a case of mistaken identity. Until DI Wesley Peterson learns of a legend involving a French woman who burned to death there in the thirteenth century. And when he discovers that records of a previous excavation on the site have vanished, and that two archaeologists involved in that dig died in tragic circumstances, Wesley starts to investigate the possibility of a link between the legend and recent events. But edging closer to the truth brings unexpected danger to Wesley. For the truth echoes a story of twisted love and obsession from many centuries ago a truth that someone wants to keep hidden, whatever the cost…

The Flesh Tailor

When Dr. James Dalcott is shot dead in his cottage it looks very much like an execution. And as DI Wesley Peterson begins piecing together the victim’s life, he finds that the well liked country doctor has been harboring strange and dramatic family secrets. Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has discovered six skeletons in nearby Tailors Court, skeletons that bear the marks of dissection and might be linked to tales of body snatching by a rogue physician in the 16th century. But when Neil finds the bones of a child buried with a 1930s coin and a toy car, the investigation takes a sinister turn. Who were the children evacuated to Tailors Court during World War II? And where are they now? When an elderly lady goes missing and a link is established between the wartime evacuees and Dr. Dalcott’s death, Wesley is faced with his most challenging case yet.

The Jackal Man

In the 15th tale in the series, Wesley faces a serial killer with an ancient Egyptian connection When Clare Mayers is almost killed on her way home by a man she describes as having a ‘dog’s head,’ it’s up to DI Wesley Peterson and his team to try and unravel this strange case. Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has been commissioned to examine the wealth of Egyptian artifacts amassed by the late Frederick Varley. But as Neil gets closer to uncovering the truth surrounding some sinister allegations of the past, he discovers the shocking secrets that someone is desperate to keep hidden from the prying eyes of the community. As The Jackal Man continues to torment the women of Tradmouth, is it a case of history repeating itself? And can Wesley Peterson stop him before it’s too late?

Seeking The Dead

When Carmel Hennessy begins a new job in North Yorkshire, she finds the historic city of Eborby gripped by fear. A killer is on the prowl ? a killer who binds and asphyxiates his victims before leaving their naked bodies in isolated country churchyards. The press are calling him the Resurrection Man. Tragic events from the past link Carmel with new kid on the block DI Joe Plantagenet, who, with his new boss, DCI Emily Thwaite, faces the unenviable task of identifying the killer before he claims another victim. The victims appear to have nothing in common but the manner of their deaths, but as Joe’s investigations lead him to a pub with a sinister history, he is forced to consider that the case may have occult connections. Then Carmel becomes aware of a malevolent presence in her new flat and, when she starts to receive mysterious threats, it is Joe she turns to first. And that is when Joe is forced to get into the mind of a cunning ? and scarily ruthless ? killer.

Playing with Bones

Singmass Close has a sinister past. Reputedly haunted by the ghosts of children, in the 1950s it was the hunting ground of the Doll Strangler, a ruthless killer who was never brought to justice. Now DI Joe Plantagenet wonders whether a copycat killer is at work when the strangled body of teenager Natalie Parkes is found with a mutilated doll lying by her side. With the recent disappearance of a young female model and an escaped convict at large, this new, horrific murder stretches Joe’s team to their limit. But as the bodies start mounting up and Joe s questioning brings him closer to the real strangler, he comes to suspect a shocking connection between all three cases.

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