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Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back the Regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself... and is coming close to a breakdown.
Meanwhile, the scattered communities along the Welsh border have their own crisis. With recession biting deep, urban crime has spilled into the countryside and old barbaric evils are revived. When a wealthy landowner is hacked to death in his own farmyard, the senior investigating officer, DI Frannie Bliss is caught in the backlash, his private life in danger of exposure.
With the framework of her own world beginning to crack, Merrily Watkins is persuaded to venture into areas where neither a priest nor a woman is welcome... to unearth secrets linked with the border's pagan past. Secrets which she knows can never be disclosed....
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yle="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory, but as the river continues to rise with December rains, within days it will be an island. Electricity has been cut and the church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. Only one man feels safe: an aggressively atheist author who has been moved—for his own safety—into a secluded house just outside the village. Meanwhile, archaeologists—assisted by Merrily Watkins’s teenage daughter, Jane—are at work unearthing an ancient row of standing stones that some people would prefer stay buried. The atheist’s temporary home is close to the site, and his young wife is becoming conspicuously agitated. Is it the fear of discovery? With the flood water washing up Church Lane towards the vicarage and the shop running out of cigarettes, it looks to be a cold and complex Christmas for Merrily Watkins. ...
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The Rev. Merrily Watkins had never wanted a picture-perfect parish—or a huge and haunted vicarage. Nor had she wanted to walk straight into a local dispute over a controversial play about a strange 17th-century clergyman accused of witchcraft. But this is Ledwardine, steeped in cider and secrets. And, as Merrily and her daughter Jane discover, a it is village where horrific murder is an age...
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yle="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Called in secretly to investigate an allegedly haunted house with royal connections, Merrily Watkins, deliverance consultant for the Diocese of Hereford, is exposed to a real and tangible evil. A hidden valley on the border of England and Wales preserves a longtime feud between two old border families as well as an ancient Templar church with a secret that may be linked to a famous ghost story. On her own and under pressure with the nights drawing in, the hesitant Merrily has never been less sure of her ground. Meanwhile, Merrily’s closest friend, songwriter Lol Robinson, is drawn into the history of his biggest musical influence, the tragic Nick Drake, finding himself troubled by Drake’s eerie autumnal song "The Time of No Reply." ...
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When a man's body is discovered in the picturesque town of Hay-on-Wye, his death appears to be "unnatural" in every sense. Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mother, and exorcist, is drafted in to investigate, in this 12th installment
A man's body is found below a waterfall. It looks like suicide or an accidental drowning—until DI Frannie Bliss enters the dead man's home. What he finds there sends him to Merrily Watkins, the Diocese of Hereford's official advisor on the paranormal. It's been nearly 40 years since Hay was declared an independent state by its self-styled king—a development seen at the time as a joke, a publicity scam. But behind this pastiche a dark design was taking shape, creating a hidden history of murder and ritual-magic, the relics of which are only now becoming horribly visible. It's a situation that will take Merrily Watkins—alone for the first time in years—to the edge of madness...
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In 1934 the dying composer Sir Edward Elgar feebly whistled to a friend the theme from his Cello Concerto and said, "If you're walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don't be frightened. It's only me." Seventy years later, Merrily Watkins—parish priest and deliverance consultant to the Diocese of Hereford—is called in to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension in a spate of road accidents in the Malvern village of Wychehill. There, Merrily discovers new tensions in Elgar's countryside. The proposed takeover of a local pub by a nightclub owner with a criminal reputation has become the battleground between the defenders of Olde Englande and the hard men of the drug world—with extreme and sinister elements on both sides. And as the choral society prepares to stage an open-air performance of Elgar's Caractacus at a prehistoric hill fort, the deaths beginc. ...
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A medieval legend spawns an unhealthy cult, and a terrifying 13th case for Merrily Watkins
When autumn storms blast Hereford, centuries-old human bones are found among the roots of a tree blown down on the city's Castle Green. But why have they been stolen? At the nearby Cathedral, another storm is building around a new, modernizing bishop who believes that if the Church is to survive it must phase out irrelevant archaic practices. Not good news for Merrily Watkins, consultant on the paranormal or, as it used to be known, diocesan exorcist. Especially as she's now presented with the job at its most medieval. In the moody countryside on the edge of Wales, a rambling 12th-century house is thought to be haunted. Although its new owners don't believe in ghosts, they do believe in spiritual darkness and the need for exorcism. But their approach to Merrily is oblique and guarded. No-one can be told—least of all, the new bishop. Merrily's discovery of the house's links with the medieval legend of a man who resisted mortality threatens to expose the hidden history of a more modern cult and its trail of insidious abuse—a trail that may not be closed....
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THE FOURTEENTH INSTALMENT IN THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES
When Aidan Lloyd's bleak funeral is followed by a nocturnal ritual in the fog, it becomes all too clear that Aidan, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace.
Aidan's hidden history has reignited an old feud, and a rural tradition begins to display its sinister side.
It's already a fraught time for Merrily Watkins, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Suddenly there are events she can't talk about as she and her daughter Jane find themselves potentially on the wrong side of the law.
In the city of Hereford, DI Frannie Bliss, investigating a shooting, must confront the apparent growth of organised crime, also contaminating the countryside.
On the Welsh border, the old ways are at war with the modern world. As the days shorten and the fog gives way to ice and snow, a savage killing draws Merrily Watkins into a conflict centred on one of Britain's most famous medieval churches, its walls laden with ancient symbolism.
Midwinter of the Spirit, televised last year to worldwide critical acclaim, was the first novel to reflect the reality of exorcism in modern Britain. All of a Winter's Night is the 15th episode in this electrifying series....
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THE FIFTEENTH INSTALMENT IN THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES
The River Wye, according to local folklore, takes a life every year. But in the lower Wye Valley something truly evil is stirring and the locals can sense it.
TV star Arlo Ripley seeks solace in a church at the water's edge. But a famous face always attracts attention and if he thinks he can hide his failings, he couldn't be more wrong. Up river, an ambitious writer thinks she's uncovering Wordsworth's stranger secrets while an urban career-criminal, newly out of prison, assures a sceptical DI Frannie Bliss that he's left his old life behind to find an unlikely pastoral peace.
Enter diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins. As she wades into the murky depths, Merrily discovers that the darkest and most disturbing evil doesn't always involve murder....
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