"A female Vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham Vicarage. The gossipy cleaning woman who discovers her body, Maxine, happens to also be in the employ of retired Chief Inspector Wexford and his wife. When detective inspector Mike Burden calls him, Wexford, intrigued by the unusual circumstances of the murder, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators. A single-mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was a woman...

Sussex, 1912. In a churchyard, villagers gather on the night when the ghosts of those who will die in the coming year are thought to be seen. Here, where the estuary leads out to the sea, superstitions still hold sway. Standing alone is the taxidermist's daughter. At 17, Constantia Gifford lives with her father in a decaying house: it is all that is left of Gifford's once world-famous museum of taxidermy. The stuffed animals that used to grace every...