Ellis Peters

In October of 1142, a local landlord gives the Potter's Field to the local clergy. The monks begin to plow it, and the blades turn up the long tresses of a young woman, dead over a year. Then the arrival of a novice who fled from an abbey ravaged by civil war in East Anglia complicates life even further for Brother Cadfael.

In the autumn of 1140 the Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury finds its new novice, Meriet Aspley, a disturbing presence. Meek and biddable by day, his sleep is rent by nightmares so violent as to earn him the nickname of "Devil's novice." Can Meriet be involved in the nearby disappearance of a superior prelate? As events take a sinister turn, it falls to Brother Cadfael to detect the truth behind the young man's predicament.

Christmas, AD 1141. Abbot Radulfus returns from London with a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross, known as the Foregate. The new priest is a man of presence, scholarship, and discipline, but little humility. When he is found drowned, suspicion is cast on many including a young man who was sent to work in Brother Cadfael's garden. With little priestly calling, he soon attracts the friendship of a beautiful girl. Brother Cadafel must sort through...

"Winter arrived early in 1142, bringing with it a heavy snowfall. The safety of the guest-hall roof at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul comes into jeopardy, and the brothers are called upoin to effect repairs. But the icy and treacherous conditions are to prove near fatal for Brother Haluin. He slips from the roof and crashes to the ground, sustaining terrible injuries-- grave enough for him to want to make his deathbed confession....

In November, 1139 A.D., Brother Cadfeal becomes involved in the search for two missing orphans and their escort.

The year is 1142. England is in the iron grip of civil war. And within the sheltered cloisters of the Benedictine Abbey, there begins a chain of events no less momentous than the upheavals of the outside world. First, there is the sad demise of the Lord of Eaton, whose ten-year-old son and heir, the young Richard, is a pupil at the Abbey. The boy refuses to surrender his new powers to his formidable grandmother, Dionysia. Then there is the arrival...

Amid a flood of pilgrims seeking solace in a saintly celebration, Brother Cadfael seeks the killer of a dear friend. In the year of our Lord 1141, civil war over England's throne leaves a legacy of violence--and the murder of a knight dear to Brother Cadfael. And with gentle bud-strewn May, a flood of pilgrims comes to the celebration of Saint Winifred at the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, carrying with it many strange souls--and perhaps the...

Cripples Day at Shrewsbury brings a hoard of disabled pilgrims to the Abbey, within a short while, a body is found in a leather sack amongst the visitors. Cadfael boils down the man's body to inspect the bones and uncovers two possible explanations for his death.

When a newly plowed field recently given to the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul yields the body of a young woman, Brother Cadfael is quickly thrown into a delicate situation. The field was once owned by a local potter named Ruald, who had abandoned his beautiful wife, Generys, to take monastic vows. Generys was said to have gone away with a lover, but now it seems as if she had been murdered. With the arrival at the abbey of young...