Honeychurch Hall

Kat Stanford is just days away from starting her dream antique business with her newly widowed mother Iris when she gets a huge shock. Iris has recklessly purchased a dilapidated carriage house at Honeychurch Hall, an isolated country estate complete with eccentric lords and ladies and butlers and cooks. When a secret from the past comes back to haunt Iris, Kat realizes she hardly knows her mother at all. And when the bodies start piling up, it is up to Kat to unravel the tangled truth behind the murders at Honeychurch Hall.

When a body is discovered in the grounds on Honeychurch Hall, suspicion falls on the folks in the village. And as the body count begins to build, our heroine, Kat Stanford, becomes inextricably embroiled in the ensuing scandal. Are the deaths the result of a local vendetta, or could they be connected to her mother’s unusual (to say the least) past?

When antique dealer Kat Stanford stumbles upon the partially mummified body of a young woman in an abandoned wing at Honeychurch Hall, suspicion falls on those who had been living there many years ago. And it appears that the deceased had been murdered. Given her mother Iris’s checkered past, Kat is not surprised to learn that Iris knew the victim. As Kat becomes embroiled once more in her mother’s mysterious and tumultuous bygone days, she comes to realize that life is never black and white.

When the only copy of Ravished, Iris Stanford’s new manuscript, never arrives at her London publisher’s office, her daughter Kat investigates the tiny local village post office, where it appears the package never left the building. Iris is on tenterhooks - not only is her novel gone with the wind, but she’s deathly afraid that Muriel Jarvis, the postmistress and notorious busybody, will expose her secret identity as the best-selling romance writer Krystalle Storm.

It's 10 days before Christmas at Honeychurch Hall, and Kat Stanford has persuaded the Earl of Grenville to open the museum room to the villagers in an effort to raise money for rooftop repairs. For the price of a ticket, visitors will be able to view an unusual display of antiques - including the legendary Bleeding Hawk of Honeychurch Hall.

Spring is in the air...and so, too, is the sound of music as the residents of Honeychurch Hall are stunned to learn that the Dowager Countess Lady Edith Honeychurch has agreed to the staging of a production of The Merry Widow in the dilapidated grand ballroom. Fears that the fiercely private octogenarian must be going senile are soon dismissed when our heroine Kat Stanford learns that the favor is a result of a desperate request from Countess Olga Golodkin.

M. C. Beaton: When a body found on the Honeychurch Hall estate proves to be that of a villager who had supposedly moved to Ireland years earlier, tongues start wagging and theories abound. Charlie Green had always been a rogue. Although Charlie's demise happened well before Kat's arrival, Kat is drawn into the mystery when she finds two rare miniature portraits hidden inside a custom-made dollhouse of Honeychurch Hall.

Following the butler's death and the cook's retirement, the ever-gullible Lady Lavinia replaces them with a power couple who are determined to thrust the crumbling estate into the 21st century. The Dowager Countess reluctantly agrees to hold a big-ticket Christmas gala and silent auction with a mystery celebrity flying in from Monaco as the guest of honour.

At last St Mary's church is going to have its own vicar! Not only that, the gorgeous Reverend Pritchard is sixty, single... and in need of a wife. But when he spearheads a campaign to restore a derelict chapel — rumoured to be haunted by a German Luftwaffe pilot- in a far-flung corner of the Honeychurch estate, the Dowager Countess puts her foot down. But nobody quite understands why... Meanwhile, a fierce bidding war at an auction of military memorabilia ends in Kat's female adversary being murdered and Kat being held as the prime suspect.

When Eric Pugsley, who runs the unsightly scrapyard on the Honeychurch Hall estate, brings home his Turkish fiancée, everyone is delighted -- even if the marriage does seem to include her feisty mother who is never without a Terkel cigarette dangling from her lips. A Safari Supper at the Hall is held in their honour but trouble begins when somewhere between the first course and dessert, one of the villagers goes missing and is later found drowned in the estate's ornamental lake.