Celebrating 20 Years of Agatha Raisin—Brand-New Bonus Story Included!After six months in London, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village—and her dashing neighbor, James Lacey. Well, sort of. James might not be so interested in Agatha. But soon enough, Agatha becomes consumed by her other passion: crime-solving. A woman has been found dead in a lonely field nearby. Her name is Jessica Tartinck, a hiker who infuriated wealthy landowners by insisting on her hiking club’s right to trek across their properties.

Now it’s up to Agatha, with James’s help, to launch an investigation. Together, they will follow no shortage of leads; many of Jessica’s fellow Dembley walkers seem all too willing and able to commit murder. But the trail of a killer is as easy to lose as your heart—and your life. So Agatha and James had better watch their every step. . . < M. C. Beaton has been hailed as “the new Queen of Crime.” She is The New York Times bestselling author of the Agatha Raisin mysteries, including As the Pig Turns and Busy Body, set in the English Cotswolds, as well as the Hamish Macbeth mysteries set in Scotland. She has also written historical romance novels and an Edwardian mystery series under the name Marion Chesney. Before writing her first novels, Beaton worked as a bookseller, a newspaper reporter, a fashion critic, and a waitress in a greasy spoon. Born in Scotland, she currently divides her time between Paris and a village in the Cotswolds. She was selected the British Guest of Honor for the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in 2006.<

“Beaton captures perfectly the tenor of life in a quiet, quaint English village.”—Booklist

“Beaton has a winner in the irrepressible, romance-hungry Agatha.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Among writers of cozy village mystery series, count M.C. Beaton as one who creates a nice tea party.”—Associated Press

This trail leads to a dead end.

After six months in London, Agatha Raisin returns to her beloved Cotswold village—and her dashing neighbor, James Lacey. Well, sort of. James might not be so interested in Agatha. But soon enough, Agatha becomes consumed by her other passion: crime-solving. A woman has been found dead in a lonely field nearby. Her name is Jessica Tartinck, a hiker who infuriated wealthy landowners by insisting on her hiking club’s right to trek across their properties.

Now it’s up to Agatha, with James’s help, to launch an investigation. Together, they will follow no shortage of leads; many of Jessica’s fellow Dembley walkers seem all too willing and able to commit murder. But the trail of a killer is as easy to lose as your heart—and your life. So Agatha and James had better watch their every step. . .

“Beaton has a winner in the irrepressible, romance-hungry Agatha.”—Chicago Sun-Times

AGATHA Raisin watched the sunlight on the wall of her office in the City of London.

It was shining through the slats on the venetian blind, long arrows of light inching down the wall as the sun sank lower, the sundial of Agatha's working day.

Tomorrow it would all be over, her stint as a public-relations officer, and then she could return to her home in the village of Carsely in the Cotswolds. She had not enjoyed her return to work. Her short time away from it, her short time in retirement, had seemed to divorce her from the energy required to drum up publicity for clients from journalists and television companies.

Although she had enough of her old truculence and energy left to make a success of it, she missed the village and her friends. She had gone back initially for a few weekends when she could get away, but the wrench of returning to London had been so great that for the past two months she had stayed where she was, working at the weekends as well.

She had thought that her new-found talent for making friends would have worked for her in the City, but most of the staff were young compared to her fifty-something and preferred to congregate together at lunch-time and after work. Roy Silver, her young friend who had inveigled her into working for Pedmans for six months, also had been steering clear of her of late, always claiming he was "too busy" to meet her for a drink or even to talk to her.

She sighed and looked at the clock. She was taking a journalist from the Daily Bugle out for drinks and dinner to promote a new pop star, Jeff Loon, real name Trevor Biles, and she was not looking forward to it. It was hard to promote someone like Jeff Loon, a weedy, acne-pitted youth with Read Less