Damien Timmer

Britain is in the grip of a chilling recession... falling wages, rising prices, civil unrest - only the bankers are smiling. It's 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it in the wild but beautiful Cornish landscape.

Ten strangers, drawn away from their normal lives to an isolated rock off the Devon coast. But as the mismatched group waits for the arrival of the hosts -- the improbably named Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen -- the weather sours and they find themselves cut off from civilization. Very soon, the guests, each struggling with their conscience, will start to die -- one by one, according to the rules of the nursery rhyme 'Ten Little Soldier Boys' -- a rhyme that hangs in every room of the house and ends with the most terrifying words of all: '... and then there were none.

Emma Banville, a human rights lawyer known for defending lost causes, sets out to prove the innocence of Kevin Russell, who was convicted for the murder of a school girl 14 years earlier.

Two detectives, DCI McDonald and DS Dodds, who seemingly have nothing in common, are thrown together and forge a rumbustious friendship and entertaining partnership.

Inspector Robert Lewis and Sergeant James Hathaway solve the tough cases that the learned inhabitants of Oxford throw at them.