From Ann Cleeves, winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger Award, comes Telling Tales, an early book in the Vera Stanhope series, which has been brought to life by Brenda Blethyn in the hit TV series Vera.

It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie’s innocence. Abigail’s killer is still at large.

For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend--and of that fearful winter’s day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch.

As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount. But are people afraid of the killer or of their own guilty pasts?
With each person’s story revisited, the Inspector begins to suspect that some deadly secrets are threatening to unfurl…

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About the Author

Ann Cleeves was working as a cook in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle when she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. She began writing her first series of crime novels here featuring the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and works as associate trainer with the reader development organization, Opening the Book. She is reader-in-residence for Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, and her reading passion is crime in translation. Her short film for Border TV, Catching Birds, won a Royal Television Society Award. Ann has twice before been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story "The Plater," and again for the Dagger in the Library award. In 2016, she won the CWA Diamond Dagger Award, the highest honor in British crime writing.

Connect: Website