The new vicar had never wanted a picture-postcard parish - or a huge and haunted vicarage. Nor had she wanted to walk into a dispute over a controversial play about a 17th-century clergyman accused of witchcraft ... a story that certain long-established families would rather remained obscure. But this is Ledwardine, steeped in cider and secrets ... a paradise of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses. And also - as Merrily Watkins and her teenage...

A crumbling hotel on the border of England and Wales has long been linked with the possible origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and his obsession with contacting the dead. Fascinating for young Jane Watkins, flushed with the freedom of her first weekend job. But the sinister side soon becomes apparent to her mother, Merrily, Diocesan Exorcist for Hereford. Then come memories of a child who killed. And blood in the fresh...

When a redundant church is bought by a young pagan couple, the local fundamentalist minister reacts with fury. In an isolated community on the Welsh border, a modern witch hunt begins. Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins is expected to keep the lid on the cauldron ... but what she finds out will seriously test her beliefs. Also, there's the problem of the country solicitor who won't be parted from his dead wife. The mystery of five ancient churches...

In the affluent, historic town of Ludlow, a teenage boy dies in a fall from the castle ruins. Accident or suicide? No great mystery - so why does the boy's uncle, retired detective Andy Mumford, turn to Diocesan Exorcist Merrily Watkins? More people will die before Merrily - her own future uncertain - uncovers a dangerous obsession with suicide, death and the afterlife hidden within these shadowed medieval streets.

Garway church was built by medieval Knights Templar. After seven centuries, the Welsh border village is still shadowed in their mysteries. Why do the local pubs have astrological names? What happened in Garway to intimidate the Edwardian ghost-story writer M.R. James? And why is it impossible to find a builder prepared to restore the ancient Master House, a few fields away from Garway church? Deliverance Consultant Merrily Watkins is ordered to investigate...