When autumn storms blast Hereford, centuries-old human bones are found amongst the roots of a tree blown down on the city's Castle Green. But why have they been stolen? At the nearby Cathedral, another storm is building around a new, modernising bishop who believes that if the Church is to survive it must phase out irrelevant archaic practices. Not good news for Merrily Watkins, consultant on the paranormal or, as it used to be known, diocesan exorcist....

It begins in the fog, with a bleak village funeral. In the early hours of the following morning, Merrily Watkins and her daughter Jane are made aware that Aidan Lloyd, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace. A rural tradition is displaying its sinister side as an old feud re-ignites. It's already a fraught time for Merrily, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as deliverance consultant, or diocesan exorcist,...

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...

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...

Diocesan Exorcist - a job viewed by the Church of England with such extreme suspicion that they changed the name. It's Deliverance Consultant now. Still, it seems no job for a woman. But when the Bishop offers it to Merrily Watkins - parish priest and single mum - she's in no position to refuse. It starts badly for Merrily and gets no easier. As an early winter slices through the old city of Hereford, a body is found in the River Wye, an ancient church...

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mum and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents in the sleepy village of Wychehill. Merrily is called in when two people are killed in a head-on crash that is also linked to the revamped local pub which, it seems, has injected the valley with a shattering, strobing surge of inner-city nightlife ......

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...

December, and the river is rising. The village of Ledwardine has never been flooded in living memory. Within days it will be an island. There's no electricity. The church is serving as a temporary mortuary for two people who drowned. Only one man feels safer. An aggressively-atheist author has been moved, for his own safety, Rushdie-style, into a secluded house just outside the village. Fundamentalist Christians have hated him for years. Now he's...