Beneath a sky the colour of sapphires and the sinister moonlight, a gentleman in evening dress is discovered slumped in the stocks on the village green - he is dead. Superintendent Hannasyde's consummate powers of detection and solicitor Giles Carrington's amateur sleuthing are tested to their limits as they grapple with the Vereker family - a group of outrageously eccentric and corrupt suspects.

When elderly Ailsa Lockyer-Fox is found dead in her garden, dressed only in nightclothes, the finger of suspicion points at her wealthy, land-owning husband, Colonel James Lockyer-Fox. A Coroner's inquest gives a verdict of 'natural causes' but the gossip surrounding James refuses to go away. Why? Because he's guilty? Or because resentful women rule the roost in the isolated Dorset village where he lives? Shenstead has become a ghost town and, with only five houses in permanent occupation, it's a place of too few people and too many secrets...

The Golden Dragon, ancient banner of the Saxons, was never carried through a more turbulent era than the years preceding the Norman Conquest. While the greedy tore at England's bleeding heart, eight kings assumed the heavy crown, and many died contesting it. This was a dark time of battle, royal family quarrels and marriages of convenience, or treachery and brutal murder. Through the years of turmoil lived Princess Aelfgifu: though sent into exile she was never far from the intrigues of her homeland. Behind the scenes she played a dangerous game and tasted a forbidden love....