P. D. James
All Books By P. D. James
A Certain Justice
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 18 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
It begins, dramatically enough, with a trial for murder. The distinguished criminal lawyer Venetia Aldridge is defending Garry Ashe on charges of having brutally killed his aunt. For Aldridge the trial is mainly a test of her courtroom skills, one more opportunity to succeed–and she does. But now murder is in the air. The next victim will be Aldridge herself, stabbed to death at her desk in her Chambers in the Middle Temple, a bloodstained wig on her head. Enter Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team, whose struggle to investigate and understand the shocking events cannot halt the spiral into more horrors, more murders…
A Certain Justice is P.D. James at her strongest. In her first foray into the strange closed world of the Law Courts and the London legal community, she has created a fascinating tale of interwoven passion and terror. As each character leaps into unforgettable life, as each scene draws us forward into new complexities of plot, she proves yet again that no other writer can match her skill in combining the excitement of the classic detective story with the richness of a fine novel. In its subtle portrayal of morality and human behavior, A Certain Justice will stand alongside Devices and Desires and A Taste for Death as one of P.D. James’s most important, accomplished and entertaining works.
... Read moreA Mind to Murder
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 9 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
-
3.8(13259 ratings)
Award-winning author P.D. James’ second mystery in her bestselling series featuring Scotland Yard investigator Adam Dalgliesh is now available on CD!
When the administrative head of the Steen Psychiatric Clinic is found dead with a chisel in her heart, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. Dalgliesh must analyze the deep-seated anxieties and thwarted desires of patients and staff alike to determine which of their unresolved conflicts resulted in murder. Widely acknowledged as “the greatest contemporary writer of classic crime” (The London Sunday Times), P. D. James received the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award for long-term achievement in 1999.
“…a superbly satisfying mystery.”–Chicago Daily News
A Taste for Death
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 22 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
When the quiet Little Vestry of St. Matthew’s Church becomes the blood-soaked scene of a double murder, Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgliesh faces an intriguing conundrum: How did an upper-crust Minister come to lie, slit throat to slit throat, next to a neighborhood derelict of the lowest order? Challenged with the investigation of a crime that appears to have endless motives, Dalgliesh explores the sinister web spun around a half-burnt diary and a violet-eyed widow who is pregnant and full of malice–all the while hoping to fill the gap of logic that joined these two disparate men in bright red death. . . .
... Read moreAn Unsuitable Job for a Woman
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
P. D. James is “the reigning mistress of murder.” –Time
Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman introduces P. D. James’s courageous but vulnerable young detective, Cordelia Gray, in a “top-rated puzzle of peril that holds you all the way” (The New York Times).
Cover Her Face
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 9 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
-
3.92(37730 ratings)
P. D. James is “the greatest living mystery writer.” –People
Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill.
Cover Her Face is P. D. James’s electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.
... Read moreDeath Comes to Pemberley
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 9 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
A rare meeting of literary genius: P. D. James, long among the most admired mystery writers of our time, draws the characters of Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice into a tale of murder and emotional mayhem.
It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.
Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.
Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P. D. James masterfully re-creates the world of Pride and Prejudice, electrifying it with the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted crime story, as only she can write it.
Death in Holy Orders
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Charles Keating
- Length: 15 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2001
- Language: English
-
3.91(16319 ratings)
The setting itself is elemental P. D. James: the bleak coast of East Anglia, where atop a sweep of low cliffs stands the small theological college of St. Anselm’s. On the shore not far away, smothered beneath a fall of sand, lies the body of one of the school’s young ordinands. He is the son of Sir Alred Treves, a hugely successful and flamboyant businessman who is accustomed to getting what he wants—and in this case what he wants is Commander Adam Dalgliesh to investigate his son’s death. Although there seems to be little to investigate, Dalgliesh agrees, largely out of nostal-gia for several happy summers he spent at St. Anselm’s as a boy. No sooner does he arrive, however, than the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious and horrifying murder, and Dalgliesh finds himself ineluctably drawn into the labyrinth of an intricate and violent mystery.
Here P. D. James once more demonstrates her unrivalled skill in building a classic detective story into a fully realized novel, gripping as much for its psychological and emotional richness as for the originality and complexity of its plotting—and, of course, for the horror and suspense at its heart. Filled with unforgettable characters, brilliant in its evocation of the East Anglian scene and the religious background against which the action takes place, Death in Holy Orders again offers proof, if proof were needed, that P. D. James is not only the reigning master of the crime novel but also, simply, one of the finest novelists writing today.
... Read moreDeath of an Expert Witness
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 13 hours 0 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
The sixth mystery in the acclaimed and bestselling Adam Dalgliesh series, which led Newsweek to crown P. D. James “the new queen of crime.”
An evil-tempered forensic scientist is put to death, putting many of his colleagues out of misery. Dr. Lorrimer appeared to be the picture of a bloodless, coldly efficient scientist. Only when his brutally slain body is discovered and his secret past dissected does the image begin to change. Once again, Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh learns that there is more to human beings than meets the eye–and more to solving a murder than the obvious clues.
“A craftsman with a poet’s vision…[P.D. James] not only detects evil but attempts to uncover the more elusive–and enduring–enigmas of the human psyche that lead to it.”–Time
... Read moreDevices and Desires
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 18 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
National Bestseller.
Featuring the famous Commander Adam Dalgliesh, Devices and Desires is a thrilling and insightfully crafted novel of fallible people caught in a net of secrets, ambitions, and schemes on a lonely stretch of Norfolk coastline.
Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coast in a converted windmill left to him by his aunt. But he cannot so easily escape murder. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk, and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when Dalgliesh discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer on the beach, he finds himself caught up in the passions and dangerous secrets of the headland community and in one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.
... Read moreInnocent Blood
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 11 hours 54 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
P.D. James is “the greatest living mystery writer.”–People
Adopted as a child into a privileged family, Philippa Palfrey fantasizes that she is the daughter of an aristocrat and a parlor maid. The terrifying truth about her parents and a long-ago murder is only the first in a series of shocking betrayals. Philippa quickly learns that those who delve into the secrets of the past must be on guard when long-buried horrors begin to stir.
“As a crime novel,” wrote the London Times, Innocent Blood is “the peak of the art.” “Flawlessly crafted . . . profoundly, masterfully moving,” Cosmopolitan concurred.
Original Sin
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 20 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
Adam Dalgliesh takes on a baffling murder in the rarefied world of London book publishing in this masterful mystery from one of our finest novelists. • Part of the bestselling mystery series that inspired Dalgliesh on Acorn TV
Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of impenetrable complexity. A murder has taken place in the offices of the Peverell Press, a venerable London publishing house located in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames. The victim is Gerard Etienne, the brilliant but ruthless new managing director, who had vowed to restore the firm’s fortunes. Etienne was clearly a man with enemies—a discarded mistress, a rejected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues, one of who apparently killed herself a short time earlier. Yet Etienne’s death, which occurred under bizarre circumstances, is for Dalgliesh only the beginning of the mystery, as he desperately pursues the search for a killer prepared to strike and strike again.
... Read moreShroud for a Nightingale
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 12 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
-
4.03(25673 ratings)
P.D. James is “the greatest living mystery writer.”–People
The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed. Another student dies equally mysteriously, and it is up to Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard to unmask a killer who has decided to prescribe murder as the cure for all ills.
The New York Times called Shroud for a Nightingale “mystery at its best.”
... Read moreSleep No More
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 3 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
No one gets inside the head of the murderer—or makes it a more thrilling read—than the late, great P. D. James. Fast on the heels of her latest best seller: a new, fiendishly entertaining gathering of previously uncollected stories, from the author of Death Comes to Pemberley and The Private Patient.
It’s not always a question of “whodunit?” Sometimes there’s more mystery in the why or how. And although we usually know the unhealthy fates of both victim and perpetrator, what of those clever few who plan and carry out the perfect crime? The ones who aren’t brought down even though they’re found out? And what about those who do the finding out who witness a murder or who identify the murderer but keep the information to themselves? These are some of the mysteries that we follow through those six stories as we are drawn into the thinking, the memories, the emotional machinations, the rationalizations, the dreams and desires behind murderous cause and effect.
This selection © 2017 by the Estate of P.D. James.
“The Yo-Yo” written 1996; revised as “Hearing Ghote” in The Verdict of Us All, ed. Peter Lovesey copyright P. D. James 2006.
“The Victim” first published in Winter’s Crimes 5, ed. Virginia Whitaker copyright P. D. James 1973.
“The Murder of Santa Claus” first published in Great Detectives, ed. D. W. McCullough copyright P. D. James 1984.
“The Girl Who Loved Graveyards” first published in Winter’s Crimes 15, ed. George Hardinge copyright P. D. James 1983.
“A Very Desirable Residence” first published in Winter’s Crimes 8, ed. Hilary Watson copyright P. D. James 1976.
“Mr Millcroft’s Birthday” first published as “The Man Who Was 80” in The Man Who copyright P. D. James 1992; revised as “Mr Maybrick’s Birthday” copyright 2005.
Foreword copyright 2017 by Peter Kemp.
Talking about Detective Fiction
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Diana Bishop
- Length: 4 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
-
3.76(1677 ratings)
To judge by the worldwide success of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Poirot, it is not only the Anglo-Saxons who have an appetite for mystery and mayhem. Talking about the craft of detective writing and sharing her personal thoughts and observations on one of the most popular and enduring forms of literature, P. D. James examines the challenges, achievements, and potential of a genre which has fascinated her for nearly fifty years as a novelist. P. D. James explores the metamorphosis of a genre which has gripped and entertained the popular imagination like no other type of novel. Written by the author widely regarded as the queen of the detective novel, this book is sure to appeal to all aficionados of crime fiction.
... Read moreThe Black Tower
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 13 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
The fifth mystery in the acclaimed and bestselling Adam Dalgliesh series by “the reigning mistress of murder”(Time), P.D. James, is now available on CD.
Just recovered from a grave illness, Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called to the bedside of an elderly priest. When Dalgliesh arrives, Father Baddeley is dead. Is it merely his own brush with mortality that causes Dalgliesh to sense the shadow of death about to fall once more?
“Splendid, macabre”–London Sunday Telegraph
“THE BLACK TOWER is a masterpiece.”–London Sunday Times
The Children of Men
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: David Case
- Length: 9 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
The year is 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction.
Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiat, the Warden of England, the old are despairing and the young cruel. Theo Faren, a cousin of the Warden, lives a solitary life in this ominous atmosphere. That is, until a chance encounter with a young woman leads him into contact with a group of dissenters. Suddenly his life is changed irrevocably as he faces agonising choices which could affect the future of mankind.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
... Read moreThe Lighthouse
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Charles Keating
- Length: 12 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.
Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team. Dalgliesh is uncertain about his future with Emma Lavenham, the woman he loves; Detective Inspector Kate Miskin has her own emotional problems; and the ambitious Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is worried about working under Kate. Hardly has the team begun to unravel the complicated motives of the suspects than there is a second brutal killing, and the whole investigation is jeopardized when Dalgliesh is faced with a danger more insidious and as potentially fatal as murder.
... Read moreThe Mistletoe Murder
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 2 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
Four previously uncollected stories from one of the great mystery writers of our time–swift, cunning murder mysteries (two of which feature the young Adam Dalgliesh) that together, to borrow the author’s own word, add up to a delightful “entertainment.”
The newly appointed Sgt. Dalgliesh is drawn into a case that is “pure Agatha Christie.” . . . A “pedantic, respectable, censorious” clerk’s secret taste for pornography is only the first reason he finds for not coming forward as a witness to a murder . . . A best-selling crime novelist describes the crime she herself was involved in fifty years earlier . . . Dalgliesh’s godfather implores him to reinvestigate a notorious murder that might ease the godfather’s mind about an inheritance, but which will reveal a truth that even the supremely upstanding Adam Dalgliesh will keep to himself. Each of these stories is as playful as it is ingeniously plotted, the author’s sly humor as evident as her hallmark narrative elegance and shrewd understanding of some of the most complex–not to say the most damning–aspects of human nature. A treat for P. D. James’s legions of fans and anyone who enjoys the pleasures of a masterfully wrought whodunit.
... Read moreThe Murder Room
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Charles Keating
- Length: 14 hours 35 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2003
- Language: English
The Dupayne, a small private museum in London devoted to the interwar years 1919 – 1939, is in turmoil. As its trustees argue over whether it should be closed, one of them is brutally and mysteriously murdered. Yet even as Commander Dalgliesh and his team proceed with their investigation, a second corpse is discovered. Someone in the Dupayne is prepared to kill and kill again. Still more sinister, the murders appear to echo the notorious crimes of the past featured in one of the museum’s galleries: the Murder Room.
The case is fraught with danger and complications from the outset, but for Dalgliesh the complications are unexpectedly profound. His new relationship with Emma Lavenham — introduced in the last Dalgliesh novel, Death in Holy Orders — is at a critical stage. Now, as he moves closer and closer to a solution to the puzzle, he finds himself driven further and further from commitment to the woman he loves.
... Read moreThe Private Patient
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 14 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating.
Two days later she was dead, the victim of murder.
To Commander Adam Dalgliesh, who with his team is called in to investigate the case, the mystery at first seems absolute. Few things about it make sense. Yet as the detectives begin probing the lives and backgrounds of those connected with the dead woman—the surgeon, members of the manor staff, close acquaintances—suspects multiply all too rapidly. New confusions arise, including strange historical overtones of madness and a lynching 350 years in the past. Then there is a second murder, and Dalgliesh finds himself confronted by issues even more challenging than innocence or guilt.
P. D. James has gained an enviable reputation for creating detective stories of uncommon depth and intricacy, combined with the sort of humanity and perceptiveness found only in the finest novelists. The Private Patient ranks among her very best.
... Read moreThe Skull Beneath the Skin
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 15 hours 51 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
P.D. James is “the greatest living mystery writer.”–People
Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death.
“Richly intricate and literate,” James’s second Cordelia Gray mystery “shows James at the height of her storytelling powers” —San Francisco Chronicle
... Read moreUnnatural Causes
- By: P. D. James
- Narrator: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 9 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
Award-winning author P.D. James third mystery in her bestselling series featuring Scotland Yard investigator Adam Dalgliesh is now available on CD!
Maurice Seton was a famous mystery writer–but no murder from his imagination could equal the ghastliness of his own death. When his grotesquely mutilated corpse is found in a drifting dinghy, ripples of horror spread among his bizarre neighbors: the cruel and cynical drama critic, the celebrated recluse, and the rakish young heir. It is up to Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh and his extraordinary aunt to discover the shocking truth about Seton’s past–before the plot takes another murderous turn.
“P.D. James scores with understated humor, stately yet unpretentious prose, psychological insights…plus, above all, fundamental warmth and wisdom in every line she writes.”–Kirkus Reviews