Anna Elliott Audiobooks

Books were the furniture in the Connecticut house where Anna Elliott grew up, both her parents holding doctorates in English literature. She began her own career in historical fiction with the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend, and followed it with The Pride and Prejudice Chronicles.

The turn towards crime came through her father, Charles Veley, who read her the whole of Conan Doyle when she was a child and eventually became her writing partner. Together they created the Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James mysteries and, more recently, the Homefront Sleuths, a father and daughter team turning out village whodunits at a steady clip. Elliott’s strengths are the ones the cosy form lives or dies by: period detail worn lightly, an ensemble you want to spend time with, and plots that play fair with the listener. She writes between homeschooling her five children, which may explain the brisk chapters.

Every title from her here belongs to The Homefront Sleuths, a cosy series set in an English village in the middle of the Second World War, where blackout curtains, evacuees and rationing supply the atmosphere and, quite often, the motive.

The Valentine Cipher is the longest and the most recent of the entries available, with The Judas Monk Murders, The Spitfire Murders, The Scrooge Conspiracy and The Spectre of Hawthorne Manor close behind. All of them are read by Iona Campbell, whose warm, steady delivery is a large part of the pleasure and gives the whole sequence the feel of one long radio serial.

Newcomers can pick up any of them without feeling lost, though the ensemble rewards listening in order. If you like your crime gentle, English and full of wartime texture, browse the titles below.