Sophie Rivers, English lecturer and amateur singer has a good life and friends to share it with, then suddenly things go badly wrong. One of her students is stabbed to death on the college premises and worse still, her best friend, George, appears to suffer a tragic accident.

Sophie Rivers is attending a writing course when a fellow student is found dead. Although glamorous Nyree hadn't done a lot to endear herself to Sophie, nevertheless she didn't deserve to meet such a squalid end. A course tutor then goes missing and it is clear that one of Sophie's fellow students is responsible - perhaps the former convict Courtney, or pompous surgeon Gimson. Sophie is unable to control her investigative instincts, despite the fact that the police warn her to leave crime-solving to the professionals. Then Sophie herself becomes a victim... "Thoroughly modern, sharp, witty and literate" - Margaret Yorke "As tough and gritty as they come" - NORTHERN ECHO

Sophie Rivers thinks she’s fallen on her feet when a temporary research post takes her to George Muntz College, just yards from her Birmingham home. Her new employer offers pleasant, even lavish, facilities and state-of-the-art equipment. Perhaps, though, all is not as comfortable as it seems, as Melina, a computer technician, may have been about to explain. For once Sophie doesn’t have time to listen. But when Melina is found dead, it’s soon clear that other people are keen to hear what Sophie herself has to say - both her home and her college office are bugged. There are any number of suspects. There’s the elusive Principal; Melina’s former colleague Dr Trevelyan, rapidly confined to a psychiatric ward; and Richard Fairfax, the powerful property tycoon who enters Sophie’s life. Then there’s the fact that the College seems to lack only one students.

When a young teacher dies, victim of a series of arson attacks at William Murdock College of Further Education, another teacher is attacked, and a women's safe hostel is razed to the ground, Sophie Rivers has more than school politics on her mind. Could these events be connected to the group of muggers she witnessed in action, or the fundamentalist students? Meanwhile Sophie's love life is no less complex as three men vie for her attention. But when the murderer targets Sophie, she's on her own...

Sophie Rivers is not enjoying her MEd course at the University of the West Midlands. Maybe it's just too long since her first degree or because she's missing love-of-her-life Mike Lowden. Sophie confides in excellent lecturer Carla Pentowski but there's something strange about Carla's past - or lack of it. When some of her students start to behave oddly, Sophie talks to her old friend, Superintendent Chris Groom. But he has news of his own: the death on his patch of first one Malay girl, then another. Then Carla disappears. The nearer Sophie gets to solving the puzzle, the more unlikely it seems that she'll escape alive...

On a year's sabbatical from her teaching job, Sophie Rivers is enjoying a stint as a volunteer for the Big Brum Bookfest - a new literary festival promising to cast Hay and Edinburgh into the shade. But someone is determined to sabotage the Bookfest. First it's the phone calls and letters threatening the festival's authors; then the Director succumbs to a mysterious illness; then, suddenly in charge of the project, Sophie herself becomes the victim of a vicious and terrifyingly knowledgeable stalker. Sophie never could resist a mystery and it's not long before she's calling on old friend Superintendent Chris Groom to find out as much as she can about the case. But when the stalker turns murderer it's clear she's in way over her head...

With her husband away on an England cricket tour of Pakistan, and the deadline for her MEd dissertation looming on the horizon, Sophie Rivers is in no mood for unwelcome distractions. Unfortunately, as a member of the university choir, she is finding it nigh on impossible to avoid them. It soon becomes apparent that the music faculty of the University of the West Midlands has more than its fair share of nutty professors and insecure students - and for some reason Sophie seems to have been appointed their unofficial guidance counsellor. But when the body of a professor turns up at a concert at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, all this fades into insignificance. Sophie's old friend, DI Chris Groom, calls on her insider knowledge to find out who - and what's - behind the killing.