The latest eerie supernatural thriller featuring the unforgettable Merrily Watkins - parish priest, single mother and exorcist. Perfect for fans of John Connolly, Ruth Rendell and Midsomer Murders.
Phil Rickman Book order
Phil Rickman, born in Lancashire, has earned accolades for his television and radio journalism. Following five celebrated novels, he launched the compelling Merrily Watkins series with The Wine of Angels. He is married and resides on the Welsh border.







- 2022
- 2018
Merrily's Border
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
- 2017
All of a Winter's Night
- 496 pages
- 18 hours of reading
When Aidan Lloyd's bleak funeral is followed by a nocturnal ritual in the fog, it becomes all too clear that Aidan, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace. Aidan's hidden history has reignited an old feud, and a rural tradition begins to display its sinister side. It's already a fraught time for Merrily Watkins, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as diocesan exorcist for Hereford. Suddenly there are events she can't talk about as she and her daughter Jane find themselves potentially on the wrong side of the law.
- 2015
The House of Susan Lulham
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
A new husband and a new house. Just as well, because Zoe doesn't like old. Back in the 1960s, this house was built to look ultra-modern, with lots of glass and sharp angles. And it was going cheap, perhaps because of the self-inflicted death of a previous owner - notoriously bloody and prolonged. But Zoe didn't know that. And if her husband Jonathan knew, he kept very quiet. How is Merrily Watkins, diocesan exorcist for Hereford, to know what's behind Zoe's claim that the late Susan Lulham is still in residence? Sceptical neighbours seem unlikely to help, and fresh blood will decorate the pristine white walls of the New House before its secret history begins, at last, to leak out.
- 2015
Friends of the Dusk
- 384 pages
- 14 hours of reading
When autumn storms blast Hereford, centuries-old human bones are found among 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 modernizing 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. Especially as she's now presented with the job at its most medieval. In the moody countryside on the edge of Wales, a rambling 12th-century house is thought to be haunted. Although its new owners don't believe in ghosts, they do believe in spiritual darkness and the need for an exorcism. But their approach to Merrily is oblique and guarded. No one can be told—least of all, the new bishop. Merrily's discovery of the house's links with the medieval legend of a man who resisted mortality threatens to expose the hidden history of a more modern cult and its trail of insidious abuse—a trail that may not be closed.
- 2014
A seriously spooky supernatural thriller by the bestselling author of the Merrily Watkins series. This is a stay-up-all-night page-turner that will have you riveted.
- 2013
December
- 608 pages
- 22 hours of reading
Horror. Four young musicians gather at a ruined abbey to tap into the site's dark history, but they would be scarred forever by the forces they unleashed.
- 2013
Curfew
- 688 pages
- 25 hours of reading
A standalone supernatural thriller from the author of the chilling Merrily Watkins Mysteries. Every night for 400 years, a curfew bell has tolled from the church tower of Crybbe. Superstitious ritual, or sole defence against an ancient evil?
- 2013
The Man in the Moss
- 608 pages
- 22 hours of reading
A perfectly preserved Celtic warrior is found in a peat bog, but his exhumation seems to trigger a wave of accidents and bad luck in the area. Are supernatural forces at work?.
- 2013
The Magus of Hay
- 472 pages
- 17 hours of reading
When a man's body is discovered below a waterfall in the picturesque town of Hay-on-Wye, his death appears to be "unnatural" in every sense and Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mother, and exorcist, is drafted in to investigate.
