An introductory biography of the life and work of Edith Pargeter, author of sixty books, but internationally known as Ellis Peters, author of the popular Cadfael Chronicles, featured on PBS’s Mystery series. Margaret Lewis investigates the circumstances which make Pargeter’s area of Shropshire so vital to her work, and discusses the wide range of her writing. Although devoting a large part of the book to the Cadfael phenomenon, and to the art of writing crime fiction, Lewis demonstrates that Pargeter is also a translator, historian, and novelist of distinction. The biography includes discussion of Pargeter’s historical novels, The Heaven Tree Trilogy and the Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet, her wartime trilogy, The Eighth Champion of Christendom, the Inspector Felse novels, her award-winnning Czech translations, as well as the Cadfael Chronicles, and here Lewis includes a plot summary of each Cadfael novel. Some photographs have been made available from Edith Pargeter’s private collection.