New crime series planned

Sarah Hilary has launched a new crime series with *The Drowning Place*, a Peak District police novel published on April 16, 2026. (penguin.co.uk) The book introduces Detective Sergeant Joseph Ashe and Detective Inspector Laurie Bower in the fictional Derbyshire town of Edenscar. Hilary said on her website that the series is set in the Peak District, a place she “haunted as a child,” and that she is writing the books with Harvill and Vintage. (sarahhilary.com) In the novel’s backstory, a school bus crashed 17 years earlier and everyone aboard drowned except Ashe, whose survival still shapes the town. The first case pairs him with Bower, an outsider from inner-city policing who dismisses local superstition and focuses on a killer with no clear motive. (penguin.co.uk) The series marks Hilary’s return to a continuing detective format after her six-book DI Marnie Rome run and several standalones. *Someone Else’s Skin*, the first Marnie Rome novel, was published in 2014 and won the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year in 2015. (crimefictionlover.com) Harvill Secker first acquired two new Hilary novels in June 2025, with deputy publishing director Katie Ellis-Brown buying United Kingdom and Commonwealth rights from agent Veronique Baxter at David Higham. The Bookseller reported then that *The Drowning Place* would open “a haunting new police procedural series.” (thebookseller.com) Publisher material places the new books between police procedural and gothic crime, with blurbs comparing the tone to *Broadchurch*, *Happy Valley* and *Vera*. Penguin describes the series as “Peak District-set” and “gothic-tinged,” with survivor’s guilt and small-town history built into the central cast. (penguin.co.uk) Hilary has framed the setting as central to the project before, telling Crime Fiction Lover in 2023 that she is drawn to places shaped by folklore, erosion and impermanence. That earlier interview was about *Black Thorn*, but it helps explain why her new series leans so heavily on landscape, weather and communities living with old losses. (crimefictionlover.com) For now, the published record confirms one released book and at least one more contracted volume. The opening novel ends by planting Joe Ashe and Laurie Bower in Edenscar for a longer stay, with Harvill and Penguin already presenting *The Drowning Place* as book one of a continuing series. (sarahhilary.com)