THE latest title in Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series, All of a Winter's Night, is published on Thursday, January 5, but local readers will have the opportunity to pick up a copy a bit earlier, as Phil visits local bookshops to sign copies on December 30 and 31.

The new novel is inspired by Kilpeck church, regarded as the classic example of Norman Romanesque architecture, emerging from a meeting of Celtic, Roman, Saxon and Viking traditions. A survey by the British Society of Dowsers found a stream underneath, which seems to have governed its orientation, along with hints of a neolithic stone circle. "There are," says Phil, "several murders in this novel, under which the unexplained – and the evil – seeps, I hope, like the underground stream below Kilpeck Church. It’s getting harder, after 14 stories, to make each book entirely different, but I hope this one is, with the private lives of the central characters – Merrily, Jane, Lol, Frannie Bliss – unobtrusively echoing the themes.

Phil will be signing copies of All of a Winter's Night in Castle Bookshop, Ludlow at 10.30an and at Burway Books, Church Stretton at 2.30pm. On New Year's Eve he will be at Rossiters in Ross-on-Wye at 10.30am, Ledbury Books and Maps at 2pm and at Three Counties Bookshop, Ledbury at 3pm.