Helen Cadbury Books In Order

Publication Order of Sean Denton Books

Publication Order of Collections

Helen Cadbury
Helen Cadbury wrote plays, fiction, and poetry. Her poetry appeared in two anthologies which were published by Cinnamon Press. She worked as an actor before she became a teacher. She worked teaching in a women’s prison and delivered training in youth arts.

Helen had an MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University. She was born on March 24, 1965 in the Midlands grew up in Oldham and Birmingham. She was the youngest of the four children of Charles Cadbury, who worked in the family confectionery company at the time, and Jill (nee Ransome), his wife. After living in London for many years, she settled up north in York, where she lived with her family.

Helen, who was driven by Quaker values, first spoke at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally in Manchester when she was sixteen years old. She went to King Edward VI high school for girls in Birmingham, Hulme grammar in Oldham, and the Quaker school Leighton Park, Reading, in the sixth form. Then she followed a film and drama studies degree at the University of East Anglia with a spell in the Hull Truck theater company.

In the year 1992, she met Josh Parker and they got married, having two sons: Isaac and Reuben. She realized that raising young kids was not compatible with touring theater, so she trained as a teacher and taught in two inner-London comprehensive schools.

The family moved to York in the year 2002, and Helen worked at York Theatre Royal as the education officer, and Askham Grange women’s open prison, near York, running different drama groups. From 2006 until 2013, she was chair of Accessible Arts and Media, a charity that runs creative learning projects.

Both she and Josh were ardent environmentalists that loved the outdoors, and they owned a tiny wood in Yorkshire that gave her great joy. Hers was a funny, sparkling, and curious intelligence, that she always put to purposeful good use.

“To Catch A Rabbit”, her debut crime novel, was published in the year 2013, and was a joint winner of the Northern Crime Award. It was selected in Yorkshire Post’s ‘13 books which define Yorkshire best’ and was selected as number 12 in top crime books that readers of WH Smith would like to see adapted for the screen. The book is from her “Sean Denton” series of historical mystery novels. “Bones I the Nest” was picked as a Read Regional title by New Writing North.

It was first published by Moth Publishing, and later re-released in a new edition by Allison & Busby and was selected as an Amazon Rising Star in January of 2015.

On June 30, 2017, she died at the age of 52 after battling cancer for about two years. Her breast cancer was first diagnosed in the year 2015. After some intensive treatment, she recovered long enough to deliver the keynote speech at Asia’s largest philanthropy conference, held in Hong Kong, and so that she could finish the third Sean Denton novel, which was released after she had passed away.

“To Catch A Rabbit” is the first novel in the “Sean Denton” series and was released in the year 2015. Two young guys stumble upon a dead hooker. She is on Sean Denton’s patch. Being Doncaster’s youngest community support officer, he is already way out of his depth, however he’s soon uncovering much more than he is supposed to know.

At the same time, Karen Friedman (a professional mom of two) learns that her brother has vanished. She is desperate in her need to know that he is safe, however once she begins looking, she learns some unexpected things about her own desires and needs. Played out against a gritty landscape on the edge of a Northern town, Sean and Karen risk losing all that they hold precious.

Readers found this novel to be an excellent written novel, with some hints of humor thrown in, it flows wonderfully. It is a hugely assured and gripping debut novel. Characters are introduced often with a considered sketch and there is never any sense of padding, as one of Cadbury’s strengths is her conciseness. She does a great job of laying down a few strands to be picked up in future books. These characters, and Helen’s descriptions of the setting (Yorkshire at its bleakest) which are each slipped in so subtly that you absorb them subliminally.

“Bones in the Nest” is the second novel in the “Sean Denton” series and was released in the year 2015. The Chasebridge Killer is out, racial tensions rise on the Chasebridge Estate and the mutilated corpse of a young Muslim man is discovered in the stairwell of a tower block in Doncaster. While he gets drawn into this case, Sean Denton’s family life and his police job get dangerously entwined, as he gets pulled back into a web of neighbors and family that he would much rather avoid.

At the same time, there is a young woman just attempting to piece her life back together after getting out of prison, however there is somebody out there that won’t let her do any of that. Somebody that will never let her forget what she has done.

Fans of the novel found this to be pacey, exciting, and humane. This one grabs you at the start and doesn’t let up until the very end. Each chapter ends with you wanting more. It is also well researched with some realistic depictions of select areas, the characters that live there, and all the tensions that bubble there.

“Race to the Kill” is the third novel in the “Sean Denton” series and was released in the year 2017. It is the middle of a long night shift for PC Sean Denton and PC Gavin Wentworth, his partner, when they are approached by one disheveled looking woman desperate for them to follow her.

She leads them to the old Chasebridge High School, where they locate the corpse of a refugee. The investigation, which points to the neighboring greyhound stadium, locates Denton gets caught up in a world of immigration, sexual abuse, and drugs and is one in which that his private life gets more and more entwined.