British Fiction

Queen Elizabeth II is looking forward to a traditional Christmas gathering with her family in Sandringham when a shocking discovery interrupts holiday plans. A severed hand has been found—but even more unsettling, she recognizes the signet ring still attached to a finger. It belongs to a scion of the St Cyr family, her old friends from nearby Ladybridge Hall. Despite the personal connection, the Queen wants to leave the investigation to the police—that is, until newspapers drag her name into the matter.

Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead - a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. Together they uncover dark, complex relationships in this rural village.

Summer 1911. A scorching heatwave engulfs the quiet town of Littleton Cotterell and brings about an unusually early harvest. The villagers are thrilled, but events quickly turn sour when one of them turns up dead in an apple orchard, stabbed through the heart. Amateur sleuth Lady Hardcastle and her trusty lady’s maid, Flo, suddenly have a juicy case on their hands. Might the mysterious stranger they recently met in the village be to blame?

When a young woman’s body is found butchered in Brighton, Roy Grace cannot help but think of his own missing wife and her unsolved fate. Elsewhere in the city, when Tom Bryce finds a disc left on a train, he simply tries to do the right thing – return it to its owner. But this attempted act of kindness makes him the sole witness to that same vicious murder. Learning that Tom has made a statement to Grace’s team, the killers have to act. But when they plan the murder of the Bryce family, it’s not just revenge – it’s entertainment.

1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.

The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Alberton is becoming a very wealthy man. His quiet dinner party seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence.

London 1884. Victorian industrialist Alexander Glenville is a man with many secrets. Fleet Street reporter Penny Green is tasked with working undercover as a maid in his home, but tragedy strikes when Glenville's daughter is poisoned. Penny's insider knowledge is crucial for Scotland Yard's murder investigation, but someone in the Glenville household already suspects that she's more than just a servant. Can Penny and Inspector James Blakely solve the mystery before Penny's cover is blown?

December 1801. The Peace of Amiens end the long war with Napoleon Bonaparte's France, but Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is appalled by its consequences. First, he's been in the Navy since 1780 (most unwillingly, most of the time!) and at sea for the better part of nine years, since 1793, so what is a dashing and successful frigate captain to do with himself, if he's ashore on half-pay, and if so, for how long? Second, and even worse, is where will Lewrie twiddle his thumbs and be bored to death until the war begins again, as he's sure it will?

The last thing DS Stephanie Johnson and DS Andy Carter expected during their much-needed canal holiday was a murder. When retired folk musician Annie Shipton is found stabbed through the neck at the helm of her barge, the couple can’t help investigating the seemingly impossible crime. Nobody else boarded Annie’s boat—so how was she killed from behind?

Caleb Cantrill is an Irishman whose luck may have just run out. He has two fortunes in gold and can't remember the location of either. And that's the least of his worries. A gang of blood-thirsty bandits are riding north to claim his first fortune, sovereign gold, which he fled with after a bank job went wrong. His second fortune, an immense gold strike, comes with a monstrous blight attached, one he accidentally unleashed onto a small mountain town nestled in the heart of a remote Canadian valley.

A man’s body washes up on a beach on the North Yorkshire coast with a single gunshot wound to the chest. The only clue to the victim’s identity is a ring engraved with two names. DCI Tom Raven is back in his hometown of Scarborough for the first time in over 30 years. When offered the chance to lead the murder investigation, he takes it. Raven quickly discovers that the prime suspect is his once-teenage friend, now a wealthy but shady businessman. He finds an ally in Detective Sergeant Becca Shawcross, but not everyone in the team is on his side.

1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, twenty-four-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices which will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha.

When an American tourist is murdered with a scone in Gemma Rose's quaint English tearoom, she suddenly finds herself apron-deep in a mystery involving long-buried secrets from Oxford's past. Armed with her insider knowledge of the university and with the help of four nosy old ladies from her local Cotswolds village (not to mention a cheeky little tabby cat named Muesli), Gemma sets out to solve the mystery - all while dealing with her matchmaking mother and the return of her old college love, Devlin O'Connor, now a dashing CID detective.

Former Detective Hillary Greene and her cold case team are handed an impossible case. Thirty years ago, two days before Christmas, the much-loved Reverend Keith Coltrane was hit over the head and left to die inside his own church. The killer was never caught. This shocking crime took place in the pretty Oxfordshire village of Lower Barton. Everyone knows everyone else in this peaceful little community. The young reverend was handsome and popular, especially with the ladies of the village. Who would have wanted to harm him?

When eight-year-old Daisy Mason vanishes from her family’s Oxford home during a costume party, Detective Inspector Adam Fawley knows that nine times out of ten, the offender is someone close to home. And Daisy’s family is certainly strange—her mother is obsessed with keeping up appearances, while her father is cold and defensive under questioning. And then there’s Daisy’s little brother, so withdrawn and uncommunicative . . .

When a senior Metropolitan Police officer and High Court judge die in quick succession, criminal profiler Doctor Alex Gregory is convinced their deaths are linked to the most shameful case of his career: the notorious wrongful conviction of Carl Deere, an innocent man found guilty of a series of heinous murders perpetrated by the ‘Soho Killer'. Four years later, released from prison and with his record wiped clean, Deere is an invisible spectre with a new name and a new face.

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue.

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers. Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.

Wanted: American nanny for an adorable four-year old. Must be able to handle a moody, brooding, sexy British boss. I’m a single father, a lawyer, and some say the most serious man in London. I’m completely focused on raising my four-year-old daughter. Since my wife walked out three years ago, the only woman who has ever caught my eye is the strictly off-limits sister-in-law of my best friend, Autumn Lumen. But temptation is easy to resist because Autumn is only visiting London from Oregon. Until she moves to London. The nanny quits. And she’s the only woman for the job.

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.