British Literature

Elizabeth wasn’t born to be queen. But when her uncle abdicates and her father steps in as king, everything in her life changes. There is one thing that never wavers, however: her endearing love of her Corgis—especially the new puppy Susan, a gift for her eighteenth birthday. Susan is by her side during Elizabeth’s WWII service, falling in love with Philip and getting married, the death of her father King George VI, her accession to the throne, the birth of her first child, and the early struggles with running a country—an ever-present reminder to find the balance between self and crown.

On a cold night in February, the popular Lighterman's ball festivities are cut short when a guest of honor, Stephen Bremmer, goes into spasms and abruptly collapses. Once again Inspector Witherspoon returns to the Wrexley Hotel to investigate a murder. The victim was considered a boorish snob who felt entitled to anything and anyone he wanted. Yet despite his Oxford education, he was barely literate, lazy, and prone to make stupid mistakes - his last mistake turned out to be crossing a killer.

London 1884. When a thief robs Fleet Street reporter Penny Green, she finds herself caught up in a horrifying murder. Someone is terrorizing the residents of St Giles Rookery, and Scotland Yard sends Inspector James Blakely to investigate. When the serial killer claims a victim outside the slums, Victorian London is sent into panic. Can Penny's friendship with the people of St Giles uncover the culprit? She and James must overcome their complicated relationship to work together, but each new murder threatens to derail their work for good.

Saved from an unwanted marriage, Darcy finds himself in Hertfordshire with his sister and former fiancée. In repayment for a debt of honor, Mr. Darcy assists Bingley in finding a wife who truly loves him by testing his potential brides. Although helpful in some ways, it ends up causing substantial confusion, especially for Elizabeth, who is upset by his peculiar behavior.

Hildy Good is a townie. A lifelong resident of a small community on the rocky coast of Boston's North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone. And she's good at lots of things, too. A successful real-estate broker, mother, and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, sent her off to rehab. Now she's in recovery—more or less.

Roy Grace, creation of the CWA Diamond Dagger award-winning author Peter James, faces his most complex case yet in Dead If You Don't. Shortly after Kipp Brown and his teenage son, Mungo, arrive at the Amex stadium for their team's biggest-ever football game, Mungo disappears. A short while later Kipp receives a text with a ransom demand and a warning not to go to the police if he and his wife want to see their son alive again.

After being abducted and assaulted, a teenage girl somehow managed to escape from her captor. She is traumatized and needs to heal, but the police need her help to catch her assailant—information she clearly knows, but is unwilling to give. Without the girl’s assistance, DI Adam Fawley’s investigation is at a dead end. When another girl vanishes under the same circumstances, he recognizes a disturbing pattern—and a link to something long buried in his past.

A decade-old animosity is the only thing Liam Davies and Zoe Valentine have in common. Until their mutual best friends pass away and they’re appointed co-guardians of the trusting couple’s precocious toddler, Mira. Liam is committed only to professional football. Relationship-wise, he’s even better at defense. Still wrestling with a tough childhood, he’s not cut out to be a father. Why his late best buddy believed in him, Liam has no idea.

England, 1903. Giles, the new Earl of Stainton, is struggling to bring his family's estate back to order after the death of his father, and he has little time to spare for his young pregnant wife, Kitty. She lives in fear of her mother-in-law, who won't give up the reins of the household. Will she ever truly be mistress of Ashmore Castle? Perhaps if her coming child is a boy, that will change the balance of power...

An unassuming Dottie Ellis falls for bad boy Jimmy Carson, who sweeps her off her feet. But after discovering she is pregnant and learning that Jimmy has gone back to his ex-girlfriend Carrie Verne, her happiness falls apart. Heartbroken, Dottie runs home, only to unearth a disturbing family secret that rocks her to the core. She is now faced with an agonizing decision to protect her unborn child. What she does shocks the town. In a moment of solidarity, Carrie makes a promise to Dottie, cementing an unlikely bond between them.

Normally dead bodies in a graveyard are buried - but not this one. When a woman is found strangled in a North London cemetery with an old newspaper clipping clutched in her hand, Inspector Witherspoon is surprised to find that he and the victim have crossed paths before. Alice Robinson was a respectable widow who ran a quiet Islington lodging house. None of her lodgers have any apparent motive to murder their landlady.

Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Man of Honor is the prequel to the New York Times best-selling and dazzling saga A Woman of Substance....

It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.

When Trystan Cartwright, the Earl of Zennor, is bored, he makes wagers…dangerous ones. One night, in a grimy little tavern in Penzance, he and his friends stumble upon a wild, hellcat of a woman masquerading as an ill-tempered lad. Unable to resist the temptation of such a challenge, Trystan wagers he can turn the little hellion into a lady in less than one month. To win, he’ll have to present her at a ball in London and fool the beau monde. But he never imagines that his lady lessons will lead to love....

January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as "St. Alan the Liberator" for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte's delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but...even Alan Lewrie?

Alison Willetts has survived a stroke, deliberately induced by a skilful manipulation of pressure points on the head and neck. She can see, hear and feel, but she is completely unable to move or communicate. In leaving Alison Willetts alive, the police believe the killer's made his first mistake. Then DI Tom Thorne discovers the horrifying truth: it isn't Alison who is the mistake, it's the three women already dead. Thorne must find a killer whose agenda is disturbingly unique, and Alison, the one person who holds the key to the killer's identity, is unable to say anything....

Meredith Mitchell's old friend Sally Caswell and her scientist husband have moved from London to the quiet of Oxfordshire, but find nothing but trouble. Quarrels between the moody scientist and an eccentric neighbour; goats in the backyard, and a letter bomb in the mail all add to malice, mystery, and murder—and another case for Meredith and her police inspector friend Alan Markby to solve.

Georgina Drake’s job photographing beautiful Hartington Hall takes a dramatic turn when she enters the ancient ice house to find the lady of the manor dead on the floor. The second wife of the irascible owner of the hall, Karen Berry had plenty of enemies. Her death could have been an accident, but when Georgina hears how Karen had argued with her husband, alienated her two step-daughters, and fired the long-standing housekeeper for theft, she’s not convinced.

In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case—and everyone involved—in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

Ending his secondment to London’s Met Police, Roy Grace gets a tip-off about a county lines drugs mastermind operating out of Brighton. On his first day back in his old job in Sussex, he is called to a seemingly senseless murder. Separately, Meg Magellan finally has her life back together, five years after the car crash that killed her husband and their son. Her daughter, Laura, now 18, is on her gap year travelling in South America with a friend, and Meg misses her badly. Laura is all she has in the world....