Cozy Historical Fiction

In the winter of 1924, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher travels to a school friend's house to witness the estate's famous Guy Fawkes celebration. But she gets more than the quiet weekend at the quaint family manse that she was originally hoping for. The home is the site of some severe family tension. The Viscount and head of the family is a strict and unyielding sort, insisting that everyone - especially his children - meet his own unreasonable expectations. On the evening of the Guy Fawkes celebration, the Viscount is found dead on the floor of his study, killed by his own hand.

England, 1919. Verity Kent's grief over the loss of her husband pierces anew when she receives a cryptic letter suggesting her beloved Sidney may have committed treason before his untimely death. Determined to dull her pain with revelry, Verity's first impulse is to dismiss the derogatory claim. But the mystery sender knows too much - including the fact that during the war Verity worked for the Secret Service, something not even Sidney knew.

In September 1925, Scotland Yard DCI Alec Fletcher inherits a large house on the outskirts of London from a recently deceased great-uncle. Fortunately so, as he and his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, are the recent proud parents of twins, and their house is practically bursting at the seams. Though in need of a bit of work, this new, larger house seems a godsend - set in a small circle of houses, with Hampstead Heath nearby, the setting is idyllic. Idyllic, that is until a dead body shows up half-hidden under the bushes of the communal garden.

Hidden beneath her British reserve, Edwina has a secret: she’s finished her novel and is bravely mailing the manuscript to a publisher. Beryl also has a secret: as thanks for solving a case, the American adventuress has been gifted an airplane. After swooping over the fields and hedgerows of Walmsley Parva, livestock scattering beneath her, she flamboyantly lands the plane on the village green, prompting a startled Edwina to consider a stiff gin fizz. Beryl’s aircraft is not the only disruption of village peace. Miss Dinsdale, a psychic medium, has started holding séances.

When Ellison Russell is nearly killed at a benefactors' party, she brushes the incident aside as an unhappy accident. But when her house is fire-bombed, she's shot at, and the person sitting next to her at a gala is poisoned, she must face facts. Someone wants her dead. But why? And can Ellison find the killer before he strikes again? Add in an estranged sister, a visiting aunt with a shocking secret, and a handsome detective staying in her guesthouse, and Ellison might need more than cream in her coffee.

Trust is a delicate thing, and no one knows that better than Rosalind Thorne. Lady Melbourne has entrusted her with recovering a packet of highly sensitive private letters stolen from her desk. The contents of these letters hold great interest for the famous poet Lord Byron, who had carried on a notorious public affair with Lady Melbourne's daughter-in-law, the inconveniently unstable Lady Caroline Lamb. Rosalind is to take up residence in Melbourne House, posing as Lady Melbourne's confidential secretary. There, she must discover the thief and regain possession of the letters.

One morning in April 1924, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher finds herself in a most unenviable position. Despite her best attempts to elude the inevitable, she must face her darkest fears and with all the strength and courage she can muster, must confront the one person she has tried hardest to avoid - the dentist. But upon arriving for her appointment, she finds the waiting room deserted and adjoining examination room locked, with no hint of either Dr. Talmadge or his nurse.

Someone is snatching priceless jewels right off the necks of British aristocrats. With his intimate access to the parlors and bedrooms of Regency London, the Richmond Thief strikes again and again. The Bow Street Runners, the city's only detectives, seem powerless to stop him. Enter Althea, lady scientist. As the young widow of a country gentleman, Lady Althea Trent is introduced to the upper-class social scene as yet another pretty face. But her own scientific inquiries and an invitation to act as an agent of Bow Street propel her into the hunt for the Richmond Thief.

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it - bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

England, 1920. Eleanor Swift has spent the last few years travelling the world: taking tea in China, tasting alligators in Peru, escaping bandits in Persia and she has just arrived in England after a chaotic 45-day flight from South Africa. Chipstone is about the sleepiest town you could have the misfortune to meet. But then, from the edge of a quarry, through the driving rain, Eleanor is shocked to see a man shot and killed in the distance. Before she can climb down to the spot, the villain is gone and the body has vanished.

Having enjoyed her tour of the Scottish countryside, Lady Violet Belmaine is reluctant to return to London. Her escort, Hugh St. Sevier, suggests a detour to the Lakes, where his former army connections have invited him to renew old acquaintances. Violet is happy to enjoy the breathtaking scenery, but all is not right with St. Sevier’s friends.

When mystery novelist Hazel Martin receives a secretive letter from an old friend who suspects her relatives have murderous intentions, she packs her bags and heads to the country. Tampered medications, symptoms of poisoning, and suspicious accidents all add up to attempted murder, and it's up to Hazel and her Siamese cat, Dickens, to sniff out the clues. But with a house full of relatives who all have a motive, will Hazel be able to unmask the culprit before things turn deadly?

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

Lady Arianna, now the Countess of Saybrook, is settling into married life with her new husband. To celebrate his birthday, she finds the perfect gift: a rare volume of botanical engravings on Theobroma cacao - or chocolate - in an exclusive bookshop. But she is forced to fight off a stranger who tries to steal it way from her. Arianna forgets about the strange incident - until she and her husband attend an important government party on a country estate, where her assailant reappears and turns out to be a Russian diplomat.

Lady Violet returns with St. Sevier to her family seat, and finds Derwent Hall at sixes and sevens upon the occasion of her nephew’s christening. Other guests have brought their children along to celebrate the occasion, and Sebastian MacHeath is on hand to serve as godfather. Nobody seems to be getting along, despite the happy nature of the gathering. Summer heat builds to an unbearable crescendo as clandestine affairs, marital troubles, and family tensions escalate. Then somebody starts kidnapping little girls.

Lady Violet has decided that life in noisy, crowded, busy London is simply not her cup of tea. Her search for a rural property to purchase must be set aside when she learns that Hugh St. Sevier has been accused of murder. Worse, the handsome physician is doing nothing to aid those trying to exonerate him. Though it requires outsmarting the magistrate, enlisting the aid of Sebastian, Marquess of Dunkeld, and literally poking around in the undergrowth, Violet is determined to prove her friend’s innocence—with or without St. Sevier’s cooperation.

As the war begins, Hanna Rombauer, a young German woman, is sent to live with her aunt and uncle after her mother’s death. Thrown into a life of luxury she never expected, Hanna soon finds herself unwillingly matched with an SS officer twenty years her senior. The independence that her mother lovingly fostered in her is considered highly inappropriate as the future wife of an up-and-coming officer and she is sent to a “bride school.” There, in a posh villa on the outskirts of town, Hanna is taught how to be a “proper” German wife.

Lady Violet Belmaine ponders that conundrum while traveling from London to rural Scotland at the invitation of an old friend. Escorted by her dashing physician friend, Hugh St. Sevier, Violet prepares to again subject herself to a nuptial celebration—except that the groom fails to appear. Matters become more interesting when Violet discovers that Sebastian MacHeath is laird of the nearest castle and well acquainted with the bride and her family.

When Inspector Shanti de Silva moves with his English wife, Jane, to his new post in the sleepy hill town of Nuala, he anticipates a more restful life than police work in the big city entails. However an arrogant plantation owner with a lonely wife, a crusading lawyer, and a death in suspicious circumstances present him with a riddle that he will need all his experience to solve. Set on the exotic island of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) in the 1930s, Trouble in Nuala is an entertaining and absorbing mystery spiced with humor and a colorful cast of characters.

In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate. Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions.