English Detective Mysteries

In The Limehouse Text, Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn discover a pawn ticket among the effects of Barker's late assistant, leading them to London's Chinese district, Limehouse. There they retrieve an innocent-looking book that proves to be a rare and secret text stolen from a Nanking monastery, containing lethal martial arts techniques forbidden in the West.

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.”

Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England's premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, he's developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history. But one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker's office with an offer.

Katie LeClair has finally settled down as the new doctor in Baxter, Michigan. After years of moving, schooling, and training, she wants nothing more than to find a place she can call home, and a small town outside of Ann Arbor seems perfect. Katie quickly gets to work in building a life for herself in Baxter, and beyond reviving her love life, she also finds a pair of business partners in a team of father and son family practitioners. But that idyllic dream is immediately shattered when one of her patients is found dead.

Erin Coleridge's used bookstore in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England, is a meeting place for the villagers and, in particular, for the local Jane Austen Society. At the Society's monthly meeting, matters come to a head between the old guard and its young turks. After the meeting breaks for tea, persuasion gives way to murder with extreme prejudice when president Sylvia Pemberthy falls dead to the floor. Poisoned? Presumably, but by whom? And was Sylvia the only target?

Owner of the Crewel World needlework shop and part-time sleuth Betsy Devonshire heads for the Minnesota north woods to renovate an old cabin. But beneath the awful linoleum is something even uglier--the skeleton of a Nazi. Betsy's investigation yields the site of a former German POW camp, a mysterious crocheted rug, and an intricately designed pattern of clues to a decades-old crime.

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member.

Detective George Elms is out of prison, and the police force that put him there is in chaos. Now they want him back to lead the hunt for vicious cop killer Kane Forley. Only George can put together a team that will bring this criminal to justice. Are his superiors using George as bait? They have their own very dark secrets to hide. But this is personal, and things spin out of control fast. Soon George will face one last race against time to save everyone who is close to him. Who can he trust to help him?

Eighteenth-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone travels to the English countryside to unravel a tangled web of mystery, medicine, and murder in this captivating new novel from Tessa Harris. A man staggers out of his cottage into the streets of Oxfordshire, shattering an otherwise peaceful evening with the terrible sight of his body shaking and heaving, eyes wild with horror. Many of the villagers believe the devil himself has entered Joseph Makepeace, the latest victim of a "great fog" that darkens the skies over England like a biblical plague.

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?

Cambridge, 1924 in early summertime. May Balls, punting, flirting and dancing the tango are the preoccupations of bright young people, but bright young Detective Inspector John Redfyre finds himself mired in multiple murders. One morning, his dog discovers a corpse neatly laid on a tombstone in the graveyard adjoining St. Bede's College. An army greatcoat and well-worn boots suggest the dead man may have been a former soldier, though the empty bottle of brandy and a card bearing the words "An Invitation to Dine" on the victim ring a discordant note.

Ten years ago, Ryan Comeaux was convicted of killing his girlfriend and was sentenced to life in prison. Now a witness has come forward who claims she was with Ryan the entire night and it’s not possible that he was the killer. But the local police assume she’s mistaken and aren’t interested in reopening what they view as an open-and-shut case. The witness, Kelsey Spalding, has her own reasons for wanting Ryan’s conviction overturned and hires Swamp Team 3 to prove him innocent.

A peaceful demonstration in the normally quiet town of Eastvale ended with 50 arrests---and the brutal stabbing death of a young constable. But Chief Inspector Alan Banks fears there is worse violence in the offing. For CID superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess has arrived from London to take charge of the investigation, fueled by professional outrage and volatile, long-simmering hatreds.

Kira's earliest memories are of living alone and wild in the woods. She has no idea how long she was on her own or what she had to do to survive, but she remembers the moment that Cady Bennett and one of her search-and-rescue dogs found her. Adopted into the Bennett family, Kira still struggles with human interaction years later, but she excels at the family business: search-and-rescue. Then Cady's estranged father asks for her help in locating a missing child—one of several visitors who has disappeared in the Sierra Glades National Park in the past 12 months.

Burnt-out social worker Amalie Holmes thinks she's finally caught a lucky break in the form of a free cottage from her mystery great aunt. With nothing to lose, Amalie heads for the hills, or, in this case, the mountains. Turns out the cottage comes with a big family secret: Amalie is from a long line of witches. She quickly discovers that living in a new town isn't easy, especially when lightning strikes whenever she loses her temper! When an orphaned 11-year-old stands accused of murder, Amalie's social worker instincts compel her to solve the case and clear the child.

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.

When English agent Gene Hawkins told his boss he'd forego his vacation to search for millionaire Dave Teller's prized missing stallion, he didn't know his retainer would include the attention of his boss's beautiful teenage daughter - or Teller's seldom sober wife. He also didn't know that a trail from London to New York to Las Vegas to California would lead eventually to murder.

Pop diva Clarion Calhoun has packed the house with a celebrity appearance in Bath's Theatre Royal production of I Am a Camera. But within moments of her much-anticipated onstage appearance, she's pulled out of character as she screams and claws at her face. When tainted stage makeup is found to have caused the disfiguring burn, fingers point to her makeup artist. Detective Peter Diamond investigates when the makeup artist is found dead, pushed from a catwalk far above the stage.

The most revered detective in Paris puts his skills to the test in three thrilling cases from the creator of Alex Cross and Detective Michael Bennett.

Eleven-year-old math prodigy Ada Lovelace, daughter of the famous and infamous poet Lord Byron, is a genius. Isolated, awkward and socially inept - but a genius. Mary Godwin, age 14, daughter of radical philosopher William Godwin and feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, is a romantic. It has been arranged for Mary and Ada to be tutored by the young man who calls himself Percy B. Snagsby, a nervous fellow who may or may not be a spy.