Historic Family Mystery

It was Mrs Croyden who had been taken by the idea of digging up the history of the family. It seemed to be the kind of thing that everyone was doing nowadays. And once started she became more and more enchanted by the project. Even her husband, George, having seen the ancient photograph of a most attractive girl, long since dead, was taken by the project. The snag was that even Great Aunt Maud, the owner of the photograph, had no idea what had happened to the beautiful girl named Isabella. Apparently she had completely vanished and to the rest of the family had simply become “The Unknown”. Would the mystery ever be solved?

Nine-year-old Olivia Friel is delighted to be spending the summer at Greyfriars House, a place where her parents, their family and friends are always happy. But this year there's an underlying tension that Olivia doesn't understand. Then one night she sees something she's not meant to, and accidentally lets slip a devastating betrayal. Charlotte Friel gets a call from her ailing mother, asking something she's never asked before: for Charlotte to come home. There are things Olivia needs to tell her daughter before it's too late, secrets to be shared about forgotten relatives and a mysterious house.

When Avery Archer, an 11-year-old boy, telephones Ken Driscoll, a young accountant, and pleads for help in escaping from his kidnappers, Ken thinks the boy is playing a sick prank. But after several daily calls, Ken truly believes the boy is in danger. When Ken contacts the local police for assistance, he learns Avery was abducted 67 years ago and eaten by alligators in a nearby lake. Were they just prank telephone calls in the middle of the night, or was it a desperate cry for help?

Wiltshire in 1901: Kathleen's family are determined to force her into marriage with a violent man. In desperation she runs away and finds what consolation she can for her lost dreams. Then tragedy strikes, and Kathleen seeks refuge at Honeyfield House, where a charitable bequest has created a hiding place for families in trouble. Nathan fought in the Great War and is now using his gift for finding lost people as a detective. Taking on the job of finding Kathleen, he is shocked to discover a woman he can love, not the vicious female he was led to expect.

Joan Seabrook, a fledgling archaeologist, has fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Arabia by travelling from England to the ancient city of Muscat with her fiancé, Rory. Desperate to escape the pain of a personal tragedy, she longs to explore the desert fort of Jabrin and unearth the treasures it is said to conceal. But Oman is a land lost in time - hard, secretive and in the midst of a violent upheaval - and gaining permission to explore Jabrin could prove impossible.

Set in vaudeville in the early 20th century, Jonah Man is a gripping and ultimately heartbreaking novel that reveals the often tragic lives of performers struggling to make it to the big time. Told from the perspectives of multiple characters, including a one-handed juggler who moonlights as a drug trafficker, a talented young boy who longs to escape the shadow of his abusive father, and a police inspector whose bumbling attempts to solve a murder result in a series of calamitous missteps, Jonah Man explores the dark side of life behind the curtain.

FACT: Unbeknownst to eleven-year-old Theresa "Tessie" Finley, she's in over her head. PROOF: After hearing a scream and catching a glimpse of a mysterious man carrying a body beneath the flickering streetlights in the cemetery behind her house, Tessie adds solving a murder case to her already quite full to-do list.

When Theo gets off a bus in Destiny, Florida, he's left behind the only life he's ever known. Now he's got to live with Uncle Chester, a Vietnam War vet and a loner who wants nothing to do with this longlost nephew. Thank goodness for Miss Sister Grandersole's Boarding House and Dance School. The piano that sits in Miss Sister's dance hall calls to Theo. He can't wait to play those ivory keys. When Anabel arrives, things get even more enticing.

After serving seventy years in prison for the murder of her sister, Eula, Della Lee has finally returned home to the Texas town of Puerto Pesar. She's free from confinement - and ready to tell her secrets before it's too late. She finds a willing audience in journalist Mick Anders, who is reeling after his suspension from a Boston newspaper and in town, reluctantly, to investigate a mysterious portrait of Eula that reportedly sheds tears.

In the wake of a tragedy that tore her life down to its foundations, Dr. Alison McAdams has lost her way. So when she's summoned to Napa to care for her ailing father, she's not sure she has anything to offer him - or anyone else. What Ali finds in Northern California wine country is a gift, an opportunity to rest, and distance from her painful memories. In a quest to discover the truth about another woman's lost love, she sets off on a journey across oceans and deep into history. And in making sense of that long-ago tragedy, Ali is able to put together the broken pieces of her heart.

Calvin Sidey - steely, hardened, with his own personal code - is one of the last cowboys. It's the 1960s, and he's living off the grid in a trailer on the prairie when his adult son, Bill, seeks his help. A mostly absentee father and grandfather, Calvin nevertheless agrees to stay with his grandchildren for a week. He decamps for his son's house in the small town where he once was a mythic figure, and soon enough problems arise: A boy's attentions to 17-year-old Ann are increasingly aggressive, and a group of reckless kids portend danger for 11-year-old Will.

In 1939, the unexpected death of Sandra Anderson dramatically and ruthlessly changes forever the lives of the family she leaves behind. Kitty, her spoiled and pampered 15-year-old daughter, has to give up her dreams of a career as she becomes the family drudge. Sandra's heartbroken husband, Johnny, finds solace for his grief by becoming the main mouthpiece for his trade union in the shipyards, leaving little time for newborn Rosebud, whose birth caused her mother's death.

Four years on from discovering their true heritage, Sally and Luke have overcome their animosity to forge a trusting brother-sister relationship. So when Luke returns home from the Hong Kong police force, he asks Sally for help to prove the innocence of his friend Irish. But Sally already has her hands full. As well as tending her flourishing business empire, she must also pick up the pieces when her family - from her feckless sister Josie to her self-centred daughter Margo - runs into trouble.

England 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to a young American boy and the boy's sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to Frant's beautiful, unhappy mother, Thomas becomes caught up in her family's twisted intrigues.

Constantly moving, from South Africa to the Persian Gulf, to Rhodesia, to England, and ultimately to suburban New Jersey, the Laments are a quirky and lovable family who live by the motto "anywhere but here." The main character, Will Lament, whom the Laments take home from the hospital as a result of a bizarre mix-up, grows up feeling that he doesn't belong.

Madeline Dare, a tough-talking, shotgun-toting ex-debutante, is not your average detective. Then again, not much about her life is what she expected. Born of old money into high society, she married into a Syracuse farming family and a bottom-of-the-food-chain job writing puff pieces for the local newspaper. Her emotional barometer these days ranges from dry irony to whining exasperation.

Angel has just lost her father, and her mother's grief means she might as well be gone, too. She's got a sister and a grandmother to look out for, and a burgeoning consciousness of the unfairness in the world - in her family, her community, and her country. Set against the backdrop of the second Philippine People Power Revolution in 2001, the contemporary struggles of surviving Filipina "Comfort Women" of WWII, and a cold winter’s season in the city of Chicago is the story of a daughter coming of age, coming to forgiveness, and learning to move past the chaos of grief to survive.

Meet Cary Beacon, a superhero in his own mind. Cary's mission to rescue his kidnapped stepkids leads him to Mexico, where he teams up with El Yucatango, a gonzo masked wrestler on a mission of vengeance. As Cary and El Yucatango fight the battle of their lives to save the kids, Cary's disappearance forces together his fractured family back home, torn apart by a fiery tragedy years ago. The parallel quests of Cary and his family link to an explosive moment in true-life history: the KKK's 1924 siege of the immigrant mining town of Lilly, Pennsylvania, which left a curse on the Beacon family.

When traveling singer Graysie Castellanos inherits a rundown mine, she thinks it’s her golden opportunity to provide her adopted daughter with a happy childhood and a prosperous future. But their bright new beginning crumbles underfoot when the townsfolk of the Sierra Nevada mining town start dropping dead of mysterious causes.

After a merciless winter, spring has sprung in 1880 Stockholm, and the city awaits the arrival of the SS Vega, the first ship to have sailed the Northeast Passage. Life is busy at the orphanage, but twelve-year-old Mika quickly notices that the older orphans are up to something—and it doesn’t look good. When Constable Hoff approaches her with information about thefts around the city, Mika becomes even more concerned about what the other kids are up to—and what they might be planning for the Vega celebration.