Historic Family Mystery

Hambledon, Pennsylvania, is still reeling from the sensational murder trial that shattered the peace of the bucolic hamlet less than a year ago. Dr. Jonathan Ferrier was accused of killing his beautiful young wife after she died following a botched abortion. The scion of a powerful old eastern family, Jonathan hired the best attorneys money could buy. When he was acquitted, many believed he had bought his freedom. Now, he has returned home to sell his practice and move on. But haunted by his wife's death, Jonathan still strives to heal the judgmental people of his divided town.

1916: Betty O’Fogarty is proud and clever. Spurred on by Betty's belief in her husband Seamus’s talent as a violin-maker and her desire to escape rural life, the couple elopes to Dublin. As Dublin is plunged into chaos as the Easter Rebellion of 1916, Betty gives birth to her first child to the sound of gunfire and shelling. A hundred years later, secrets churn their way to the surface, and Betty’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren uncover both Betty’s ruthlessness and her unique brand of heroism.

Now that Pauline Esmeralda Simone-Thierry von Cant has been rescued from Castle Cant by her half-sister and former maidservant, Lucy, the real adventure begins. For there are forces that want to tear Pauline and Lucy apart. In their land, a war rages over chewing gum.

Glasgow, 1932. When the son-in-law of one of the city’s wealthiest shipbuilders is found floating in the River Clyde with his throat cut, it falls to Inspector Jimmy Dreghorn to lead the murder case—despite sharing a troubled history with the victim’s widow, Isla Lockhart. From the flying fists and flashing blades of Glasgow’s gangland underworld, to the backstabbing upper echelons of government and big business, Dreghorn and his partner ‘Bonnie’ Archie McDaid will have to dig deep into Glasgow society to find out who wanted the man dead and why.

James Lionel Falconer has risen quickly from a mere shop worker to being the right-hand man of Henry Malvern, head of the most prestigious shipping company in London. With Malvern's daughter Alexis running away to the country after a terrible tragedy and refusing to return, James' ascent to head of the company seems inevitable. But even a charmed life like James' is not without its setbacks. A terrible fire threatens to end his merchant career before it's had a chance to truly begin. Mrs. Ward, James' former paramour, has a secret that could change his life forever.

Agatha Christie’s world is one of glamorous society parties, country house weekends and growing literary fame. Nan O’Dea’s world is something very different. Her attempts to escape a tough London upbringing during the Great War led to a life in Ireland marred by a hidden tragedy. After fighting her way back to England, she’s set her sights on Agatha. Because Agatha Christie has something Nan wants. And it’s not just her husband.

A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.

Dalton, North Dakota. It’s September 1951: years since George and Margaret Blackledge lost their son James when he was thrown from a horse; months since his widow Lorna took off with their only grandson and married Donnie Weboy. Margaret is steadfast, resolved to find and retrieve her grandson Jimmy - the one person in this world keeping James’s memory alive - while George, a retired sheriff, is none too eager to stir up trouble. Unable to sway his wife from her mission, George takes to the road with Margaret by his side, traveling through the Dakota badlands to Gladstone, Montana.

Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair and the feelings she harbors for her sister's husband. To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto.

Alice Pendelbury believes everything in her life is pretty much in order - from her good friends to her burgeoning career. But even Alice has to admit it’s been an odd week. Not only has her belligerent neighbor, Mr. Daldry, suddenly become a surprisingly agreeable confidant, but he’s encouraging her to take seriously the fortune-teller who told her that only by traveling to Turkey can Alice meet the most important person in her life. What’s more, the peculiarly insistent Mr. Daldry has even agreed to finance Alice’s trip - one that against all reason seems to be predestined.

Babe is a charismatic and widely loved man, a gambler with a gift for gab that often gets him out of tricky situations. He’s also a dreamer, something he shares with his patient and loving wife, Rosie. They both yearn for financial stability and see the land they own as insurance for future generations. But when Babe and a few comrades enlist in a scheme that improbably falls apart, he endangers the little security the family has. On the verge of losing everything, what’s a family man to do? If you’re a gambler like Babe, you double down and risk it all for one big score.

Andrew Gross delivers a stirring story of a Jewish family brought together in the dawn of the women's garment business and torn apart by the birth of organized crime in New York City in the 1930s. Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough in a tiny flat on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father thrust them into having to fend for themselves. Morris, the youngest, dropped out of school at 12 and apprenticed himself to a garment cutter in a clothing factory; Sol headed to accounting school; but Harry, scarred by a family tragedy, fell in with a gang of thugs as a teenager.

When 15-year-old Margot and her three sisters arrive at Applecote Manor in June 1959, they expect a quiet English country summer. Instead they find their aunt and uncle still reeling from the disappearance of their daughter, Audrey, five years before. As the sisters become divided by new tensions when two handsome neighbors drop by, Margot finds herself drawn into the life Audrey left behind. When the summer takes a deadly turn, the girls must unite behind an unthinkable choice or find themselves torn apart forever.

Never turn your back on the Cahills.... The most powerful family history has ever known returns with a vengeance in The 39 Clues: Doublecross! Confidential until August 2015!

Twenty-three-year-old Katy Speed is fascinated by the house across the street. The woman who lives there, Gloria, is the most glamorous neighbour on the avenue, owning a fashionable dress shop in Bexhill-on-Sea. But who is the woman who arrives in the black car most Saturdays while Gloria is at work? Sometimes she brings women to the house, other times they have children. Hilda, Katy's mother, disapproves of Gloria. She wonders if these mysterious visitors have just been released from prison. Is Gloria secretly bringing criminals, or worse, into the heart of the community?

We live within the ruins of an ancient civilization whose size has rendered it invisible. Remembered in myth as Atlantis, Lemuria, or other lost world archetypes, the remains of this advanced civilization have lain buried for millennia beneath the deserts and oceans of the world. Investigating the perennial myth of a forgotten fountainhead of civilization, J. Douglas Kenyon presents extensive physical and spiritual evidence of a lost great culture, the collective amnesia that wiped it from planetary memory, and the countless ways ancient catastrophes still haunt modern civilization.

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the first great revolution of the twentieth century began as working-class men and women occupied buildings throughout Dublin, Ireland, including the general post office on O’Connell Street. Among the commoners in the GPO was a young staff captain of the Irish Volunteers named Michael Collins. He was joined a day later by a fourteen-year-old messenger boy, Eoin Kavanagh.

After the funeral of her mother, Sally, Alice Kent is approached by a man named Angus Tweedy. He claims to be her father and tells her that he served time in prison for marrying Sally bigamously. What does he hope to gain telling her this now, 30 years on? How can her adored dad Ralph not be her true father? And why did her mother betray her so badly? She had accepted Sally's many faults and her reluctance to never speak of the past. But faced with this staggering deception, Alice knows she must uncover the whole truth about her mother. Whatever the cost.

Calling all Cahills! Announcing a 39 Clues Superspecial adventure - the gang is back, and called to investigate one of their own: Sinead Starling.

In Sins of the Fathers, Susan Howatch takes the reader into the world of the very rich, a family divided from generation to generation by a great fortune and the consequences of a terrible secret that lies at the very heart of their wealth.