Historical Cozy

The Queen of England has concocted a plan in which penniless aristocrat Lady Georgie is to entertain a Bavarian princess and conveniently place her in the playboy prince's path, in the hopes that he might finally marry.

But queens never take money into account. Georgie has very little, which is why she moonlights as a maid-in-disguise.

Summer 1923. Lady Eleanor Swift is finally persuaded by her butler, Clifford, to take a villa in the south of France for the season. She plans to do what a glamorous lady abroad should: long lunches on the balcony followed by lazy afternoons lounging by the pool. But when Clifford examines the wine cellar, he discovers there are no decent reds, but there is a very dead body. The victim is famous American movie-star Rex Armstrong. Poor Rex seems to have been stabbed with a sword from the film set. So how did he end up in Eleanor’s villa?

Newly minted PI Emma Holmes and her partner Sam Collins are just settling into their business when they’re chosen for a high-profile case: retired music-hall star Verity Malone hires them to find out who poisoned her husband, a theater impresario. Verity herself has been accused of the crime. The only hitch—the Brighton police are already on the case, putting Emma in direct competition with her husband, police superintendent Edgar Stephens.

Late spring, 1936. As Kitty Underhay steps onto the sun-drenched station platform in Nice, on orders from Whitehall to track down a missing man, she hopes there will still be time to lie by the pool, preferably with a cocktail in hand. But when she and her husband Matt take a brief evening stroll, instead of finding a perfect croissant, they stumble across a body. Kitty and Matt quickly realise it is Fred Bennett, the man from Whitehall they were hoping to find. Had he simply drunk too much fabulous French wine, or is something fishy going on in this seaside city?

Sussex, 1958: A radiant Flora is being twirled across the dancefloor by her dashing new husband, Jack. It’s the perfect wedding in Abbeymead, until a mysterious stranger is found dead just outside the village. But when Flora finds an envelope tucked into the man’s silver cigarette case, the address is key to discovering the poor chap’s name–Russell Farr. He isn’t known to any of the villagers, so at first all signs point to a tragic accident. That is, until they discover Farr previously worked at the esteemed Cleve College, where Jack is now a writer-in-residence.

From the authors of the best-selling series "CHERRINGHAM". This compilation contains episodes 4-6: "MURDER WORE A MASK": Lavinia's annual Masked Ball at Mydworth Manor is a highlight of the season - but the lavish party comes to a full stop when one of the guests is found dead down by the lake. Harry and Kat suspect that the dead man was the victim of a clever case of murder. And the killer's work is not yet done... "DEADLY CARGO": Mydworth's Excelsior Radio Company is world-famous for its expensive radio-phonographs.

Ladies man, dandy, charming rogue, thief. Montague Morgan has a buccaneering reputation and he doesn't give a damn—until he falls in love. He has a plan, he needs money, and he knows how to get it. He and his lover conspire to escape to exotic lands with stolen gold. But the gold belongs to dangerous people, and plans can go awry. Morgan disappears, has he escaped, or has he fallen prey to lethal retribution?

Back home in the Kootenays after her Arizona honeymoon, Lane offers her assistance when neither the outgoing teacher, Rose, nor her replacement, Wendy, show up at the local schoolhouse one blizzardy Monday in December. But when she finds the teachers’ cottage ransacked with Rose unconscious and bleeding, and Wendy missing, Lane delivers Rose to the hospital in Nelson and turns the case over to her exasperated husband, Inspector Darling, and his capable colleagues, Sergeant Ames and Constable Terrell.

It’s November, and Lane and Darling have escaped the chilly autumn in the Kootenays for a honeymoon at the posh and romantic Santa Cruz Inn in sunny Tucson, Arizona. But despite her very best intentions to relax, soon after their arrival Lane’s plans to spend the holiday poolside with a good mystery are interrupted by gunfire. One of the hotel’s wealthy guests has been shot point blank and Lane is second on the scene.

It’s an early morning in May when Lane is pulled from a deep sleep by a concerning phone call from Scotland—her grandfather has had a heart attack. Lane hastily makes plans to fly overseas, and a dejected Inspector Darling prepares himself for a stint of bachelorhood. But before he can begin to dwell on it the Nelson Police learn that Ben Arden, a local cad, has gone out for a late-night boat ride and not returned, which immediately sets the town rumour mill churning.

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

London, 1925. With their band the Dizzy Heights, jazz musicians Ivor ‘Skins’ Maloney and Bartholomew ‘Barty’ Dunn are used to improvising as they play the Charleston for flappers and toffs, but things are about to take a surprising turn.

New York, 1908: The days are getting longer—and warmer—in Manhattan. Molly Murphy Sullivan doesn’t want to leave her home in the city, but typhoid is back, and she’s expecting. So she heads north with the children to summer with her mother-in-law in Westchester County. Molly tells herself it won’t be so bad, after all the countryside is pretty, and she’s determined to make the best of it. Even if she’s leaving her husband, Daniel, behind. And at least she’s not the only one heading north. Her great friends, Sid and Gus, are headed to the Catskills to visit Sid’s family.

Miss Busby helped Major Heathcliff Lennox solve a series of murders at Bloxford in the Cotswolds. Now, she finds herself drawn into a new murder, but this time, it's just her, and she must rely on her sharp mind and sharper wits to catch a Cotswolds killer, along with a handsome police inspector and a reporter who's keen to make her mark.

November 1911. Lady Emily Hardcastle is celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke’s Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage—a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval. When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects—and his police colleagues.

Having inexplicably nabbed the duke of Kesgrave, 26-year-old spinster Beatrice Hyde-Clare is determined to marry him at once, and no amount of hand-wringing from anxious family members, worried friends, and well-meaning acquaintances will convince her to delay. Except, maybe, she is a little swayed by her uncle’s efforts to make amends for treating her with cold indifference during her childhood.

It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern.

Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop’s Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce’s sister, Ophelia, is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. “A church is a wonderful place for a wedding”, muses Flavia, “surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar.”

Sussex, 1957: When Flora Steele and handsome crime writer Jack Carrington attend the grand re-opening of the Priory Hotel in the beautiful little village of Abbeymead, their day out is cut short when the flame-haired female singer in the band suddenly drops dead before their eyes. Flora is stunned by the unexpected turn of events and immediately deduces foul play. Beverly Russo was a spirited young woman with a big voice, and Flora is determined to get to the bottom of her untimely demise—especially as the detective sergeant leading the investigation is so hopeless.

Rosalind Thorne may not have a grand fortune of her own, but she possesses virtues almost as prized by the haut ton: discretion, and a web of connections that enable her to discover just about anything about anyone. Known as a "most useful woman," Rosalind helps society ladies in need--for a modest fee, of course--and her client roster is steadily increasing.