Historical Cozy

If you love early rock & roll, poodle skirts, clever who-dun-its, a charming cat, and an even more charming detective, you're going to love this series. Enjoy books 1 and 2 of the 1950s Cozy Mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Lee Strauss!

Mirabelle Daws traveled all the way from Australia to Sheridan Square to visit her sister - only to die in the middle of a locked garden. All the residents of Sheridan Square have a key to the garden - but no one seemed to know that Mirabelle was planning to arrive. So the question facing Mrs. Jeffries is: Who wanted to make sure that Mirabelle's visit was very, very short-lived?

Michael Anstruther-Wetherby is a man destined for power. Except that Michael, for all his political skill and intelligence, lacks the most important element of success: a wife.

Lies, spies, film stars, and murder. New Year’s Eve, 1921 Posie has been asked to accompany Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at Maypole Manor, the clifftop home of Lord Robin Glaysayer. With a blizzard raging outside, when a killer strikes, the Inspector and Posie’s skills are tested to breaking point as they try to find the murderer before he attacks again.

Katherine, her loyal maid Harriet, and her tenacious pug Emma soon find themselves knee-deep in troubled waters as they try to piece together the baffling clues to reveal the truth. To further complicate matters, Katherine's investigation is impeded by the incompetent detective hired by the Marquess of Bath to flush out the burglar. Now Katherine must juggle advising Prudence on how "not" to land a duke, while she dives into the investigation in the hopes of narrowing down the suspects without making waves amongst the aristocracy.

Twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is back at Buckshaw at last, but her homecoming is overshadowed by news of her father's illness. Forbidden from visiting him in hospital, Flavia busies herself in the village, but she soon makes a macabre discovery: the corpse of a reclusive woodcarver in an empty house, except for a curiously uncurious cat. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. However, what awaits Flavia will shake her to the core.

She'd once been the toast of London, but now scandal has brought her down. Still, pretty, petted Lady Tara Davidson can't believe her new fate. She had wanted to marry for love…but her profligate father has promised her hand to none other than Breccan Campbell, the "Beast of Aberfeldy" and laird of the valley's most despised clan! Well, Tara may have to marry him, but Breccan can't make her love him…can he?

Train enthusiast Francis Humphreys took his last breath while relatives and neighbors visited downstairs. But if everyone was downstairs, who could have stolen into Uncle Francis's study, killed him, and escaped? Mrs. Jeffries will have to lend her downstairs common sense to this upstairs murder mystery.

On a snowy Thursday morning in Lent 1964, a stranger seeks sanctuary in Grantchester’s church, convinced he has murdered his wife. Sidney and his wife Hildegard go for a shooting weekend in the country and find their hostess has a sinister burn on her neck. Sidney’s friend Amanda receives poison pen letters when at last she appears to be approaching matrimony. A firm of removal men 'accidentally' drop a Steinway piano on a musician’s head outside a Cambridge college.

When Kat's employer asks for help in clearing her friend's name, Kat trades her kitchen for the homes of Mayfair's wealthiest families. Soon antiquities are disappearing not only from the extravagant households of connoisseurs and collectors but also from the illustrious British Museum. As the thefts increase in frequency, Kat calls upon her friend Daniel McAdam, who has already set himself up in a pawnshop on the Strand as a seedy receiver of stolen goods. When a man is murdered in the shop, Kat must use all of her wits to see that the thieves are caught and justice is done.

After a perfectly decent local woman is killed during a robbery, the Witherspoon household receives a surprising visit from a stranger named Blimpey Groggins. He claims his best buddy was convicted of the crime. He also claims the peaceable chap didn't even know how to fire a gun. And considering he's to be hanged in three weeks, Blimpey's desperate to find the real killer. With the trail cold, the crime allegedly solved, and the evidence mucked up, Mrs. Jeffries and her belowstairs cohorts have their work cut out for them if they want to save an innocent man from the gallows.

When the body of a renowned British archeologist is found inside a sarcophagus he was bringing back from a dig in Egypt, Redmond and Haze must determine who aboard the Sea Witch had reason to want him dead. The method of murder suggests it was someone familiar with the funerary rites of the Ancient Egyptians, casting suspicion on members of the expedition, but there were others aboard the vessel who might have harbored a grudge against Blake Upton for reasons unconnected to the dig.

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day - with her nephew, Derek, and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Belinda, in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy.

Another day, another dead woman in Ellison Russell's study. Only this one claimed to be Mrs. Anarchy Jones. As Ellison juggles mothers, daughter, unhappy wives, and near-miss murder attempts, one thing is clear - someone will go to any lengths to hide the truth. Can Ellison and Anarchy catch a killer before the body count rises? Or will Ellison be the next corpse in the study?

Lady Frances Ffolkes is incensed when she finds out that her dear friends Gwendolyn and Thomasina have been subject to vicious threats. Promising to uncover their attacker, she travels with them to Kestrel's Eyrie, the fabled estate belonging to Gwen's family. But soon Frances faces an even greater problem, when Gwen's father, a powerful diplomat, is stabbed to death with his prized ruby dagger.

On a long-delayed errand to remote Wycliffe Manor, ex-Lieutenant Jack de Sackville stumbles across the murdered body of London dandy, Basil Culpepper, in the hedgerow, a long way from his usual haunts. To Jack's dismay, he discovers the earl's daughter Culpepper hiding in Wycliffe's kitchen. Disguised as a lowly cook, Lady Elspeth Villiers may have liked to shoot Culpepper for ruining her life, but she dropped out of sight for more immediate reasons than an old scandal-her wealth has become the focus of greedy men.

In 1851, private detective Laetitia Rodd is enjoying a well-earned holiday when she gets an urgent request for her services. Mrs. Rodd’s neighbor Jacob Welland is a reclusive rich gentleman dying of consumption, and he wants Mrs. Rodd to find his brother, who has been missing for 15 years. Joshua Welland was a scholar at Oxford, brilliant, eccentric, and desperately poor when he disappeared from the university. Friends claim to have seen him since, in gypsy camps and wandering around the countryside.

Normally dead bodies in a graveyard are buried - but not this one. When a woman is found strangled in a North London cemetery with an old newspaper clipping clutched in her hand, Inspector Witherspoon is surprised to find that he and the victim have crossed paths before. Alice Robinson was a respectable widow who ran a quiet Islington lodging house. None of her lodgers have any apparent motive to murder their landlady.

Frank Malloy has never known any life other than that of a cop, but his newfound inheritance threatens his position within his department. While trying to keep both his relationship with Sarah and his fortune under wraps, he' s assigned to a new case - finding a missing young woman for her worried father, Henry Livingston. It seems the girl had been responding to "lonely hearts" ads in the paper for months before she disappeared.

Charming and feisty Poppy Redfern stumbles into murder in this exciting new World War II historical mystery series from critically acclaimed author Tessa Arlen. In a remote English village, two popular women who are dating American servicemen are found strangled, and Poppy must team up with a pilot to unearth chilling secrets before she becomes the next victim.