Historical Cozy

Bombay, 1909. Genevieve Masefield and George Dillman make a living as detectives aboard the early twentieth century's most extravagant ocean liners. From the members of first class in all their finery, to the card cheats and pickpockets plying their trade, they've experienced more than their share of humanity. For their latest voyage, the Salsette boasts a pair of travellers who feign ignorance of each other but there is clearly no love lost between them. Then there’s an elderly man whose powers of deduction may be based on more earthly techniques than the mystical energy he claims to possess.

Officer Jax Diamond doesn’t always play by the rules, and he’s in the hot seat again with the captain of his precinct. So, when a brazen little puppy alerts him of a crime, Jax is ordered to stand down or get canned. On the city streets, broke and alone, Jax beats himself up for making the wrong decision. Even the little tramp who keeps trailing him everywhere can’t lift his spirits. But crime never stops in New York City, and a string of deadly Christmas capers spirals out of control.

Moments before the wedding, Christopher Sterry finds the groom, his twin brother, murdered. One would expect Christopher to become the next Earl of Longford. No one would be surprised if he married his twin's almost-bride, Helen Grove. She is, after all, his closest friend and confidante. Except Christopher is deaf in an inflexible world that believes a deaf mute is no better than a barbaric half-wit, unfit to be an earl and quite capable of murdering his brother.

The race is on to find a killer in the heart of Kentucky horse country. Detective Augustus Grant is faced with his most baffling case to date. Well-respected race horse breeder John Jorgenson, is murdered in his den, days before the Kentucky Derby, and the list of suspects is growing. Complicating matters, Gus' ex-girlfriend is the last person to have seen the victim alive.

Greece, 545 BC: It is illegal to die on the sacred isle of Delos. It's also illegal to give birth there. Yet when murder is committed, the only available detective to solve the crime is the priestess Diotima, and she is heavily pregnant.

In this novella, Annie and Nate Dawson, the amateur sleuths from M. Louisa Locke's cozy Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, are visiting Nate's family at their ranch near San Jose, California. What was supposed to be a pleasant romantic interlude for the two of them, plus a chance for Annie to get to know Nate's family better, turns serious when a crime is uncovered. And, as in Locke's short stories from this series, Annie gets help in resolving the crisis from a very unexpected quarter.

On his death bed, Lord Pembroke took great care to try to ensure the future of his beautiful, unconventional niece, Lady Jane. Her debutante ball featured the most eligible bachelors of London society. But when the night of the dance arrives, things do not go as planned.

In Bloody Lessons, it's the winter of 1880, and the teachers of San Francisco are under attack: their salaries slashed and their competency and morals questioned in a series of poison pen letters. Annie Fuller, the reluctant clairvoyant, has been called in to investigate by Nate Dawson, her lawyer beau. The case becomes personal when they discover that Laura, Nate's sister, may be one of the teachers targeted for attack.

An historian, who is convinced that the memoirs of 19th-century Shoshone heroine Sacajawea are stashed somewhere on the reservation, has disappeared.

After being fired from her latest variety hall engagement, Ophelia acts her way into a lady's maid position for a crass American millionaire. But when her new job whisks her off to a foreboding castle straight out of a Grimm tale, she begins to wonder if her fast-talking ways might have been too hasty. The vast grounds contain the suspected remains of Snow White's cottage, along with a disturbing dwarf skeleton. And when her millionaire boss turns up dead - poisoned by an apple - the fantastic setting turns into a once upon a crime scene.

Mary Handley is a not your typical late-nineteenth century lady. She's fiery, clever, daring—and she’s not about to conform to the gender norms of the day. Not long after being fired from her job at the hat factory for insubordinate behavior, Mary finds herself at the murder scene of Charles Goodrich, the brother of a prominent alderman and former bookkeeper of Thomas Edison.

Thirty-year-old society matron Lola Woodby has survived her loveless marriage with an unholy mixture of highballs, detective novels, and chocolate layer cake, until her husband dies suddenly, leaving her his fortune. Or so Lola thought. >As it turns out, all she inherits from Alfie is a big pile of debt. Pretty soon, Lola and her stalwart Swedish cook, Berta, are reduced to hiding out in the secret love nest Alfie kept in New York City.

After closing a case with the Brooklyn Police Department, Mary Handley is determined to become an official detective in her own right. And when Emily Worsham shows up at her new office— convinced her uncle John Worsham was murdered and desperate for answers—Mary’s second assignment begins.

Daisy Gumm Majesty, spiritualist to folks with more money than sense, can scarcely believe that her best client wants her to get her spiritual control, Rolly, to appear at a séance in a speakeasy. Bad enough that Daisy made up Rolly when she was ten, but now Rolly has to perform at a séance for a bunch of murdering gangsters?

In 1920s Pasadena, California, Daisy Gumm Majesty caters to the rich and famous as a medium who puts the "con" in conjurer. When she's blackmailed by Detective Sam Rotondo into spying on the wealthy Kincaid family, Daisy isn't quite sure what he's trying to sniff out. When Daisy gives Sam his own private reading, she tells him the spirits have a lot more in store for him. Original.

Nicolaos and his partner in investigation, Diotima, have taken time out of their assignments to come home to get married. But if Nico was hoping they'd be able to get hitched without a hitch, he was overly optimistic. When they arrive in Athens, there's a problem waiting for them. The Sanctuary of Artemis is the ancient world's most famous school for girls. When one of the children is killed, apparently by a bear, and another girl disappears, Diotima's childhood teacher asks her former pupil to help them.

It's the summer of 1880, and once again the lovely and inquisitive businesswoman Annie Fuller is helping San Francisco lawyer and beau Nate Dawson with a troublesome case. Nate's client, a female typesetter accused of murdering her boss, refuses to help in her own defense. Complicating matters, Nate's sister, Laura, insists on getting involved in the potentially dangerous investigation, while Laura's friend, Seth Timmons, troubled Civil War veteran, finds himself a witness for the prosecution. Will Nate be able to win his first big case?

Variety hall actress Ophelia Flax's plan to reunite her friend, Prue, with her estranged - and allegedly wealthy - mother, Henrietta, is met with a grim surprise. Not only is the marquise's Paris mansion a mouse-infested ruin, but Henrietta has inexplicably vanished, leaving behind an evasive husband, two sinister stepsisters, and a bullet-riddled corpse in the pumpkin patch decked out in a ball gown and one glass slipper - a corpse that also happens to be a dead ringer for Prue.

Mary Kruger has no choice but to accompany her family to Desolation Point, where mysterious tragedies happen with alarming regularity. In this isolated setting with Lake Superior's waters on three sides and a forest on the other, Mary must overcome her fear of water, wild animals, and the ghosts of Desolation Point. To save herself and her family, she must untangle past mysteries in order to prevent her family from becoming another sad entry in the Desolation Point Lighthouse log book.

Variety hall actress Ophelia Flax knows how to win over an audience. That's why she's accepted the marriage proposal of the brutish Comte de Griffe to nettle her occasional investigative partner - and romantic sparring partner - the pompous if dashing Professor Penrose. But with his boorish table manners, wild mane of hair, and habit of prowling away the wee hours, the comte has shredded Ophelia's last nerve. She intends to disengage from her feral fiancé at his winter hunting party.