Historical Detective

It's with a heavy heart that Jane Austen takes up a new residence at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Secretly mourning the lost love of her life, she's stunned to learn that the late Lord Harold Trowbridge has made her heir to an extraordinary bequest: a Bengal chest filled with his diaries, letters, and most intimate correspondence. From these, Jane is expected to write a memoir of the Gentleman Rogue for posterity. But before she can put pen to paper on this labor of love, she discovers a corpse in the cellar of her new home.

"When I say, therefore, that [my brother] has better powers of observation than I...I am speaking the exact and literal truth." (Sherlock Holmes) This story occurs when Mycroft, an athletic Cambridge graduate, assists the secretary of state. He becomes embroiled in a mystery in Trinidad based on actual history. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a huge Holmesian, seven feet two inches tall, basketball's all-time leading scorer, and a US cultural ambassador. Anna Waterhouse is a professional screenwriter and script consultant.

It was 1921 when Lord Peter Wimsey first encountered the Attenbury emeralds. The recovery of the magnificent gem in Lord Attenbury's most dazzling heirloom made headlines - and launched a shell-shocked young aristocrat on his career as a detective. Now it is 1951. A happily married Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife, the detective novelist Harriet Vane. Then the new young Lord Attenbury - grandson of Lord Peter's first client - seeks his help again, this time to prove who owns the gigantic emerald that Wimsey last saw in 1921.

Eva has never felt like she belonged...not in her own family or with her friends in New York City, and certainly not at a fancy boarding school like Hardwick Preparatory Academy. So, when she is invited to join the Fives, an elite secret society, she jumps at the opportunity to finally be a part of something.

Within the mysteries of the body, especially those who have been murdered, 18th-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone specializes in uncovering the telltale clues that lead toward justice. Newly released from the notorious asylum known as Bedlam, Lady Lydia Farrell finds herself in an equally terrifying position - as a murder suspect - when she stumbles upon the mutilated body of Sir Montagu Malthus in his study at Boughton Hall.

When Mayor Cermak’s “Hoodlum Squad” brings Heller along on a raid with no instructions but to keep his mouth shut and his gun handy, he becomes an unwitting, unwilling part of a hit on Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti. As a result, Heller quits the force to become a private eye. His first job: head off a nation-shaking political assassination in Miami Beach. With the Chicago World’s Fair as a backdrop, Heller encounters a ragtag array of crooks and clients, including Al Capone, George Raft, “Dutch” Reagan, and FDR himself.

The story you’re about to hear is the second Charlie Chan novel, and it features a parrot named Tony who is witness to a crime. The unusual bird spoke Chinese and had a less-than-perfect use of English grammar but was killed by the criminals as a precaution. Chan himself was a friend of a family selling jewels and agreed to deliver them on his first trip to mainland California. While there he masquerades as a pidgin-speaking cook during his undercover investigation. His profound and original intelligence offers genial humor and witty dialogue.

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives' investigation is hampered from the start. Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe, Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.

On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene. Faced with what initially appears to be a motiveless murder, Colbeck is intrigued by the murder weapon - a noose. When it emerges that the victim had worked as a public executioner, Colbeck realises that this must be intrinsically linked to the killer's choice of weapon.

England, 1942. The Nazis' relentless Blitz may have paused, but London's nightly blackouts continue. Now, under the cover of darkness, a madman is brutally killing and mutilating young women in eerie and exact re-creations of Jack the Ripper's crimes. What's more, he's targeting women who are reporting for duty to be Winston Churchill's spies and saboteurs abroad. The officers at MI5 quickly realize they need the help of Special Agent Maggie Hope to find the killer dubbed "the Blackout Beast". A trap is set.

In the summer of 1994, a workman at the historic mansion of railroad baron James J. Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbles on a long-hidden wall safe. When experts arrive to open the safe and examine its contents, they make an astonishing discovery. There, inside, is a handwritten manuscript bearing the signature of John H. Watson, MD. The manuscript contains the story of how Sherlock Holmes and Watson traveled to Minnesota to track a murderous arsonist - known only as the Red Demon - who is threatening both Hill and his Great Northern Railway.

Droitwich, April 1890. A nine-year-old girl vanishes without a trace from the local churchyard. Her father, the salt tycoon Sir Charles Chilton, is beside himself. There's no price he won't pay for his daughter's safe return. AND SOMEONE OUT THERE IS COUNTING ON IT. Sir Charles calls on Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb to investigate.

When a local publican is murdered, Inspector Witherspoon takes Mrs. Jeffries' advice to heart. He is going to trust his own instincts - but that keeps Mrs. Jeffries in the dark. She must rouse the household staff to action and hope the Inspector doesn't arrest the wrong person before they can solve the crime.

In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case—and everyone involved—in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

When a scandalous murder shocks London high society, 17-year-old aspiring lawyer Lizzie Bennet seizes the opportunity to prove herself, despite the interference of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the stern young heir to the prestigious firm Pemberley Associates. Convinced the authorities have imprisoned the wrong person, Lizzie vows to solve the murder on her own. But as the case - and her feelings for Darcy - become more complicated, Lizzie discovers that her dream job could make her happy, but it might also get her killed

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.

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.

The Abbey of Imleach, in the southwest Irish kingdom of Muman, now rivals Armagh as the centre of the faith in Ireland. For the founder of the abbey was none other than St Ailbe, the man who brought Christianity to Muman, converted its king and baptised him at Cashel in AD448. But now, calamity has struck the community of the abbey. Not only has an elderly monk suddenly disappeared, but the holy relics of St Ailbe have also vanished. These sacred relics are not just the concern of the abbey's community but are a priceless icon and political symbol of the entire kingdom....

As commander of the powerful Special Branch, Thomas Pitt has the job of keeping Britain safe from spies and traitors. So there' s no obvious reason why he is suddenly ordered to investigate two minor incidents: the blood, hair, and shards of glass discovered outside the home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston, and the simultaneous disappearance of Mrs. Kynaston' s beautiful lady's maid. But weeks later, when the mutilated body of an unidentified young woman is found near Kynaston' s home, Pitt realizes that this is no ordinary police investigation.

The gathering has the appearance of a smart autumn house party - stunning women and powerful men enjoying a few days of leisurely pleasure in a setting of exquisite beauty. In fact, the guests are Irish Protestants and Catholics gathered in a reluctant parley over home rule for Ireland, a problem that has plagued the British Isles since the reign of Elizabeth I. When the meeting's moderator, government bigwig Ainsley Greville, is found murdered in his bath, the negotations seemed doomed.