Historical Detective

Undeterred by world war and enemy submarines, Amelia Peabody, grandmaster Elizabeth Peters' indomitable archaeologist-sleuth, once again sets sail for Egypt, where ghosts of an ancient past and specters of a present-day evil hover silently over an inscrutable land.

It's 1910, and Daniel Pitt is a reluctant lawyer who would prefer to follow in the footsteps of his detective father. When the biographer Russell Graves, who Daniel is helping defend, is sentenced to execution for the murder of his wife, Daniel's Pitt-family investigative instincts kick in, and he sets out to find the real killer. With only 21 days before Graves is to be executed, Daniel learns that Graves is writing a biography of Victor Narraway, the former head of Special Branch and a close friend of the Pitts. And the stories don't shed a positive light. Is it possible someone is framing Graves to keep him from writing the biography-maybe even someone Daniel knows in Special Branch? The only answer, it seems, lies in the dead woman's corpse.

The year is 1976. Veteran New Haven homicide detective Frank Suchy has finally learned to cope with the demons in his life and the daily pressure of "the job" - being exposed to every manner of death that could possibly befall someone - all the while celebrating his third year of sobriety. But when his best friend's child is brutally murdered in broad daylight outside a downtown shopping mall, his world begins to deteriorate, bringing back the nightmares that he thought were locked away long ago.

It’s 1890 and the newly famous Sherlock Holmes faces his worst adversary to date - a diabolical villain bent on destroying some of London’s most admired public figures in particularly gruesome ways. A further puzzle is that suicide closely attends each of the murders. As he tracks the killer through vast and seething London, Holmes finds himself battling both an envious Scotland Yard and a critical press as he follows a complex trail from performers to princes, anarchists to aesthetes.

Grit, determination, and a will of steel have propelled Hudson Stone through life. No case he faced as Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard went unsolved. But nothing could have prepared the implacable investigator for inheriting a dukedom. Even more maddening than his ducal obligations is Lady Elysande Collingwood, the previous Duke of Wycombe’s betrothed. Worst of all, the debts Hudson has been bequeathed along with the title mean he needs to marry an heiress to save his estates from ruin, and the cheerful, dazzling Lady Elysande is the only one he knows.

December 1918: As a difficult year draws to a close, there is much to celebrate for 19-year-old Phoebe Renshaw and her three siblings at their beloved family estate of Foxwood Hall. The dreadful war is finally over; eldest daughter Julia's engagement to their houseguest, the marquis of Allerton, appears imminent; and all have gathered to enjoy peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. But the peace of Foxwood Hall is shattered on the morning of Boxing Day, when the marquis goes missing.

In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey. The police have put the murders down to a violent robbery, but Detective Inspector Madden from Scotland Yard has his own suspicions. In the meantime the killer is plotting his second strike.

As Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt investigates the leak in the Colonial Office, he quietly looks into the tragic death of his childhood mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond. Pitt believes he was murdered and that the crime is connected with the treachery in the government. He makes little progress...until a second murder reverberates through London.

1859. St Mary's Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cedric Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming travel to Derbyshire to investigate.

In Parson, Texas, a small town ravaged by a devastating hurricane and the Vietnam War, twenty-nine-year-old Lou is diligently renovating a decaying old mansion for Miss Kate, the elderly neighbor who has always been like a mother to her. Mourning her brother’s death in Vietnam, Lou dreams of enjoying a more peaceful future in Parson. But those hopes are crushed when Miss Kate is murdered, and no one but Lou seems to care about finding the killer.

Aristocratic sleuth Charles Lenox makes a triumphant return to London from his travels to America to investigate a mystery hidden in the architecture of the city itself, in The Hidden City by critically acclaimed author Charles Finch...

Lady Ottilia and Lord Francis Fanshawe are holidaying in Tunbridge Wells when they stumble across the scene of a horrific accident. While visiting the High Rocks, a local tourist spot, a young woman falls to her death from the top of the climb. It soon becomes clear that the woman is linked to the infamous Dowager Viscountess Lady Wem - an indomitable matriarch visiting Tunbridge with her extended family. The young woman was at the center of a scandal - Lady Wem's grandson, Daniel, eloped with her three years prior.

In pre-war London, Olivia Denis wins a plum assignment from her newspaper when she meets the glamorous French fashion designer, Mimi Mareau. Mimi has it all - wealth, talent, acclaim, and a British duke for a lover. But on her first visit to Mimi's new Mayfair house of haute couture, Olivia finds something else - the body of an unknown man. Mimi and her three French assistants say they don't know the man, but is that true? As Olivia spends time around the salon, she learns at least one of the women knew the dead man and all four women are lying.

On a cold February night in Regency London, a dark curtain falls on the Sans Pareil Theatre following the death of April Clare, a promising young actress, whose body is found in mysterious circumstances. Detective Stephen Lavender and his dependable deputy, Constable Woods, quickly discover that nothing is quite as it seems. As successive mysteries unfold, they soon realise that it is not only the actors from the Sans Pareil who are playing a part.

The letter came in secret, with a pearl eardrop from an aunt long thought dead, resurrecting the forbidden past. Banished by her spiteful half sister, Queen Mary, to Hatfield House in the English countryside, 25-year-old Princess Elizabeth cannot refuse the summons. The Boleyns are in grave danger. And Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, is marked for death by a master poisoner whose reign of terror may have royal sanction.

Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every Sunday to hear the sermons of Barnabas Bay. Millions more tune in on television, giving the good Reverend international fame, and a chance to spread the gospel from New York City’s harbor all the way to South Korea. But threatening notes have been appearing in the collection bag, suggesting that one of the faithful has decided it’s time this good shepherd get the hook.

Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands is caught off guard one night in 1933 by a phone call from a distressed boy named Jackie Drummond, who just might be the illegitimate son Joe never knew he had....

In Let Loose the Dogs, Murdoch’s life and work overlap tragically. His sister, who long ago fled to a convent to escape their abusive father, is on her deathbed. Meanwhile, Harry Murdoch, the father whom Murdoch long ago shut out of his life, has been charged with murder and calls on his estranged son to prove his innocence. But, knowing his father, what is Murdoch to believe?

When Tommy and Tuppence visit an elderly aunt in her gothic nursing home, they think nothing of her mistrust of the doctors; after all, Ada is a very difficult old lady. But when Mrs. Lockett mentions a poisoned mushroom stew and Mrs. Lancaster talks about "something behind the fireplace," Tommy and Tuppence find themselves caught up in a spine-chilling adventure that could spell death for either of them....

An exquisite silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff in the care of silversmith, Hugh Kellow. When the coffee-pot is stolen and a murder is committed, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called in to investigate.