Historical Detective

When Lily Rowan doesn’t laugh at his jokes, Archie Goodwin knows something’s wrong. Her niece Noreen has been running around with Sparky Linville, a club-hopping bad boy who’s the terror of Manhattan nightlife, and the last time she went out with him, Noreen wasn’t herself when she came home. Springing into action, Goodwin waits for Linville outside of Morgana’s, a chrome-and-glass palace. They nearly come to blows, but Linville’s bodyguard intervenes, and Goodwin retreats to plan his next move. In the morning, Linville is dead, and Goodwin is the chief suspect.

The inimitable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her husband Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher seem to get a reprieve from their sleuthing duties when they are invited to the wedding of their friend, Lucy Fotheringay. Lucy's grandfather is hosting the ceremony at his beautiful estate and so it promises to be a typical affair with hordes of gossipy aunts and other colorful, but not necessarily pleasant, relatives. Daisy meets all these characters and observes the ensuing familial fraternization with a certain kind of amusing nonchalance.

A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower's blade. A singer's costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician's box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along?

Stoke Newington, 1863: Little Margaret Lovejoy is found brutally murdered in the outhouse at her family’s estate. A few days later, a man is cut down in a similar manner on the doorstep of courtesan and professional detective Heloise Chancey’s prestigious address. At the same time, Heloise’s maid, Amah Li Leen, must confront events from her past that appear to have erupted into the present day. Once again Heloise is caught up in a maelstrom of murder and deceit that threatens to reach into the very heart of her existence.

An academic so conservative he thought Ronald Reagan was a pinko, Hale Markham rules Prescott University like an intellectual tyrant - until the morning he’s found dead at the bottom of one of Prescott’s famously beautiful ravines. Every liberal on campus hated the crotchety old crank, but which one is responsible for giving Markham his final push to the right? The case so intrigues the incomparable, reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe that he takes the unusual step of leaving the confines of his home.

It's late 1936, and King Edward is in turmoil, having fallen in love with the scandalously divorced and even more scandalously American Wallis Simpson. He wants to marry her but knows that doing so will jeopardize his crown. Edward confides in his dear friend Darcy, Georgie's husband, and the couple agree to hide Wallis in their home while Edward figures out what to do. But unbeknownst to Georgie and Darcy, Sir Hubert, the owner of the estate, has given a film crew permission to shoot a motion picture about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn on the grounds

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it - bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

Captain Harry Cathcart and Lady Rose Summer got engaged so Rose can avoid being sent to India with all the other failed debutantes. Bored with endless parties, teas, and balls, Rose befriends Dolly Tremaine, a beautiful young girl newly arrived from the country. Rose is delighted to have a protégé, but their friendship is cut tragically short when Dolly is found floating in a river. Now Harry must solve the mystery of Dolly's death, and keep Rose from being the murderer's next victim.

Lady Rose Summer refuses to abide by her parents' insistence that she marry. Even more distressing, she wants to work. On advice from Captain Harry Cathcart - a noble-born private investigator who knows Rose all too well - her parents agree to let Rose work as a typist and live in a women's hostel. But life as a working woman isn't quite what Rose imagined: When a playboy is murdered, Rose returns to high society to follow a trail of deception, rumors, and devious plots.

The plaintiffs in a sensational breach of promise suit are wealthy social climbers Barton and Delphine Lambert, suing on behalf of their beautiful daughter, Zillah. The defendant is Zillah's alleged fiancé, brilliant young architect Killian Melville, who adamantly declares that he will not, cannot, marry her. Not even to his counsel, distinguished barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone, will Killian explain his rejection of rich and charming Zillah.

In the 1920s, in post - World War I England, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple, newly engaged to Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher, is asked by her brother-in-law to discreetly investigate a series of poisoned pen letters that many of the local villagers have been receiving. When the pompous and unbearable brother of the local vicar is killed by a very large rock, dropped on his head from a great height, it seems clear to all that this campaign of gossip has escalated to murder.

In the winter of 1924, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher travels to a school friend's house to witness the estate's famous Guy Fawkes celebration. But she gets more than the quiet weekend at the quaint family manse that she was originally hoping for. The home is the site of some severe family tension. The Viscount and head of the family is a strict and unyielding sort, insisting that everyone - especially his children - meet his own unreasonable expectations. On the evening of the Guy Fawkes celebration, the Viscount is found dead on the floor of his study, killed by his own hand.

It is 1918. Coming out of retirement, an aging Sherlock Holmes travels to Palestine with his 19-year-old partner, Mary Russell. There, disguised as ragged Bedouins, they embark on a dangerous mission. If they fail, the holy city goes up in flames.

Peter Marlin's wife is found strangled and he becomes the prime suspect. She'd only just returned from an unexplained absence of several months. And during that time, Peter had found a new lover. Everything points to the husband but there's no real proof. Inspector John Crow is called in to help the local police. But his new colleagues aren't keen on an outsider. And Crow must solve the case before anyone else dies.

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen". At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead. Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one...one by one they begin to die. Who among them is the killer? And will any of them survive?

In late 1923, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and her husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, come to America for a honeymoon visit. In the midst of a pleasure trip, however, both work in a bit of business - Alec travels to Washington, DC, to consult with the US government, Daisy to New York to meet with her American magazine editor.

The 13th installment in Stephanie Barron's fan favorite Being a Jane Austen Mystery series. Between novels, Victorian England's most beloved author doubles as a sleuth in often idyllic locales. November 1815. The Battle of Waterloo has left the British economy in shreds; Henry Austen, Jane's favorite brother, is about to declare bankruptcy. The crisis destroys Henry's health, and Jane flies to his London bedside.

Christmas Eve, and the Lee family's reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. When Hercule Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man....

London 1884. Electricity pioneer Simon Borthwick lights up Victorian London with a stunning illuminations display - then shoots himself in a hansom cab. Plucky Fleet Street reporter Penny Green witnesses the inventor's death and suspects the clue to his suicide lies in a mysterious letter he left behind. But can she persuade Inspector James Blakely of Scotland Yard that a crime has been committed? Borthwick isn't the only person who died that day, and Penny soon encounters a shadowy world which the police can't get close to.