Historical Fiction Cozy Mystery

Adventszeit 1881. Im Stadtgraben von Nürnberg wird ein Junge tot aufgefunden. Im Mund entdeckt die Polizei ein Stückchen Lebkuchen. Wenig später wird der Ratsherr Jakobus Ehrenhoff am Henkersteg aufgeknüpft. Um seinen Hals baumelt der Rest eines vergifteten Lebkuchenherzens. Pistoux scheint der rechte Mann an der rechten Stelle zu sein, denn die Ermittlungen drehen sich im Kreis und der in einer stadtbekannten Zuckerbäckerei arbeitende Meisterkoch kennt sich aus mit dem Gebäck.

When Lorry Lockharte’s cousin, Kasey, is accused of murder, Lorry feels like once again she must work to find the murderer. Did Kasey do it, or is she truly innocent as she claims? Lorry isn’t so sure about this one. Not only did Kasey have the opportunity and the motive, but she picked up the murder weapon. Will Lorry find the murderer only to discover that it really is Kasey?

When wealthy Lionel Furthingale’s daughter disappeared 25 years ago, she was assumed dead, a traceless disembodied victim of the Resurrection Men. Furthingale has now learned from a note scribbled on a playbill that his daughter not only lived an unknown number of years, but she gave birth before dying. Detective Morgan Bateman and his bluestocking assistant Victoria Eubank must race to find missing granddaughter Priscilla before the Drury Lane murderer corrects the mistake.

A large group of people enters the Rutledge Historical Society to see the new and much anticipated 1950s murder exhibit. After viewing the display, the group exits the building leaving two people behind. A few minutes later, one of the two is shot dead in front of the exhibit and the other one rushes out the back door and escapes. Was the perpetrator one of the group or was it the old woman’s daughter who has only a very weak (and stinky) alibi? Or could it have been someone else?

Adelaide Willowby is having a bad day. It’s a week before Christmas, and she has just kicked out the love of her life. Her sister and her daughter are barely speaking to her, one of her best girls is getting married, and ownership of the Wylder County Social Club is in jeopardy. Now she has landed in jail—for murder.

It is the dawn of the Second World War, but life in the small town of Fielding carries on in its uncomplicated way. For young Eva, life is about to change, as her dearest friend Annie vanishes and people claim to have never known her at all. Desperate to find her, Eva befriends two strangers: the eccentric Lola, and tender but distant Gabe. The two open her eyes to a hidden world, in which people can disappear and all memory of them be forgotten.

Mabs Millett is the reluctant heiress to Cheadle Abbey, one of Vanbrugh's monstrous piles. At a deb dance in the early fifties, she meets a financier who offers her a job as an assistant to the editor of the social diary on a magazine he has just bought.

Just after 4 pm on September 6, 1901, 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz pumped two shots into the chest and abdomen of President William McKinley. Czolgosz had been on a receiving line waiting to shake the president’s hand, his revolver concealed in an oversized bandage covering his right hand and wrist. McKinley had two Secret Service agents by his side, but neither made a move to stop the assailant. After he was apprehended, Czolgosz said simply, “I done my duty.”

Etwas Unglaubliches ist passiert! Aus einem Beinhaus wurden doch tatsächlich Schädel und Knochen gestohlen. Die Kölner Bürger sind über diesen gottlosen Frevel empört. Nur kurze Zeit später wird im Hinterhof von Adelina eine schwangere Frau getötet. Medicus Neklas Burka, der Ehemann der Apothekerin, wird direkt verdächtigt, da geglaubt wird, er habe die Schwangere für seine Experimente missbraucht. Adelina setzt es sich in den Kopf seine Unschuld zu beweisen. Aber als sie kurz darauf Schädel und Knochen in einem geheimen Raum in ihrem eigenen Keller entdeckt, kommt auch ihr Zweifel.

Als die junge Apothekerin Adelina das Zunfthaus besucht, entdeckt sie die schwer zugerichtete Leiche einer jungen Frau. Nur eine kurze Zeit später hört sie, dass der Verlobte der Toten, ein Zunftmeister, verschwunden ist. Es wird zunächst von einer Tat aus Eifersucht ausgegangen, doch kurz darauf wird er ebenfalls tot aufgefunden. Doch Adelina hat weitaus persönlichere Probleme im Kopf, als diesen Fall - bis plötzlich Münzen bei ihr auftauchen. Diese entstammen dem Bestechungsgeld der Patrizier, was zur Folge hat, dass Adelina in Verdacht gerät die Stadt Köln verraten zu haben!

An exotic mystery set in 11th-century Japan....Akitada is on his way to the bedside of his dying mother when bad weather forces him to take refuge in a temple whose central treasure is a brilliantly painted hell screen. Perhaps its violent imagery influences his dreams: that night he is awakened by a terrible scream.

It's only after Akitada returns to his family and a scene of domestic unhappiness and scandal that the significance of that cry becomes clear.

Five years after the war, Amie Stilwell, a photo interpreter for an Allied unit in England, returns to her hometown in Maine. Jobless and discouraged but stubbornly resourceful, she’s starting over in the same coastal village where her life once went so wrong. Waiting for her is Shibby Travis, the surrogate mother with whom Amie never lost touch. But the unexpected also awaits…

When Lady Emma Percival's father dies, leaving her penniless and alone, she fears that she will end up on the streets. Help is at hand, albeit from an unlikely source, when it transpires that her father has appointed his greatest enemy to be her guardian. The Duke of Liscarroll is a cold-hearted brute whom Emma spars with at every turn, but soon their angry altercations turn to something else entirely....

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?

Set in Pasadena, California, in the 1920s, this fresh, funny romance follows the exploits and adventures of a medium who caters to the rich and famous... and puts the “con” in conjurer!

Esme Quentin is devastated when her sister Elizabeth is assaulted and left unconscious, miles from her home. Two days later Esme discovers that Elizabeth has a secret past. Desperate for answers which the comatose Elizabeth cannot give, Esme enlists the help of her friend Lucy to search for the truth, unaware of the dangerous path she is treading. Together they unravel a tangle of bitterness, blackmail, and dubious inheritance, and as the harrowing story is finally revealed, Esme stumbles upon evidence of a pitiful crime.

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 3 and 4 of the 1950s Cozy Mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Lee Strauss!

Egypt, 1914. It is the beginning of the war and Gareth Owen, Mamur Zapt and Head of Cairo’s Secret Police, is given the unhappy task of rounding up enemy aliens. But, in a land where adoption of foreign nationality is a popular means of avoiding trial by an Egyptian court, determining who counts as German proves contentious. And then there’s the face in the cemetery.

When a brutal dance marathon in the suburbs of Boston in 1932 turns deadly, Dr. Haley Higgins is surprised to discover the deceased is the widow of a man whose body still lies in the cold cabinets of her morgue. She has reasons to believe the man’s death wasn’t natural, and now, with his wife having succumbed to the same symptoms, her convictions of foul play are stronger than ever.

Investigative reporter Sam Hawke, alias Mrs. Samantha Rosenbaum, is the first on the scene—what luck!—when a body is found in the yard of St. Stephen’s Church on Hanover Street in Boston. Dr. Haley Higgins, the assistant Chief Medical Examiner, finds the modus operandi of the crime eerily familiar to that of her brother’s, an unsolved murder that has plagued her for years.