Historical Fiction Romance Mystery

Lord Francis and Lady Ottilia Fanshawe have suffered a devastating blow. With Ottilia sunk deep into a depression, Francis is desperate to get his beloved wife back. So when he hears about a murder at the seaside town of Weymouth, an idea starts to form.... A young girl's body has been discovered, laid out in an open coffin, surrounded by candles. The staged scene, and the fact that the victim was a member of a theatrical troupe, suggests one of her colleagues is the killer. Knowing Ottilia's sharp intuition and penchant for solving mysteries, Francis brings her to the murder site.

There's no such thing as privacy in the tiny village of Birdswing. Everywhere Dr. Benjamin Bones turns, someone is spying from a window, listening through a wall, or gossiping over a garden fence. "The birds sing in Birdswing," says the vicar, Father Cotterill; and in February 1940, this is more true than ever. Waiting for Hitler to make his move and turn this "Phony War" into the real thing, Ben's fellow villagers are desperate for a distraction.

Left at an orphanage as a child, Thea Reed vowed to find her mother someday. Now grown, her search takes her to Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin, in 1908. When clues lead her to a mental asylum, Thea uses her experience as a postmortem photographer to gain access and assist groundskeeper Simeon Coyle in photographing the patients and uncovering the secrets within. However, she never expected her personal quest would reawaken the legend of Misty Wayfair, a murdered woman who allegedly haunts the area and whose appearance portends death.

Fitzwilliam Darcy has avoided the entrapments of desperate maidens seeking a wealthy husband…until the Netherfield Ball. There's just one problem: The lady does not want him. Elizabeth Bennet seeks a brief respite from the crowded halls only to find herself wrapped in the arms of the one man she despises—Mr. Darcy.

In the twilight of a November evening, Sir Henry, a man of wealth and charm, comes across a badly beaten Eliza, desperate to escape her cruel stepfather. Realizing she has nowhere to go, Sir Henry takes her to his home in Mayfair. There, as she recovers, Henry introduces her to a world of art and literature she never knew existed. But her brutal world follows her to London, where the salons of the aristocratic elite coexist with the back alleys of the criminal underworld.

Eli Hunter needs a woman who can act her way onto any Covent Garden stage. He needs a woman with steely determination and a cunning mind. A woman who can help him recover a stolen artifact owned by a secret society. But he encounters a problem. The only detective available stirs a passion that could soften the hardest heart - a terrifying prospect for a man who’s survived the worst kind of betrayal. Can Rachel and Eli work together and suppress their obvious attraction? When thrown in the midst of danger, will they find something infinitely more precious than a stolen artifact?

February, 1906. As the personal secretary of the recently departed duke of Olympia - and a woman of scrupulous character - Miss Emmeline Rose Truelove never expected her duties to involve steaming through the Mediterranean on a private yacht, under the prodigal eye of one Lord Silverton, the most charmingly corrupt bachelor in London. But here they are, improperly bound on a quest to find the duke's enigmatic heir, current whereabouts unknown. Maximilian Haywood was last seen at an archaeological dig on the island of Crete.

A gifted but troubled physician, Blue Calhoun runs a thriving medical practice from his Nob Hill mansion in San Francisco while raising his son alone after an unthinkable tragedy. Then one day a female fugitive with a gunshot wound appears in Blue's surgery. Even though she holds a pistol aimed at his heart, the desperation in her eyes awakens Blue's compassion. Reluctantly he is drawn to her fragile beauty, her nerves of steel, and the mystery surrounding her circumstances.

Nell Martin is moving again, this time to the Winslow Grand Hotel, built in 1878. As Nell is settling in, strange things begin to happen. Doors lock of their own accord, writing appears on bathroom walls - and most horrifying of all - visions of a dead boy permeate her waking life. Thinking it was her mind playing tricks on her, she soon finds the past and the present colliding as she learns horrific details of a murder that happened at the hotel in 1907 involving a girl named Lea.

Three innocent debutantes must work to solve the mysterious death of their childhood friend. With undaunted determination they pledge to not only expose the man responsible for their friend's tragic death on her wedding night, but to also uncover other unscrupulous men of the ton who would jeopardize the future of other young women.

Prince Hywel has called all the bards of Wales to him for a music festival to mark the third anniversary of his rule over Ceredigion. He has invited all the lords of Wales too, including his father, his uncle, and his neighbor to the south, King Cadell. But with the highborn also come the low: thieves, spies, and other hangers-on. And when a murderer strikes as the festival starts, Gareth and Gwen are charged with discovering his identity - before the death of a peasant shakes the throne of a king.

Summer 1764. Alec and Selina anxiously await the birth of their first child at their estate in Kent. It should be a time of family celebration, but the death of a young poacher has Alec investigating murder. And when renovations to his sprawling manor unearth a secret burial chamber, a shocking family secret comes to light. Everything Alec thought he knew about his birth is again called into question, and with it the special bond with his irascible uncle Plantagenet.

Jesse Marley calls herself a realist; she's all about the here and now. But in the month before Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding in 1981, all her certainties are blown aside by events she cannot control. First, she finds out that she's adopted. Then she is run down by a motorbike.

Felicia Oakes is the illegitimate daughter of…well, someone or other. A pirate, perhaps, or a spy, or a royal prince…who knows? Her vivid imagination conjures a myriad possibilities, all more exciting than her position as governess to two motherless children. But when their father is drowned aboard the Brig Minerva, Felicia must take them to their new guardian in the North of England, where her life is about to be turned upside down.

Someone wants Alyce Hythe dead…Shunned from London society for being the daughter of England's most notorious spy, Alyce Hythe desires only to clear her father's name. For years, she has been hidden away from all prying eyes, given a new identity and told to forget who she was. But strange things have been happening causing old rumors to once more be whispered. Long has Lord Julian Casvelyn lived with guilt brought on when his brother was murdered by England's most infamous traitor. But one eventful night has changed everything Lord Julian believed about his brother's death.

In 1914, while visiting her friend Madeleine, Lady Elspeth Douglas's life is thrown into chaos when war breaks out and the Germans quickly overrun Belgium, threatening France. Having just agreed to marry Alain, Madeleine's dashing brother, Lady Elspeth watches him leave to join his unit, and then she sets out for England, only to find herself trapped on the French coast.

Fleeing the attentions of the handsome and commanding Marquess of Darkefell, Lady Anne Addison arrives on the doorstep of a dear friend seeking nothing but rest and relaxation, but soon finds herself putting her investigative talents to work after a sighting of the Barbary Ghost. Always a skeptic of the supernatural, Lady Anne immediately suspects the apparition is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to conceal smugglers on the beach below her friend's house.

The handsome Viscount Trent finally makes up his mind to accede to the pleadings of his family and get married. He is twenty-seven and for a long time they have been begging him to take a wife and produce an heir to his illustrious title, his famous stately home and his vast estate. On the whole he finds debutantes extremely boring and has enjoyed a number of affaires-de-coeur with older married women. However there is one girl, Marigold Marlow, he considers outstanding and she is the acknowledged great beauty of the Season.

It is the spring of 1945, and in a dusty, remote community, the world’s most brilliant minds have come together in secret. Their mission: to split an atom and end a war. But among those who have come to Robert Oppenheimer’s "enchanted campus" of foreign-born scientists, baffled guards, and restless wives is a simple man in search of a killer. Michael Connolly has been sent to the middle of nowhere to investigate the murder of a security officer on the Manhattan Project.

In The Orchid Affair, Willig introduces her strongest heroine yet. Laura Grey, a veteran governess, joins the Selwick Spy School expecting to find elaborate disguises and thrilling exploits in service to the spy known as the Pink Carnation. She hardly expects her first assignment to be serving as governess for the children of Andre Jaouen, right-hand man to Bonaparte's minister of police....