Historical Fiction Romance Mystery

From the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she's expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments--especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s--Luisa's work remains stuck in the past decoding messages from World War II. When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather's work, her father's identity, and why she has never progressed.

Phoebe Atkinson is what society might call unconventional. Instead of marrying well like other women born to wealth, she chose to be a schoolteacher. Not to mention she lives in a leaky flat in an unfashionable part of town rather than stay in her parents’ mansion. But when her most promising pupil goes missing she has only one option: beg her sister’s best friend, the powerful Duke of Ellis, for help.

A few days before Christmas 1939, Dr. Benjamin Bones is in a "Bah, humbug" sort of mood. It's the coldest winter on record, his country is at war, and his love life has run aground. But magic as well as mysteries abound in Cornwall. When Ben makes a bargain with an elfin little man, it leads him to an old woman who longs to make amends - and a chance for Ben to show that certain someone how much he cares.

London,1925. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Devenand Hunter finds himself in the middle of a series of upper-class deaths in London. Bright young people are being extinguished in their favorite night spots, from a sleazy private jazz club to the Savoy ballroom. Dev knows just the person to help him navigate the treacherous society waters: Lady Adelaide Compton, a marquess's daughter and widow of a Great War hero. Unfortunately, he has put her in jeopardy once before, nearly leading him to turn in his warrant card.

When assassin Rafe Fletcher returns home to London, he can’t help falling for his brother’s woman. For a man looking for redemption, it’s the last thing he wants. Lizzie Croft has feared her friend’s brooding brother for years. She remembers him as cold, calculating and dangerous, the very last man she needs in her life. The very last man she can trust. But trust him she must when she becomes the prime suspect in a murder.

Justine DeCabrillac, daughter of the nobility whose parents died in the chaos of the Revolution, is rescued from a decadent child brothel by a woman of the French Secret Police. Justine, too, becomes a great spy for France. Attacked on a rainy London street, Justine knows only one man can save her: Hawker, her oldest friend - her oldest enemy. London is crawling with hidden assassins, and someone is out to frame Hawker for murder. The two spies must work together to find who's out to destroy them.

Lady Priscilla Dalloway’s twin brother took a job as trainer to Lord Cromarty - and then promptly disappeared. For Pris, finding her brother means seducing notorious cad Dillon Caxton. Dillon claims to have set aside his devilish ways and forged an impeccable reputation as Keeper of the Register for racehorses. He resists all women, and lets absolutely no one view the information he safeguards. But Lady Priscilla Dalloway is no ordinary temptress and she means to work her way into Dillon’s books.

England, 1817. Captain Lacey takes a post as a secretary at the Sudbury School in Berkshire, a school for sons of the wealthiest merchants and bankers in England. As soon as he arrives, Lacey discovers that he's been hired for more than his letter-writing skills. A series of disturbing pranks have kept the school in an uproar, and the headmaster expects Lacey to discover the identity of the prankster. The problems intensify when a groom from the school's stables turns up dead in a lock of the nearby canal.

She witnessed a murder - and now her life is in danger. Fifteen year-old Belle, though raised in a London brothel, is an innocent. But when she witnesses one of the girls brutally strangled by a client, she is cast into a cruel, heartless world. Snatched from the streets and sold into prostitution, she is made a courtesan in New Orleans.

The Pink Carnation, history's most elusive spy and England's only hope for preventing a Napoleonic invasion, returns in Lauren Willig's dazzling, imaginative new historical romance. The Masque of the Black Tulip opens with the murder of a courier from the London War Office, his confidential dispatch for the Pink Carnation stolen.

Notorious rake Alexander Sinclair, Earl of St. James, takes pride in displaying his sins. When he's tasked by the Home Office with finding the men who attempted to assassinate the prime minister, his hunt leads him to Olivia Everett, a proper schoolmistress who wants nothing to do with a profligate nobleman like him. Unknown to her, Olivia's brother Henry has been working with the revolutionary group planning to overthrow the government. Olivia agrees to help the persuasive earl. But the closer they get to uncovering the villains, the more Alec and Olivia will need to trust each other.

Emma Cadbury had been an innocent, a whore, a charity worker, and a surgeon. She chose a life without love until she saved a dying soldier in a charity ward. Brandon Rohan had lost himself to drugs and degradation, wanting to die, and only one person could save him. But she’d disappeared. Now they’ve come together again, but he doesn’t remember, and she doesn’t want to. But someone is trying to kill her, and Brandon is the one man who can save her.

1792, England: Lord Francis and Lady Ottilia Fanshawe are on their way home when their coach comes to a sudden stop. A woman is standing in the middle of the road - covered in blood. The woman refuses to speak but on further investigation they find the body of a man hidden in the woods. Ottilia insists on bringing the woman home to find out what occurred. But the more she finds out the more complicated the case becomes....

Carlyn Kearney spends two lonely years not knowing whether to mourn or to hope after she receives word from the Union Army that her husband is missing. When the war ends without further word, Carlyn finds herself penniless, in debt, and forced from her home. With nowhere else to go, she seeks refuge at the Shaker village of Harmony Hill. The Shakers profess peace through simple living, but to Carlyn the Shaker life seems anything but simple.

National best-selling author Ariana Franklin resumes her Mistress of the Art of Death series with A Murderous Procession. In 1176, King Henry II’s daughter is set to marry the king of Sicily. But when several wedding guests are murdered during the procession, Adelia must uncover who is behind the killings and who is the killer’s real target.

December 1943. In the years before the rise of Hitler, the Gerber family’s summer cottage was filled with laughter. Now, as deep drifts of snow blanket the Black Forest, German dissenter Franka Gerber is alone and hopeless. Fervor and brutality have swept through her homeland, taking away both her father and her brother and leaving her with no reason to live.

The wooded hills of Oxfordshire conceal the remains of the aptly named Ashdown House - a wasted pile of cinders and regret. Once home to the daughter of a king, Ashdown and its secrets will unite three women across four centuries in a tangle of romance, deceit, and destiny....

The instant Captain Declan Frobisher lays eyes on Lady Edwina Delbraith, he knows she's the woman he wants as his wife. The scion of a seafaring dynasty accustomed to success, he discovers that wooing Edwina is surprisingly straightforward - not least because she makes it plain that she wants him as much as he wants her.

The year is 1803 and England and France remain at odds. Hoping to break the English once and for all, Napoleon backs a ring of Irish rebels in uprisings against England and sends the Black Tulip, France's most deadly spy, to the Emerald Isle to help. Meanwhile, not to be outdone by her husband, Letty Alsworthy steals away on a ship bound for Ireland, armed and ready to fight for her spouse and to learn a thing or two about spying for England.

The Pyrates is all the swashbucklers that ever were, rolled into one great technicoloured pantomime - tall ships and desert islands, impossibly gallant adventurers and glamorous heroines, buried treasure and black spots, devilish dons and ghastly dungeons, plots, duels, escapes, savage rituals, tender romance and steaming passion, all to the accompaniment of ringing steel, thunderous broadsides, sweeping film music, and the sound of cursing extras falling in the water and exchanging period dialogue.