Historical Fiction Thriller

As newspapers reported in the 1890s, a woman dubbed "Shakespeare" was found dead in a seedy hotel along the waterfront by Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. The chilling scene recalled for press and police alike Jack the Ripper’s victims in London. Panicked New Yorkers worked feverishly to halt that maniac’s spree from expanding across the Atlantic. The city only sighed relief after detectives abruptly arrested a traveling Algerian ex-soldier for the crime.

As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry - and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

For Captain Charles Hunter, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking, and the law of the land rests with those ruthless enough to make it. Word in port is that the galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is awaiting repairs in a nearby harbor. Heavily fortified, the impregnable harbor is guarded by the bloodthirsty Cazalla, a favorite commander of the Spanish king himself. With backing from a powerful ally, Hunter assembles a crew of ruffians to infiltrate the enemy outpost and commandeer El Trinidad, along with its fortune in Spanish gold.

It's AD 123, and the sun is shining on southern Gaul. Ex-military medic Ruso and his British wife, Tilla, are back after a long absence - but it's not the reunion anyone had hoped for. Ruso's brother has left him in charge of a farm he has no idea how to manage, a chronic debt problem, and a gaggle of accident-prone small children. Meanwhile his sister Flora has run away to rescue her boyfriend, who's accused of murdering a wealthy guest at a party.

In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor in rural Oxfordshire. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe’s life is in ruins. Over 150 years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items.

It's hard country, but the pioneers of Fury (Population 112) are banding together to make it a home. With barren lands, blinding dust storms, drought, hostile Indians and violent bands of cutthroat outlaws against them, death is never far away. It's enough to make Jason Fury, whose father the town was named after, ride out for San Francisco. But a fiery young redhead named Megan McDonald keeps him Arizona bound - and just in time.

When Frank Morgan gets to a town called Los Angeles, he can see the forces gathering around him. For the Spanish landowners, wealth is measured in cattle on the open range. For hard nosed oilmen, a fortune is in the ground - in the form of shining black crude oil.... When blood is spilled on the sun-seared land, Morgan allies himself with a beautiful, widowed rancher - even as he cuts a deal with an ambitious wildcatter. Morgan is not trying out treachery.

London, 1849. Charles Dickens has set up Urania Cottage as a sanctuary for fallen women. But he is shocked when the matron's assistant - Patience Brooke - is found hanging outside the property, covered in blood. Desperate to protect the reputation of the Home and to stop a scandal from spreading, Dickens takes the investigation into his own hands. With the help of his good friend, Superintendent Sam Jones of Bow Street, and a description of the suspect as "a man with a crooked face", Dickens's search takes him deep into the filthy slums of Victorian London.

In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive.

George Arrow, a good-looking, independently wealthym and single man of 36, has just been diagnosed with a weak heart. A heart so weak, his doctor tells him, he must go to extraordinary lengths to avoid putting the slightest strain upon it. On his doctor's advice, George packs up his life in Dublin and boards a train to the Bay of Galway where he intends to live quietly in a hotel and await the inevitable end. On the train, he meets John Burden, and as they chat, George realizes that his new acquaintance is an odious man.

Finally home in Kent after her recent adventures in Yorkshire and Cornwall, Lady Anne Addison is shocked to spy her erstwhile suitor, the Marquess of Darkefell, skulking around the gypsy camps near her property. Outraged that he has followed her there, she writes a scathing letter to him and his family, which brings Darkefell - and his denials that it was he - to Kent. Despite Darkefell's arrival, Anne is preoccupied with the troubles that plague her family and loved ones. Is it the old gypsy woman's curse that is making her friends ill, or something far more sinister?

Chief of the Intelligence Department Sir Leonard Wallace - bearing always the hallmark of coolness and wit - is up to his earlobes in trouble. Summoned by the Viceroy of India, he makes a rapid flight to India to investigate the mysterious death of British officer Major Elliot and the theft of some very important dispatches.

Sir Robert of Offord dies mysteriously just after accusing his new wife of adultery and his son-by-marriage wants the shire's new Crowner to prove the knight was murdered. Instead, Sir Faucon de Ramis discovers that a bell owned by the dead man is missing. But who could have taken it - the daughter who loved it as a child, the knight who wants it as collateral, or the prior who wishes to restore it to its holy purpose of calling the angels? Follow Warwickshire's new Servant of the Crown as Sir Faucon embarks on his most unusual and convoluted hunt yet.

A leper's daughter is found in the well of a dying hamlet, and the only suspect has fled into Feckenham Forest. But the sun is setting, and Warwickshire's sheriff is hunting his new crowner. That sends Sir Faucon de Ramis and Brother Edmund, his prickly clerk, racing for a nearby abbey only to meet the man he least wishes to see at the abbey gates. Before long, Faucon finds himself riding into the dark at Sir Alain's side as they hunt for yet another lost innocent.

As the Great Blizzard of 1888 cripples the vast machinery that is New York City, heiress Prudence MacKenzie sits anxiously within her palatial Fifth Avenue home waiting for her fiance's safe return. But the fearsome storm rages through the night. With daylight, more than 200 people are found to have perished in the icy winds and treacherous snowdrifts. Among them is Prudence's fiancé - his body frozen, his head crushed by a heavy branch, his fingers clutching a single playing card, the ace of spades.

Two-time Edgar Award-winner Rupert Holmes, author of the critically acclaimed Where the Truth Lies and creator of the Tony Award-winning musical whodunit The Mystery of Edwin Drood, now fuses gripping suspense and evocative music in an innovative novel of intrigue set in 1940, during the very heart of the Big Band era.

Weak in battle, powerless at court, and absent in the bedroom: the English crown has rarely sat less easily than on the head of Edward II. Inheriting the Plantagenet throne in a powerful position, Edward needs a wife to continue the dynasty - but the beautiful, charming Isabella fails to stir his heart like his close friend Piers Gaveston. Slighted and ignored, Isabella takes a new lover: the ambitious nobleman Roger Mortimer. Seduced by Mortimer's treachery, Isabella plots with him to murder her husband and take the throne.

Isobel Kingston is dead. Or so everyone believes. When a mysterious woman writes her last words in sand, Isobel steps out of the shadows to uncover the truth. As she plunges into a storm of betrayal, the winds are determined to throw Atticus Riot on her course, and the two detectives collide in a sea of madness and murder.

Atticus Riot took a bullet to his head the day his partner was killed. Three years later, Riot returns to San Francisco to put his ghosts to rest, but the abduction of an heiress snags his attention. Two ransom demands are delivered, and the husband of the abducted Isobel Kingston is hiding the truth. The clock is ticking. Can Riot find Mrs. Kingston in time, or will she become one more regret among many?

In the Mongollon Rim country of Arizona, Frank Morgan walked into a blood feud between two powerful cattle barons. When the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, Morgan had killed one of the men. Now, the dead man’s family wants revenge and the surviving rancher wants to silence Frank Morgan forever. Suddenly, the last gunfighter is on his own against a devil’s brew of murderous enemies. And amidst the lying and the killing is the beautiful young woman whose father Frank shot down - and one last thing worth dying to defend....