Historical House Mysteries

A violent assault on a door-to-door salesman leaves the man's life hanging in the balance as Barbara, Craig, and Deputy Elwood search for answers. Was it the victim's estranged wife? A business competitor? A dissatisfied customer?

In the early 1600s, Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, ruled Čachtice Castle in the hinterlands of Slovakia. During bizarre nightly rites, she tortured and killed the young women she had taken on as servants. A devil, a demon, the terror of Royal Hungary — she bathed in their blood to preserve her own youth. 400 years later, echoes of the Countess’s legendary brutality reach Aspen, Colorado.

When Indian Princess Alexandrina is left penniless by the sudden death of her father, the Maharaja of Brindor, Queen Victoria grants her a grace-and-favor home in Hampton Court Palace. Though rumored to be haunted, Alexandrina and her lady's maid, Pooki, have no choice but to take the Queen up on her offer. Aside from the ghost sightings, Hampton Court doesn't seem so bad. The princess is soon befriended by three eccentric widows who invite her to a picnic with all the palace's inhabitants, for which Pooki bakes a pigeon pie. But General-Major Bagshot dies after eating said pie....

Septiembre, 1907. Movido por los celos, el joven traductor ruso Nikolái Naumov dispara contra el conde Kamarowski en su palacio de Venecia al saber que contraerá matrimonio con la mujer que ama en secreto. Cuando el conde muere, la investigación policial apunta a su prometida, la condesa Tarnowska, como instigadora del crimen pasional junto con otro de sus amantes, el abogado Donato Prilukov.

DECEMBER 1942. As the war rages on, the accidental death of a young man is almost unremarkable. Except this young man was patrolling the grounds of Hursley Park House, where teams are designing crucial modifications to the Spitfire. JANUARY 1943. Josephine Fox is given a code name and a mission as she is seconded to Hursley: uncover the network responsible for information leaks to the enemy. And when the dead man's father visits Bram Nash convinced that his son was innocent of espionage and the victim of murder, her friend is also drawn into the investigation.

Barbara Hollis has barely settled into the sleepy little town where her brother is sheriff, when a shocking crime rocks the community. Thanks to a peculiar new friend she has made and an unexpected prize she has won at a plasticware party, Barbara finds herself dragged into a dangerous mystery.

After months of travel, former maid Lottie Sprigg returns to Fortescue Manor in the rolling hills of Shropshire. Her arrival coincides with a celebratory dinner to mend a family feud. But the flow of champagne dwindles to a trickle when a body is found in the library. Who committed the atrocity? Suspicion falls on several characters: some above stairs and some below....

In a time of war, nowhere is safe. While World War Two rages, Cat Carlisle runs a women’s refuge to protect beaten wives. But when one of the women is found dead in the woods behind the house, Cat’s world shatters. Was the killer a violent husband seeking revenge? A secret lover? Or is something more dangerous at play? Because Cat and her fiancé, Thomas, have a secret: they’re hiding a precious golden chalice, keeping it locked safely away from the plundering Nazis until the war is over. But someone wants that treasure, and no one will be safe until they get it....

Jeremy Walker is accused of killing his wife. The sheriff's sister, Kate Hammond, applies for the job as his housekeeper in order to try and find the proof they need to hang Jeremy. However, Kate never suspected she'd fall in love with the man. Her new mission is to find out who really killed Helen Walker to clear Jeremy's name. When the real killer is revealed, it sets Kate in a tailspin of grief and heartbreak.

Moments before the wedding, Christopher Sterry finds the groom, his twin brother, murdered. One would expect Christopher to become the next Earl of Longford. No one would be surprised if he married his twin's almost-bride, Helen Grove. She is, after all, his closest friend and confidante. Except Christopher is deaf in an inflexible world that believes a deaf mute is no better than a barbaric half-wit, unfit to be an earl and quite capable of murdering his brother.

Dive into the secret, ancient, powerful world of two New Orleans families, the Deschanels and the Sullivans.

Annie Darling's yuletide preparations have been put on hold because her mother-in-law, Laurel, has taken to chatting up ghosts in the local graveyard. Across Broward's Rock, onetime movie star Marguerite Dumaney Ladson has called together all of her kin and their exes for a gala celebration. Among the honored guests are Annie's father and Dr. Emory Swanson. Ladson has fallen for Swanson's new-age-pseudo-occult gobbledygook. Right after the announcement that she's leaving her fortune to the charlatan's Evermore Foundation, there's a murder.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the first original novel to feature Ben the Cockney tramp, the unorthodox detective character created by J. Jefferson Farjeon, author of Mystery in White. Strange things are happening in the untenanted houses of Jowle Street. There are unaccountable creakings and weird knockings on the door of no.29, where a homeless ex-sailor has taken up residence.

Professor Moriarty’s new client is the manager of a West End theater. He’s three weeks away from opening his Christmas pantomime, the expensive spectacle that pays for the rest of the year. But after months of freak accidents and spooky incidents, the cast and crew are convinced the show is cursed. Worse, he’s out of money, and the rent is due.

This novel has been in the works since its beginning in 2005 when a century and half old colonial style home was restored by the author and his wife, Barbara. For over twelve months, the house did an amazing transformation, the third time since its original construction in 1845. The first time it was restored was 1861. The second time in 1932 and the last time in 2005.

Mary Handley is a not your typical late-nineteenth century lady. She's fiery, clever, daring—and she’s not about to conform to the gender norms of the day. Not long after being fired from her job at the hat factory for insubordinate behavior, Mary finds herself at the murder scene of Charles Goodrich, the brother of a prominent alderman and former bookkeeper of Thomas Edison.

Lord Sugawara Akitada, the senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice, must find the mysterious killer of a man condemned to live in exile for a crime he did not commit. Meanwhile, Akitada's retainer, Tora, investigates the sudden death of a blind street singer, whose past life is a bigger mystery than anyone thought. Told in Parker's clever, vivid prose, The Convict's Sword is a must-read for those who love well-written mysteries in an exotic setting.

Twenty years after the Holocaust and the Nazi reign of terror, Thor, a neo-fascist organization born out of the Nazi defeat in Europe, is ready to take over the United States. Rabbi Ben Zvi Kantorwicz, an escapee from Auschwitz, and his organization the Aleph Bet, is determined to stop them from achieving their objective - new world order of blond-haired, blue-eyed super people with a hand-raised American president as its Fuhrer, continuing the policies and philosophy of the Third Reich.

After closing a case with the Brooklyn Police Department, Mary Handley is determined to become an official detective in her own right. And when Emily Worsham shows up at her new office— convinced her uncle John Worsham was murdered and desperate for answers—Mary’s second assignment begins.

What started as a routine investigation of three small-time criminals with seemingly little in common exploded into a conspiracy of nation-toppling proportions. Walt is a hardened NYPD detective assigned to a case that takes him from the seedy underbelly of Harlem to the weird and haunted world of 1950s Haiti. True crime writer Paul Merlino (author of Homicides in Harlem) brings to light the true story of a series of murders that connected politicians, the mob, and even intelligence agencies that threatened the very ecosystem of the delicately poised Caribbean life.