Historical House Mysteries

París, 1897. Un hombre escribe sentado a una mesa en una habitación abarrotada de muebles: he aquí al capitán Simonini, un piamontés afincado en la capital francesa, que desde muy joven se dedica al noble arte de crear documentos falsos.

Hombre de pocas palabras, misógino y glotón impenitente, el capitán se inspira en los folletines de Dumas y Sue para dar fe de complots inexistentes, fomentar intrigas o difamar a las grandes figuras de la política europea. Caballero sin escrúpulos, Simonini trabaja al servicio del mejor postor.

When Mr. Rushworth, the former husband of Edmund's sister Maria, is discovered dead in his home, Jonathan and Juliet find themselves with problems far weightier than the marriage market. In one of the greatest scandals of its day, Maria abandoned her new husband in favor of the notorious rake Henry Crawford, and when he wouldn't marry her, was forced to flee to the continent in disgrace. Now Maria is back, accompanied by a daughter she claims Mr. Rushworth fathered after their divorce—and who he wrote into his will just before his death.

On Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a ten-minute televised speech announcing his resignation as Soviet president. Moments later, with little pomp and less circumstance, the red flag was lowered from its floodlit perch atop the Kremlin, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Into the vacuum—before a new democracy had time to put down roots—surged the Russian mafia, supplying what the new state could not: krysha, or “roof”—protection for the privately owned businesses sprouting across the country.

Bernie Gunther had his first brush with evil as a policeman in 1930s Berlin and came to know it intimately as a private eye under the Nazis, when each case drew him deeper into the enormities of the regime. Now the war is over and Gunther's in Vienna, trying to clear an old friend of the murder of an American officer.

Evie, Countess of Woodridge, is on a mission to rescue her favorite modiste from the consequences of an unfavorable review. Her quest is a timely diversion as her granny, Toodles, appears to be suffering from a case of restlessness. All goes well until Evie's public clash with the journalist responsible for the article is followed by the journalist's death. The circumstances are suspicious and the police is warning Evie to stay away from the case. While she is happy to comply with the detective's request, the killer has other ideas and goes one step too far . . .

In vivid, brilliant fiction that illuminates the dark psychology of soldiers, Jeff Shaara brings to life the familiar characters, stunning triumphs, and soul-crushing defeats of the fascinating, long-forgotten Mexican-American War.

Destined to be a classic, Sweeping Up Glass is a tough and tender novel of love, race, and justice, and a ferocious, unflinching look at the power of family. Olivia Harker Cross owns a strip of mountain in Pope County, Kentucky, a land where Whites and Blacks eke out a living in separate, tattered kingdoms and where silver-faced wolves howl in the night. But someone is killing the wolves of Big Foley Mountain - and Olivia is beginning to realize how much of her own bitter history she’s never understood: Her mother’s madness, building toward a fiery crescendo.

For years, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have ridden roughshod over rabble-rousers and gun hands in troubled towns like Appaloosa, Resolution, and Brimstone. Now, newly appointed as Territorial Marshalls, they find themselves traveling by train through the Indian Territories.

The restorative power of the ocean brings Jane Austen and her beloved brother Henry, to Brighton after Henry’s wife is lost to a long illness. But the crowded, glittering resort is far from peaceful, especially when the lifeless body of a beautiful young society miss is discovered in the bedchamber of none other than George Gordon—otherwise known as Lord Byron. As a poet and a seducer of women, Byron has carved out a shocking reputation for himself—but no one would ever accuse him of being capable of murder.

The master of military historical fiction turns his discerning eye to the Korean War in this riveting new novel, which tells the dramatic story of the Americans and the Chinese who squared off in one of the deadliest campaigns in the annals of combat: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as Frozen Chosin.

It is ancient Rome, and Gordianus the Finder has a knack for finding trouble. Known to many as the one man in the ancient world who can both keep a secret and uncover one, Gordianus lays bare some of his most intriguing and compelling adventures.

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.

One old copy of the novel Rebellion sits in Lena Knecht’s tote bag, about to accompany her on a journey from New York to Berlin in search of a clue to the hand-drawn map on its last page. It is the brilliantly captivating voice of this novel—a first edition nearly burned by Nazis in May 1933—that is our narrator. Fast-paced and tightly plotted, The Pages brings together a multitude of dazzling characters, real and invented, in a sweeping story of survival, chance, and the joys and struggles of love.

Jane Austen is enjoying August, 1806, among Derbyshire's craggy peaks, sparkling streams, and cavernous gorges. That is, until she discovers the corpse of a young gentleman whose blond curls and delicate features suggest the face of an angel.

For more than a century, one of the world's great treasures, a 600-year-old copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy, has been safely housed at Bombay's Asiatic Society. But when it vanishes, together with the man charged with its care, British scholar and war hero John Healy, the case lands on Inspector Persis Wadia's desk. Uncovering a series of complex riddles written in verse, Persis - together with English forensic scientist Archie Blackfinch - is soon on the trail. But then they discover the first body.

In 1912, John Wade and his brother, William - children of the American consul - were kidnapped off the street in Chungking, China, and raised in the house of Eunuch Chang, the city's master criminal. Twenty-five years later, John is the eunuch's most valuable ward, a trained assassin and swindler, and William has become a talented forger. On the brink of World War II, China is in chaos. When William betrays Eunuch Chang and escapes to central China, a place of ferocious warlords and bandits, John begins a desperate search to save his brother.

La Europa turbulenta de los años treinta y cuarenta del siglo XX es el escenario de las andanzas de Lorenzo Falcó, ex contrabandista de armas, espía sin escrúpulos, agente de los servicios de inteligencia. Durante el otoño de 1936, mientras la frontera entre amigos y enemigos se reduce a una línea imprecisa y peligrosa, Falcó recibe el encargo de infiltrarse en una difícil misión que podría cambiar el curso de la historia de España.

Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America's greatest cities, some of Louis L'Amour's most compelling fiction was set in his own time. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gangsters and beauties, private investigators and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend.

1929: Miss Clara Vale is a woman ahead of her time. Rather than attending Oxford to bag an eligible Duke (as her mother, Lady Vale, so desperately hoped), she threw herself into a degree in chemistry, with aspirations to become a scientist in her own right. But the world isn't ready for Clara. Unable to land a job in science because she's a woman, she is stuck behind the desk at a dingy London library. Until her estranged Uncle dies suddenly, leaving her his private detective agency, and laboratory, in his will.

Berlin, 1878: Der Gauner Felix Blom wird nach drei Jahren Haft aus dem Kittchen entlassen. Doch in Freiheit ist nichts mehr so, wie es war: Seine Wohnung wurde weitervermietet, sein Geld gepfändet und seine Verlobte ist mit jemand Neuem liiert. Alle Versuche, an Geld oder Arbeit zu kommen, scheitern. Doch dann kommt Blom eine Idee: Warum sich nicht mit der neuen Nachbarin zusammentun? Die ehemalige Edelprostituierte Mathilde führt eine Privatdetektei, doch die Aufträge sind rar, da man ihr als Frau diese Arbeit nicht zutraut.