Historical Mystery Women Sleuth

When an old archeologist friend gives Mary Russell a curled scrap of papyrus, Mary is startled to see that it is covered with Greek symbols. The writing may be a letter from an unknown-female-apostle. Soon the old friend has been murdered, the Holmes' cottage has been ransacked, and Mary is faced with a particularly dangerous and painful investigation. From the solitude of the English countryside to the dark teeming streets of London, A Letter of Mary carries the two quick-witted sleuths through a maze of clues and cul-de-sacs.

Jane Austen—sparkling, spirited and incredibly clever—is suddenly thrust into a mystery when a milliner’s dead body is found locked inside a cupboard during the middle of a ball. When Jane’s brother Georgie is found with some jewellery that belonged to the deceased, the local officials see it as an open-and-shut case, one which is likely to end with Georgie’s death. Jane is certain that her brother is innocent, and that there is much more to the murder than meets the eye.

In return for a random act of kindness, scholar Li Bai Chang presents young cook Kat Holloway with a rare and precious gift - a box of tea. Kat thinks no more of her unusual visitor until two days later when the kitchen erupts with the news that Lady Cynthia's next-door neighbor has been murdered.

Reporter sleuth Poppy Denby is asked to investigate the mysterious death of an up-and-coming female scientist in an Oxford laboratory known as the Crystal Crypt. The official verdict is that Dr June Leighton died in a tragic accident, but Dr Leighton's lab assistant believes it was murder. However, when Poppy discovers that the colleague has spent time in a mental institution and has an unresolved murder in her own past, Poppy wonders if she is being misled. Then, another female academic is attacked, and Poppy herself becomes a target.

At her friend Ivy's behest, Lady Emily Ashton reluctantly agrees to attend a party at the sprawling English country estate of a man she finds odious. But the despised Lord Fortescue is not to be her greatest problem.

Twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is back at Buckshaw at last, but her homecoming is overshadowed by news of her father's illness. Forbidden from visiting him in hospital, Flavia busies herself in the village, but she soon makes a macabre discovery: the corpse of a reclusive woodcarver in an empty house, except for a curiously uncurious cat. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. However, what awaits Flavia will shake her to the core.

The year is 1928, and after the death of a maid at a glamorous society party, fortune heir Bryan Guinness seizes life and proposes to 18-year-old Diana, the most beautiful of the six Mitford sisters. The maid's death is ruled an accident, and the newlyweds put it behind them to begin a whirlwind life. Accompanying Diana as her lady's maid is Louisa Cannon, as well as a coterie of friends, family and hangers on, from Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh. When a second victim is found in Paris in 1931, Louisa begins to see links with the death of the maid two years previously.

Within just a couple of days, detective Leo Schultz’s life unravels. His son Rick is kidnapped and horrifically murdered. The very next day, Schultz’s car runs over a little girl, and he is identified by witnesses as the driver. Only his partner, PJ Gray, believes in his innocence. For city officials, this is not the end of it, as key members of the law and order systems are successively taken down.

December 1935. Director Monty Harrison's production of A Christmas Carol has had a troubled run on its tour of regional theatres. With tensions amongst the cast running high, the company reach their final stop—London's Theatre Royale. Catastrophe, however, strikes on opening night: Scrooge dies on stage, the result (it is presumed) of a heart attack. But the show must go on. Until, that is, a leading theatre critic—and old rival of Monty's—is killed backstage.

When young cook Kat Holloway learns that the children of London's Foundling Hospital are mysteriously disappearing and one of their nurses has been murdered, she can't turn away. She enlists the help of her charming and enigmatic confidant Daniel McAdam, who has ties to Scotland Yard, and Errol Fielding, a disreputable man from Daniel’s troubled past, to bring the killer to justice. Their investigation takes them from the grandeur of Mayfair to the slums of the East End, during which Kat learns more about Daniel and his circumstances than she ever could have imagined.

Spirited debutante Lady Olivia McLeod, cherished daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Strathaven, has two interests: solving mysteries and winning the love of her rescuer and secret crush, the infamous Duke of Hadleigh. When Livy joins Lady Charlotte Fayne's charity for young ladies and discovers that it is a front for a covert investigative agency, she is thrilled. Livy dedicates herself to solving a deadly case. Little does she realize that the path to danger will also lead to her heart's deepest desire.

Miss Sparks finds herself followed, then approached, by a young woman who has a very personal connection to a former paramour of Sparks. But something is amiss, and it seems that Iris’s past may well cause something far more deadly than mere disruption in her personal life. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn is struggling to regain full legal control of her life, her finances, and her son—a legal path strewn with traps and pitfalls.

A classmate from Oxford University introduces Mary to Margery Childe, the charismatic spiritual leader of the New Temple of God. Curious about Margery’s popular teachings, Mary begins attending temple meetings. But when Margery’s followers—all well-bred, well-heeled young women—become targets for murder, Mary senses something sinister lurking within the walls of the temple. With Holmes at her side, she plunges headlong into the most dangerous investigation of her life.

1937. War with Germany is dawning, and a civil war already raging in Spain. Split across political lines, the six Mitford sisters are more divided than ever. Meanwhile their former maid Louisa Cannon is now a private detective, working with her policeman husband Guy Sullivan.

1894. A well-respected academic is found dead in a gentlemen’s convenience cubicle at the British Museum, the stall locked from the inside. Professor Lance Pickering had been due to give a talk promoting the museum’s new 'Age of King Arthur' exhibition when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Having forged a strong reputation working alongside the inimitable Inspector Abberline on the Jack the Ripper case, Daniel Wilson is called in to solve the mystery, and he brings his expertise and archaeologist Abigail Fenton with him.

In 1887 New York City, Nellie Bly has ambitions beyond writing for the ladies pages, but all the editors on Newspaper Row think women are too emotional, respectable and delicate to do the job. But then the New York World challenges her to an assignment she'd be mad to accept and mad to refuse: go undercover as a patient at Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for women.

Travelling at high speed in her beloved Hispano-Suiza, accompanied by her maid and trusted companion, Dot; her two adoptive daughters, Jane and Ruth; and their dog, Molly, The Hon Miss Phryne Fisher is off to Queenscliff. She'd promised everyone a nice holiday by the sea with absolutely no murders, but when they arrive at their rented accommodation that doesn't seem likely at all.

The eccentric Olive Kettering swore someone was trying to harm her. Too bad no one listened, though plenty wanted her dead. When Olive is shot and killed, Mrs. Jeffries has no problem speaking her mind to see justice served.

When a fellow passenger is found dead on Audrey's packet ship from France, a mysterious note on the body points to her as the killer. Detained in Dover for an inquest that is being led by a prejudiced magistrate, she is joined by trusted friends and family—and the newly minted viscount, Hugh Marsden—to prove her innocence. But when it's discovered the murdered man was a private inquiry agent, hired to follow the duchess while she traveled the Continent, they enter a race to find out who hired him and why.

The Great War is over - but in Ireland, in the wake of the bloody 1916 Easter Rising, anyone who served in France is now considered a traitor, including Nurse Eileen Flynn and former soldier Michael Sullivan, who only want to be married in the small, isolated village where she grew up. Even her grandmother is against it, and Eileen’s only protection is her cousin Terrence, who was a hero of the Rising and is still being hunted by the British.