Historical Mystery Women Sleuth

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.

With The Witch Doctor’s Wife, Tamar Myers delves into her personal history as the daughter of Christian missionaries in the Belgian Congo. Rich and alive with the sights and sounds of the continent—as exciting, evocative, charming, and suspenseful as Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels—Myer’s unforgettable excursion to colonial Africa recalls Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, even the Academy Award-nominated film Blood Diamond.

London, 1883. Actress Lizzie Dixie drowned in the River Thames, so how was she murdered five years later in Highgate Cemetery? Intrepid Fleet Street reporter Penny Green was a friend of Lizzie's, and Scotland Yard needs her help. Does Penny unwittingly hold clues to Lizzie's mysterious death? Penny must work with Inspector James Blakely to investigate the worlds of theater, showmen, and politicians in search of the truth. But who is following her? And who is sending her threatening letters?

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue.

It's 1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?

New York Times best-selling master of suspense, Elizabeth Peters, brings an exotic world of adventure, intrigue, and danger to vivid life, in a tale as powerful as ancient Egypt.

Fiona Mahoney stands in the ashes of her hopes, facing her tempting adversary, Inspector Grayson Croft. Her sins are about to spill from her lips, when he says the one thing that could dispel all thoughts of revelation or redemption. Someone is leaving the corpses on London's cobbled streets, and a name is being whispered in the fearful shadows. The name, against which Fiona would sell her very soul for vengeance: Jack the Ripper. Old enemies and new friends join Fiona, as she chases a relentless evil through the streets of Victorian London.

Returning to her childhood home, Lady Kiera Darby hopes her beloved brother Trevor and the merriment of the Hogmanay Ball will distract her. But when a caretaker is murdered and a grave is disturbed at nearby Dryburgh Abbey, Kiera is once more thrust into the cold grasp of death. While Kiera knows that aiding in another inquiry will only further tarnish her reputation, her knowledge of anatomy could make the difference in solving the case.

Another day, another dead woman in Ellison Russell's study. Only this one claimed to be Mrs. Anarchy Jones. As Ellison juggles mothers, daughter, unhappy wives, and near-miss murder attempts, one thing is clear - someone will go to any lengths to hide the truth. Can Ellison and Anarchy catch a killer before the body count rises? Or will Ellison be the next corpse in the study?

When an executed original of a secret treaty between England and France, known as the French Treaty, is stolen from the country estate of Lord Halifax, Scotland Yard asks Joanna, Dr. John Watson, Jr., and Dr. John Watson, Sr., to use their detective skills to participate in the hunt for the missing treaty. As the government becomes more restless to find the missing document and traditional investigative means fail to turn up the culprit, Joanna is forced to devise a clever plan to trap the thief and recover the missing treaty.

There is only one place Kendra Donovan wants to travel - back to her own time period in the 21st century. But since that's not happening, she agrees instead to travel with her new guardian, the Duke of Aldridge, to one of his smaller estates in Lancashire. Their journey takes them through Yorkshire, a region whose breathtaking beauty masks a simmering violence brought on by the Industrial Revolution, which pits mill owner against worker.

Chicago, 1938. Late one night, before the 10:00 show, the body of a prominent radio actress is found dead in the station's lounge. All the evidence points to murder and one young up-and-coming radio actress, Vivian Witchell, as the next victim. But Viv isn't the type to leave her fate in the hands of others - she's used to stealing the show. Alongside charming private detective Charlie Haverman, Vivian is thrust into a world of clues and motives, suspects and secrets. And with so much on the line, Viv finds her detective work doesn't end when the "On-Air" light goes out.

October 1832. Kiera is enjoying the slower pace of the English countryside. She, Sebastian, and their infant daughter have accompanied her father-in-law, Lord Gage, home so that he can recuperate from the injuries he sustained in a foiled attempt on his life. But as the chill of autumn sweeps across the land, they receive a summons from an unexpected quarter. Lord Gage's estranged uncle—a member of the notorious Roscarrock family—has been murdered, and his family is desperate for answers. Despite Lord Gage's protests, Kiera and Sebastian press on to Cornwall to assist.

It sounds idyllic: a leisurely drive through the sun-drenched landscape of Provence. But Charity's dream holiday turns into a nightmare when she becomes embroiled in a sinister plot to kidnap a young boy. She soon finds herself in a deadly pursuit and must uncover whom to trust...and whom to fall for.

Peacetime has brought little respite for Verity Kent. Intrigue still abounds, even within her own family. As a favor to her father, Verity agrees to visit his sister in Wiltshire. Her once prosperous aunt has fallen on difficult times and is considering selling their estate. But there are strange goings-on at the manor, including missing servants, possible heirloom forgeries, and suspicious rumors - all leading to the discovery of a dead body on the grounds. While Verity and her husband, Sidney, investigate this new mystery, they are also on the trail of an old adversary.

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day - with her nephew, Derek, and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Belinda, in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy.

New York City, 1899. Tillie Pembroke’s sister lies dead, her body drained of blood and with two puncture wounds on her neck. Bram Stoker’s new novel, Dracula, has just been published, and Tillie’s imagination leaps to the impossible: the murderer is a vampire. But it can’t be - can it? A ravenous reader and researcher, Tillie has something of an addiction to truth, and she won’t rest until she unravels the mystery of her sister’s death.

Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, owns a building in the heart of 19th-century London, a place she uses under pseudonyms to front for her investigative work. Employed there is a porter - Joddy, a young boy in a uniform festooned with buttons - whose even younger brother substitutes for him when he's sick. But Paddy disappears after one day at the job, and Enola Holmes is alerted to this by the still ill Joddy.

When Nicole Rayburn adds a historic bookshop to her list of promotional venues, she meets the owner, Deborah Dolan, who’s desperate to discover what happened to her Victorian ancestor. A well-respected playwright, Edgar Hilliard seemingly had it all: professional success, a thriving business, and a loving family, but according to family lore, Edgar walked out one night, never to return, an unfinished manuscript his only legacy to future generations.

Charlotte Pitt’s mother, Caroline, travels with her young husband, Joshua Fielding, and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, where Dracula first touched English soil. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of Dracula by the daughter of Whitby millionaire Charles Netheridge, but the amateurish script produces a disastrous first read-through. As tempers flare and wind and snow swirl around Netheridge’s lonely hilltop mansion, a black-cloaked stranger emerges from the storm - an eerily opportune arrival, for this enigmatic figure, one Anton Ballin, turns out to be a theatrical genius.