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.

Looking forward to the joys of connubial bliss, newlyweds Lady Emily and Colin Hargreaves, diplomats of the British Empire, set out toward Turkey for an exotic honeymoon. But on their first night in the city, a harem girl is found murdered, strangled in the courtyard of the Sultan's lavish Topkapi Palace. Sir Richard St. Clare, an Englishman who works at the embassy in Constantinople, is present and recognizes the girl as his own daughter who was kidnapped twenty years earlier. Emily and Colin promise the heartbroken father that they'll find her killer.

The new decade is going well for Edgar Stephens and his good friend the magician Max Mephisto. Edgar is happily married, with children, and promoted to Superintendent. Max has found fame and stardom in America, though he's now back in England for a funeral, and a prospective movie job. Edgar's new wife, though - former detective Emma - is restless and frustrated at home, knowing she was the best detective on the team. But when an investigation into a string of disappearing girls begins, Emma sees her chance to get back in the action. She begins her own hunt.

The Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles. Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?

Isle of Iona, 1927: Cast away on a remote locale, Jane’s latest assignment depends on concealing her identity and blending in at an occult gathering. Not even her fiancé, Redvers, can be too close as she uncovers the truth about Robert Nightingale, enigmatic leader of the Order of the Golden Dawn—a group made up of supernatural ceremonies, influential people, and an undefinable darkness. When a woman tries to escape to the mainland only to be found murdered in the moors, the shocking scene reveals it’s easier to join the Golden Dawn than it is to leave.

Though the Great War is nearing its end, the fighting rages on. While waiting for transport back to her post, Bess Crawford meets Captain Alan Travis from the island of Barbados. Later, when he's brought into her forward aid station disoriented from a head wound, Bess is alarmed that he believes his distant English cousin, Lieutenant James Travis, shot him. Then the captain is brought back to the aid station with a more severe wound, once more angrily denouncing the lieutenant as a killer.

Who did the deed? Having chanced upon some clues, budding sleuth Lottie tries to make sense of mysterious conversations and bare-faced lies. She's assisted by her trusty dog, Rosie, and the local delivery boy. But when a second body is found, her theories come undone.

Los Angeles, 1943. As the Allies beat back the Nazis in the Mediterranean and the United States military slowly closes in on Tokyo, Walt Disney cranks out wartime propaganda and the Cocoanut Grove is alive with jazz and swing every night. But behind this sunny façade lies a darker reality. Up in the lush foothills of Hollywood, a woman floats lifeless in the pool of one of California’s trendiest hotels. When Maggie Hope learns that this woman was engaged to her former fiancée, John Sterling, and that he suspects her death was no accident, intuition tells her he’s right.

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.

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career elsewhere, mostly abroad. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Birmingham, England, as a research fellow and assistant professor. Birmingham, however, is no Venice, so when she gets word of a position back home, Caterina jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one.

Nora Kenny makes the occasional journey on the Staten Island ferry to work in Prudence's Fifth Avenue house, just as her mother once served Prudence's mother. As little girls, they played freely together, before retreating into their respective social classes. Still, they remain fond of each other. But when Nora slips away to Saint Anselm's one chilly Saturday to confess her sins and never returns, Prudence is alarmed. And when Nora's body is discovered in a local park, Prudence is devastated.

In Secrets of the Nile, Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, have joined his formidable mother on a holiday to visit the exotic treasures of Egypt. Their host, Lord Bertram Deeley, is a renowned amateur British collector of antiquities, who has invited his closest friends on a lavish cruise up the Nile to his home at Luxor. But on the first night of their journey, he suddenly collapses after offering a welcome toast, a victim of the lethal poison cyanide. Who amongst this group of his nearest and dearest would want to kill their generous host?

It is every mama's dearest wish that her daughter marries well. But how to ensure that a seemingly earnest suitor is not merely a fortune hunter? Rosalind is involved in just such a case, discreetly investigating a client's prospective son-in-law, when she is drawn into another predicament shockingly close to home.

May 1890: As NYU Law School finally agrees to admit female law students, Judge MacKenzie's daughter, Prudence, weighs her choices carefully. Chief among her concerns is how her decision would affect the Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law agency and her professional and personal relationship with the partner who is currently recuperating from a near fatal shooting.

A murder case. A love triangle. And a plucky journalist smack in the middle...England, 1922. Crime reporter Lillie Mead wants to take the country by storm. While her handsome fiancé hopes she'll quit her dangerous line of work, the journalist dreams of taking her talents national. When she's called in to cover the murder of a wealthy duke, she puts her relationship troubles on hold to focus on locating the crime's sole witness before the killer does...

December, 1919. Clever crime reporter Lillie Mead hoped to celebrate a peaceful Christmas in the English countryside. But when a close friend's colleague turns up dead, Lillie knows there'll be little festive spirit until she unwraps this mystery. Following the clues to the wintery Scottish Highlands, she hopes to stop the killer cold before the next body hits the snow. But after she connects the victims to a clandestine wartime committee, she puts herself firmly in the murderer's sights.

April, 1940. Hitler is invading Denmark on Tuesday. Olivia Redmond has only a weekend to bring a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and his war-altering research to Britain. The scientist and his wife want to leave, but their troublesome daughter will do anything to stop her parents from departing. When the daughter’s German fiancé is murdered, the police refuse to let anyone depart until they find the killer. If Olivia wants to escape Denmark with the chemist and his breakthroughs, she will have to unmask the killer before the Nazis stop her forever.

In the Spring of 1926, the corpses of three men are found in shallow graves off the beaten path in Epping Forest outside of London - each shot through the heart and bearing no identification. DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, the lead detective, is immediately given two urgent orders by his supervisor at the Yard: solve the murders quickly and keep his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, away from the case! Thankfully, Daisy's off visiting their daughter at school. But when a teacher is found dead, Daisy is once again in the thick of it.

Plagued with guilt, Freda Simonson, the only witness to the murder of the landlord of Langcliffe's tavern, believes that her testimony may have convicted the wrong man, but when she passes, the case seems closed. It just so happens, though, that Freda's nephew is courting the renowned amateur sleuth Kate Shackleton, who has decided to holiday in Langcliffe with her teenage niece, Harriet.

Lady Violet Belmaine emerges from two years of mourning less than enthusiastic about resuming her place in Polite Society. She’s talked into attending a country house party by her French physician friend, Hugh St. Sevier, only to find that the house party guests are preyed upon by a mysterious thief.