Historical Mystery Women Sleuth

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.

November, 1939. The British government has assembled a small group of intellectuals at an estate north of London as part of a top-secret codebreaking effort. Everything about it is clandestine. The facility is ringed with a veil of silence until one of the young female linguists is murdered. Britain's counterintelligence spymaster tasks Olivia Redmond with finding the killer and the motive. Olivia is sent in alone, without clues or suspects. Did the murder victim uncover a mole? Could Britain's program to break German enigma cyphers be compromised?

In the latest in Rhys Bowen's award-winning historical series, Molly Murphy is supposed to give up sleuthing now that she’s married, but the murder of an alderman puts her on the trail of a killer.

Sussex, 1881. Lady Helena Scott-De Quincy's marriage to Sir Justin Whitcombe, three years before, gave new purpose to a life almost destroyed by the death of Lady Helena's first love. After all, shouldn't the preoccupations of a wife and hostess be sufficient to fulfill any aristocratic female's dreams? Such a shame their union wasn't blessed by children...but Lady Helena is content with her quiet country life until Sir Justin is found dead in the river overlooked by their grand baroque mansion.

Phryne Fisher is doing one of her favorite things -dancing at the Green Mill (Melbourne's premier dance hall) to the music of Tintagel Stone's Jazzmakers, the band who taught St Vitus how to dance. And she's wearing a sparkling lobelia-coloured georgette dress. Nothing can flap the unflappable Phryne -especially on a dance floor with so many delectable partners. Nothing except death, that is.

March 1920: Life has turned unsettlingly quiet for former British Intelligence agent Verity Kent and her husband, Sidney. But even that false calm is about to end. As threats remain, the French authorities soon request Sidney's help with a suspect who claims to have proof of treason—shortly before she is assassinated. The murder of a Belgian lawyer aboard a train seems at first to be a simple case of revenge. But the victim was connected to British Intelligence, and possessed papers detailing the sinking of a gold-laden German ship during the war.

Tending to the soldiers in the trenches of France during the First World War, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford can't help but notice the photo of a young pilot's wife every time she tends to him. But then at the railway station, in a mob of troops leaving for the front, Bess glimpses a familiar face - the pilot's wife, with another man. Later, back in France, Bess sees a newspaper with a drawing of the woman's face on the front page. She'd been murdered - the very day Bess saw her.

Singapore, 1910 - Harriet Gordon has found fulfillment at last. Her young ward, Will, has settled into his new home with Harriet and her brother, Julian. And Harriet’s employment as a typist at the Straits Settlements Police Force has given her an intriguing way to occupy her time and some much-needed financial independence. But when her friend and employer, Inspector Robert Curran, is called to the scene of a brutal murder and Harriet is asked to comfort the victim’s family, her newfound sense of contentment is abruptly shattered.

When business magnate Robert Jeffreys announces his investment in airships, he hosts a promotional flight for a group of reporters. Working undercover in the crew is retired spy Augusta Peel. She’d rather be working on her book repair business, but Inspector Fisher of Scotland Yard has persuaded her to help with a surveillance operation. The press trip on the airship takes a turn when a body is found in a cabin. Can Augusta identify the murderer? It’s tricky to find a motive among the sophisticated passengers—some of them are sophisticated liars, too.

England 1928. Mystery writer Marius Quin receives alarming news from his sleuthing partner Lady Bella Montague that their childhood friends are in danger. Back in their charming village of Hurtwood, the three Heaton cousins have all been sent identical death threats. When the local constable refuses to help, it’s up to Marius and Bella to stop the would-be killer. But they arrive too late, and Marius finds his former best friend dead in his kitchen with a knife through the heart.

Fall, 1947. New York City. Private Investigator Ida Davis has been called to New York by her old partner, Michael Talbot, to investigate a brutal killing spree in a Harlem flophouse that has left four people dead. But as they delve deeper into the case, Ida and Michael realize the murders are part of a larger conspiracy that stretches further than they ever could have imagined. Meanwhile, Ida’s childhood friend, Louis Armstrong, is at his lowest ebb.

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.

1929: Girls are going missing in Melbourne. Little, pretty golden-haired girls. And not just pretty. Three of them are pregnant, poor girls from the harsh confines of the Magdalene Laundry. People are getting nervous. Polly Kettle, a pushy, self-important Girl Reporter with ambition and no sense of self-preservation, decides to investigate - and promptly goes missing herself. It's time for Phryne and Dot to put a stop to this and find Polly Kettle before something quite irreparable happens to all of them. It's all piracy and dark cellars, convents and plots, murder and mystery...and Phryne finally finds out if it's true that blondes have more fun.

Lady Rose Summer, the wayward Edwardian debutante who keeps getting mixed up in disreputable adventures, would swear she is not a jealous woman. After all, she knows her engagement to private detective Captain Harry Cathcart is only a ploy to keep her parents from shipping her off to India. But then Harry's latest client, Dolores Duval--a vision of curves with a seductive French accent--starts appearing everywhere at his side.

The former Beatrice Hyde-Clare is having a little trouble adjusting to her new situation. Now installed as the duchess of Kesgrave in elegant splendor in Berkeley Square, she is confounded by the stately residence’s seemingly endless array of rooms. And every time one of the maids addresses her as "your grace", she flinches.

Twenty-three-year-old Katy Speed is fascinated by the house across the street. The woman who lives there, Gloria, is the most glamorous neighbour on the avenue, owning a fashionable dress shop in Bexhill-on-Sea. But who is the woman who arrives in the black car most Saturdays while Gloria is at work? Sometimes she brings women to the house, other times they have children. Hilda, Katy's mother, disapproves of Gloria. She wonders if these mysterious visitors have just been released from prison. Is Gloria secretly bringing criminals, or worse, into the heart of the community?

Lady Violet has decided that life in noisy, crowded, busy London is simply not her cup of tea. Her search for a rural property to purchase must be set aside when she learns that Hugh St. Sevier has been accused of murder. Worse, the handsome physician is doing nothing to aid those trying to exonerate him. Though it requires outsmarting the magistrate, enlisting the aid of Sebastian, Marquess of Dunkeld, and literally poking around in the undergrowth, Violet is determined to prove her friend’s innocence—with or without St. Sevier’s cooperation.

A Yuletide dinner in West Brompton should have been a festive occasion, until the host, wealthy Stephen Whitfield, dropped dead before the second course. Now, Mrs. Jeffries and the busy sleuths must rally in support of their inspector, especially since the clues are harder to find than a silver sixpence in a plum pudding.

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King garners widespread acclaim for her suspenseful novels rich with historical detail. Set in the vibrant Paris Jazz Age, The Bones of Paris introduces private investigator Harris Stuyvesant, an American agent who’s been given the plum assignment of locating beautiful young model Philippa Crosby. But when Philippa’s trail ends at the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, Stuyvesant discovers a world where art meets sexual depravity - and where a savage killer lurks in the shadows.

An artist's model never shows up at Neville Grant's house...or so he claims. But when one of Mr. Grant's houseguests suddenly dies, the Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries have to work double-time to find both the missing model and the killer!