Historical Suspense Women Sleuths

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.

This series features a real historical figure—the formidable Ela Longespée. The young Countess of Salisbury was chosen to marry King Henry II’s illegitimate son William. After her husband’s untimely death, Ela served as high sheriff of Wiltshire, castellan of Salisbury Castle, and ultimately founder and abbess of Lacock Abbey.

Taking on the responsibilities that come with being Lady Lyndhurst, Stella is eager to embrace yuletide traditions in the Edwardian English countryside and use her strong social influence for good. Her world becomes so consumed with starting a horse farm charity for the holidays that she barely notices the usual oddities attached to her upper crust lifestyle. At least, not until items vanish from her bedroom and maligned housekeeper, Mrs. Nelson, becomes seriously ill—only to be found dead in the cold on Mistletoe Lane.

In this fifth delightful entry, Anthony and Agatha Award nominee Susan Wittig Albert re-imagines Beatrix Potter wearing her sleuthing cap as the village of Sawrey lies buried beneath a blanket of Christmas snow. While she and her animal friends investigate a puzzling death, Miss Potter wonders if she can acknowledge her fondness for Mr. Heelis and still remain loyal to her fiancé’s memory.

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.

With London's streets deserted, a young flower girl is murdered. But why was she out so late on the foggiest night of the year? Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard has nowhere to even begin looking for a suspect. However, Mrs. Jeffries, his housekeeper, is even more accomplished at detection than she is at household management. A policeman's widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the inspector in the right direction to solve the mystery.

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.

When a local publican is murdered, Inspector Witherspoon takes Mrs. Jeffries' advice to heart. He is going to trust his own instincts - but that keeps Mrs. Jeffries in the dark. She must rouse the household staff to action and hope the Inspector doesn't arrest the wrong person before they can solve the crime.

London's social season is in full swing, and Victorian aristocracy can't stop whispering about a certain gentleman who claims to be the direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. But he's not the only topic of wagging tongues. Drawing rooms, boudoirs, and ballrooms are abuzz with the latest news of an audacious cat burglar who has been systematically stealing valuable items that once belonged to the ill-fated queen. Light gossip turns serious when the owner of one of the pilfered treasures is found murdered, and the mysterious thief develops a twisted obsession with Lady Emily Ashton.

In this second installment of Carola Dunn's cozy mystery series set in 1923 England, plucky Daisy Dalrymple embarks on another assignment for Town and Country magazine and discovers that daffodil bulbs aren't all that's buried in a country estate's flower bed.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

Cantankerous and vinegar-tongued Grandmama, from Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, is the leading character in this Christmas novel, which unfolds in the chilly, windswept Romney Marshes off the English Channel. Grandmama arrives on a holiday visit to the home of Charlotte's parents, where a fellow guest--an outcast from her own family--is subsequently murdered. Like the heroes before her in Anne Perry's Christmas novels, Grandmama is called upon to play the role of amateur detective.

Late one night in April 1958, a filing assistant at Miss Brickett's receives a letter of warning, detailing a name, a time, and a place. She goes to investigate but finds the room empty. At the stroke of midnight, she is murdered by a killer she can't see - her death the only sign she wasn't alone. It becomes chillingly clear that the person responsible must also work for Miss Brickett's, making everyone a suspect.

London, 1817. The London Season is beginning once more, and Lily Adler’s return to her home on Half Moon Street feels different this year. No longer a recent widow, she has a life and friends waiting for her. Lily also has new responsibilities in the form of her protégée Amelia, the sister of her longtime friend Jack Hartley, who is escaping her own brush with scandal and murder. It doesn’t take long for Lily’s growing reputation as a lady of quality who can discreetly find what is missing or solve what is puzzling to bring a desperate young woman to her doorstep.

It all sounds simple enough as Phryne sets new investigations into motion. But when greed and fear are the motivating factors, people become ruthless and Phyrne quickly finds herself enmeshed in blackmail, secrets, lies and the dangerous influences of deep magic.

Jack the Ripper begins his reign of terror. Miss Sarah Bain, a photographer, supplements her meager income by taking illicit boudoir photographs of the town's local ladies of the night. But when two of her models are found gruesomely murdered within weeks of one another, Sarah begins to suspect it's more than mere coincidence.

Harriet Andover had no intention of dying young like her silly siblings had. She intended to outlive them and outdo them as she always had. But Harriet discovers that the best intentions can lead to murder when she is strangled inside her mansion with a house full of holiday guests. As much as Inspector Witherspoon enjoys his job delivering justice, the last thing he wanted was a complicated murder case just a week before Christmas. He soon discovers that Harriet's own husband and grown stepchildren are not overcome with grief and neither are most of her friends.

Molly Murphy - now Molly Sullivan - is a year into her marriage, expecting her first child, and confined to the life of a housewife. She’s restless and irritable in the enforced idleness of pregnancy and the heat of a New York summer in 1905. So when a trip to the post office brings a letter addressed to her old detective agency asking her to locate a missing Irish serving maid, Molly figures it couldn’t hurt to at least ask around, despite her promise to Daniel to give up her old career as a detective. On the same day, Molly learns that five babies have been kidnapped in the past month.

When Inspector Witherspoon becomes the main suspect in a murder case, Scotland Yard refuses to let him investigate. But no one said anything about Mrs. Jeffries and her polished detection skills, proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crime solver's work is never done.

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate?