Historical Suspense Women Sleuths

It's with a heavy heart that Jane Austen takes up a new residence at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Secretly mourning the lost love of her life, she's stunned to learn that the late Lord Harold Trowbridge has made her heir to an extraordinary bequest: a Bengal chest filled with his diaries, letters, and most intimate correspondence. From these, Jane is expected to write a memoir of the Gentleman Rogue for posterity. But before she can put pen to paper on this labor of love, she discovers a corpse in the cellar of her new home.

Harlem, 1927. Twenty-seven-year-old Louise Lloyd has found the perfect job! She is the new manager of the Dove, a club owned by her close friend Rafael Moreno. There Louise meets Nora Davies, one of the girls she was kidnapped with a decade ago. The two women—along with Rafael and his sister, Louise’s girlfriend, Rosa Maria—spend the night at the Dove, drinking and talking. The next morning, Rosa Maria wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the previous night. Nora is lying dead in the middle of the dance floor.

Called to Chinatown to deliver a baby, midwife Sarah Brandt soon helps search for a missing girl. But nobody seems to know where she is. Has she been sold to a brothel, or has she run off with a secret love?

Amory Ames is a wealthy young woman who questions her marriage to her notoriously charming playboy husband Milo. Looking for a change, she accepts a request for help from her former fiance, Gil Trent. Amory accompanies Gil to the luxurious Brightwell Hotel in an attempt to circumvent the marriage of his sister Emmeline to Rupert Howe, a disreputable ladies' man. Amory sees in the situation a grim reflection of her own floundering marriage.

New York Times best-selling Grand Master Elizabeth Peters is at her stylish and suspenseful best in a richly woven tale of greed, treachery, and murder set against the tumultuous backdrop of wartime intrigue.

On vacation from London on the beautiful Italian coast, 28-year-old Elena Standish and her older sister Margot have finally been able to forget some of the lasting trauma of the Great War. Touring with her camera in hand, Elena has found new inspiration in the striking Italian landscape, and she's met an equally striking man named Ian. Not ready to part from one another, she and Ian share a train trip home to England. But a shocking murder disrupts their agenda, forcing Elena to personally deliver a message to Berlin that could change the fate of Europe.

Lord Francis and Lady Ottilia Fanshawe have suffered a devastating blow. With Ottilia sunk deep into a depression, Francis is desperate to get his beloved wife back. So when he hears about a murder at the seaside town of Weymouth, an idea starts to form.... A young girl's body has been discovered, laid out in an open coffin, surrounded by candles. The staged scene, and the fact that the victim was a member of a theatrical troupe, suggests one of her colleagues is the killer. Knowing Ottilia's sharp intuition and penchant for solving mysteries, Francis brings her to the murder site.

After the funeral of her mother, Sally, Alice Kent is approached by a man named Angus Tweedy. He claims to be her father and tells her that he served time in prison for marrying Sally bigamously. What does he hope to gain telling her this now, 30 years on? How can her adored dad Ralph not be her true father? And why did her mother betray her so badly? She had accepted Sally's many faults and her reluctance to never speak of the past. But faced with this staggering deception, Alice knows she must uncover the whole truth about her mother. Whatever the cost.

The monsoon has started and as Bombay grapples with rain-induced chaos, a new case arrives at Malabar House. A man has been found frozen in the foothills of the Himalayas, near the town of Dehra Dun, his face crushed. The case is handed to the unflappable Inspector Persis Wadia and the man is christened 'The Ice Man' by the national media. Who is he? How long has he been there? Why was he killed?

The first three books of the acclaimed Ginger Gold Mystery series by USA Today best-selling author Lee Strauss: Murder on the SS Rosa, Murder at Hartigan House, and Murder at Bray Manor. It's 1923, and young war widow fashionista Ginger Gold makes a cross-Atlantic journey with her companion Haley Higgins to London England to settle her father's estate. When the ship's captain is found dead, Ginger is only too happy to lend her assistance to the handsome Chief Inspector Basil Reed.

Former policeman Frank Malloy is frustrated when a woman requests his private detective services to implicate her wealthy husband in adultery, the only legal grounds for divorce in New York state. Although Mrs. Bing seems genuinely distressed about her marriage and desperate to end it, she refuses to tell Frank the reason she absolutely must divorce her husband and admits she has no legal grounds. Frank explains he won't manufacture evidence for her and sends her on her way.

It is 1864 when Lizzie Martin takes up the post of companion to a wealthy widow who is also a slum landlord. Lizzie is intrigued to learn that her predecessor disappeared, supposedly having run off with an unknown man. But when the girl's body is found in the rubble of one of the recently demolished slums around the prestigious new railway station at St Pancras, Lizzie begins to wonder exactly what has been going on.

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.

In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely business venture-The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous-and never discussed-past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family.

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.

Sherlock Holmes has received a call for help from an old friend. The Reverend Barring-Gould, noted parson and folklorist, wants Holmes to investigate some strange sightings. When Mary Russell realizes where their search will take them, however, her blood runs cold. A ghostly coach and giant dog have been glimpsed on Dartmoor—the chilling landscape of the Hound of the Baskervilles. As Holmes and Russell work through a challenging tangle of evidence, gossip, and legend to uncover the truth, the grey mystery of the moor swirls around them.

Frank Malloy has never known any life other than that of a cop, but his newfound inheritance threatens his position within his department. While trying to keep both his relationship with Sarah and his fortune under wraps, he' s assigned to a new case - finding a missing young woman for her worried father, Henry Livingston. It seems the girl had been responding to "lonely hearts" ads in the paper for months before she disappeared.

Get swept away to the glamor of a 1950's department store where four women's loyalties, vanity, friendship, and detective skills are put to the test. These four women have much to dislike about each other, but they unanimously agree that Mr. Wynton is the best of employers and must be protected at all costs from someone who seems determined to see him gone for good. When other employee deaths occur, can the women band together to solve the murders, or will they discover it is one of their own bent on destroying Wynton's from within?

India’s only female lawyer, Perveen Mistry, is compelled to bring justice to the family of a murdered female Parsi student just as Bombay’s streets erupt in riots to protest British colonial rule. Sujata Massey is back with this third installment to the Agatha and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning series set in 1920s Bombay.

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.