Historical Thriller

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950 - and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

Having enjoyed her tour of the Scottish countryside, Lady Violet Belmaine is reluctant to return to London. Her escort, Hugh St. Sevier, suggests a detour to the Lakes, where his former army connections have invited him to renew old acquaintances. Violet is happy to enjoy the breathtaking scenery, but all is not right with St. Sevier’s friends.

Lady Violet Belmaine ponders that conundrum while traveling from London to rural Scotland at the invitation of an old friend. Escorted by her dashing physician friend, Hugh St. Sevier, Violet prepares to again subject herself to a nuptial celebration—except that the groom fails to appear. Matters become more interesting when Violet discovers that Sebastian MacHeath is laird of the nearest castle and well acquainted with the bride and her family.

In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate. Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions.

Edinburgh, 1911: When Maud McIntyre and her lady’s maid, Daisy, form a detective agency, they never dream their first case will take place at a glamorous house in the Scottish Highlands. But when the duchess of Duddingston, concerned that a notorious jewelry thief will target her lavish weekend party, employs Maud to go undercover as a guest to find the culprit, the agency has its first case to solve....

As the first Axis aircraft streak across English Channel airspace, so begins a battle for the ages; one that will determine the trajectory of the war. Braced for engagement on their individual fronts, the Littlefields plumb the depths of courage and ingenuity to defend their beloved Britain. Fresh from the slaughter of Dunkirk, youngest brother Jeremy is called upon to create a French Resistance network composed of former naval officers. At MI-9 headquarters, Claire Littlefield has devised an intelligence coup that could change the tide of the war.

London 1884. Electricity pioneer Simon Borthwick lights up Victorian London with a stunning illuminations display - then shoots himself in a hansom cab. Plucky Fleet Street reporter Penny Green witnesses the inventor's death and suspects the clue to his suicide lies in a mysterious letter he left behind. But can she persuade Inspector James Blakely of Scotland Yard that a crime has been committed? Borthwick isn't the only person who died that day, and Penny soon encounters a shadowy world which the police can't get close to.

One of the best-selling Western writers of all time, William W. Johnstone established three of the genre’s most enduring characters in Matt and Smoke Jensen and their stalwart friend Preacher. In Helltown Massacre,, the family Jensen lands squarely in the crosshairs of a railroad tycoon trying to run the iron horse through Paiute territory. To protect the land, three honest men will face half a hundred hired guns—impossible odds, unless you’re a Jensen.

The shocking murder of Sir Henry Claybourne leaves Regency London shaken and horror-struck. But for genteel spinster Miss Emmeline St. Germaine, the crime slices far too close to home. Just hours before the knight's death she held a dagger to him, threatening him to stay silent as she rescued a scullery maid he had procured for his pleasure. Did the man - or woman - who murdered the knight know of her visit? Her secret identity at risk, her reputation and life in jeopardy, Emmeline must solve the crime or face scandalous exposure and ruination for a crime she did not commit.

Jack Garrison lost his wife and their only child in a car accident, and thereafter lost his faith. In this dramatic novel, the 33-year-old skeptic experiences the mysterious wonder of being caught up in visions, dreams, and real-life experiences. Listeners journey with Jack throughout the Holy Land and also globally, from his home in London to the furthest corners of the world.

In the town of 34 Corners, Colorado, Matt Jensen rides into a savage blood feud. Thirty years ago two friends came West and built a thriving cattle business. Now, their families have become kill-crazy enemies and the town is awash in a frenzy of killing. Add in hired gunmen on both sides of the fight, and two lovers crossing the dividing line, and the terror will never end. Eager to put as many miles between himself and 34 Corners, Matt Jensen just can't bring himself to leave without trying to stop the bloodshed.

A series of grisly murders rocks London. At each location, only a jumble of bones remains of the deceased, along with a bizarre sphere covered in strange symbols. The son of the latest victim seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes and his former partner, Dr. John Watson. They discover the common thread tying together the murders. Bizarre geometries, based on ancient schematics, enable otherworldly creatures to enter our dimension, seeking to wreak havoc and destruction.

In the year of our Lord 1141, August comes in golden as a lion, and two monks ride into the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul bringing with them disturbing news of war...and a mystery.

After slipping 150 years into the past, modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson has embraced her new life in Victorian Scotland as housemaid Catriona Mitchel. Although it isn’t what she expected, she's developed real, meaningful relationships with the people around her and has come to love her role as assistant to undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie. Mallory, Gray, and McCreadie are on their way to the Scottish Highlands for McCreadie's younger sister's wedding.

In the winter of 1835, young Charles Dickens is a journalist on the rise at the Evening Chronicle. Invited to dinner at the estate of the newspaper's co-editor, Charles is smitten with his boss' daughter, vivacious 19-year-old Kate Hogarth. They are having the best of times when a scream shatters the pleasant evening. Charles, Kate, and her father rush to the neighbors' home, where Miss Christiana Lugoson lies unconscious on the floor. By morning, the poor young woman will be dead.

It’s the autumn of 1890, and a spate of bombings has hit London. The newspapers are full of fevered speculation about anarchists, antimonarchists and Fenians. But one man suspects an even more sinister hand behind the violence. Sherlock Holmes believes Professor Moriarty is orchestrating a nationwide campaign of terror, but to what end? At the same time, a bizarrely garbed figure has been spotted on the rooftops and in the grimy back alleys of the capital.

In a strange room in Morocco, Mary Russell is trying to solve a pressing mystery: Who am I? She has awakened with shadows in her mind, blood on her hands, and soldiers pounding on the door. Out in the hivelike streets, she discovers herself strangely adept in the skills of the underworld, escaping through alleys and rooftops, picking pockets and locks. She is clothed like a man, and armed only with her wits and a scrap of paper containing a mysterious Arabic phrase. Overhead, warplanes pass ominously north.

Eighteenth-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone travels to the English countryside to unravel a tangled web of mystery, medicine, and murder in this captivating new novel from Tessa Harris. A man staggers out of his cottage into the streets of Oxfordshire, shattering an otherwise peaceful evening with the terrible sight of his body shaking and heaving, eyes wild with horror. Many of the villagers believe the devil himself has entered Joseph Makepeace, the latest victim of a "great fog" that darkens the skies over England like a biblical plague.

At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.

Hidden beneath her British reserve, Edwina has a secret: she’s finished her novel and is bravely mailing the manuscript to a publisher. Beryl also has a secret: as thanks for solving a case, the American adventuress has been gifted an airplane. After swooping over the fields and hedgerows of Walmsley Parva, livestock scattering beneath her, she flamboyantly lands the plane on the village green, prompting a startled Edwina to consider a stiff gin fizz. Beryl’s aircraft is not the only disruption of village peace. Miss Dinsdale, a psychic medium, has started holding séances.