Historical Thriller

Framed for murder, Dewey "Mac" McKenzie is running for his life. Though Mac's never even made a pot of coffee, he talks his way onto a cattle drive heading west as a chuckwagon cook. Turns out he has a natural talent for turning salt pork and dried beans into culinary gold. He's as good with a pot and pan as he is with a gun, which comes in handy on a dangerous trail drive beset with rustlers, hostile Indians, ornery weather, and deadly stampedes. Mac can hold his own with any cowboy twice his age. At least until the real showdown begins . . .

New York Times best-selling author Amanda Quick returns to the exclusive seaside community of Burning Cove, where more than one person with a dark past has gone to reinvent themselves. But some secrets are just too deadly to stay hidden, and some pasts can never stay buried.

In 1814, Atlas Catesby, a brilliant adventurer and youngest son of a baron, is anxious to resume his world travels after a carriage accident left him injured in London. But his plans are derailed when, passing through a country village, he discovers a helpless woman being auctioned off to the highest bidder - by her husband. In order to save her, Atlas purchases the lady, Lilliana, on the spot to set her free. But Lilliana, desperate to be with her young sons and knowing the laws of England give a father all parental rights, refuses to be rescued.

The spunky Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson has returned to the exotic Nile valley. Parasol aloft and hot on the trail of an unexplored tomb, she must outwit a shadowy evildoer, a questionable antiquities dealer, and her loquacious son, Ramses.

An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar in London's Jewish ghetto. When the eccentric and enigmatic Barker takes the case, he must hire an assistant, and out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved", he chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man with a murky past.

Lady Violet returns with St. Sevier to her family seat, and finds Derwent Hall at sixes and sevens upon the occasion of her nephew’s christening. Other guests have brought their children along to celebrate the occasion, and Sebastian MacHeath is on hand to serve as godfather. Nobody seems to be getting along, despite the happy nature of the gathering. Summer heat builds to an unbearable crescendo as clandestine affairs, marital troubles, and family tensions escalate. Then somebody starts kidnapping little girls.

When a maid in the upper class Ellison household is strangled, Inspector Pitt is called in to investigate. He finds a world ruled by strict manners and social customs, where the inhabitants of the Ellison's neighborhood appear to be more outraged by the thought of scandal than they are by murder. Inspector Pitt finds a most unlikely ally in Charlotte, the Ellison's spirited daughter. But as the murders continue, Charlotte and Pitt find themselves drawn together by more than the investigation.

Garnering three RITAs and a Christy Award, Francine Rivers is acclaimed for classics like Atonement Child. Set in the 1850s Smoky Mountains, this Gold Medallion-winner tells the gripping tale of a girl who's desperate to remove the guilt of her sister's death and anxious to absolve her departed grandmother of sins. While seeking the elusive Sin Eater, she uncovers a hideous secret and finds the truth.

Frances Wynn, the American-born Countess of Harleigh, enjoys more freedom as a widow than she did as a wife. After an obligatory year spent mourning her philandering husband, Reggie, she puts aside her drab black gowns, leaving the countryside and her money-grubbing in-laws behind. With her young daughter in tow, Frances rents a home in Belgravia and prepares to welcome her sister, Lily, arriving from New York - for her first London season.

Seventeen-year-old Lady Alexandra is strong-willed and sharp-tongued - in a house full of older brothers and their friends, she had to learn to hold her own. Not the best makings for an aristocratic lady in Regency London. Yet her mother still dreams of marrying Alex off to someone safe, respectable, and wealthy. But between ball gown fittings, dances, and dinner parties, Alex, along with her two best friends, Ella and Vivi, manages to get herself into what may be her biggest scrape yet.

What happened to Dr. Jonathan Brandon, a dashing RAF flight surgeon, who disappeared from London in 1945? Kidnapping? Murder? Or did Brandon merely vanish of his own free will, seeking another life? American teacher Anne Howard is stunned by a different explanation - that her British grandmother's long-lost fiance was unwillingly wrenched back through time to Elizabethan England. Anne knows time travel is nonsense - until she is handed a fresh-cut thornless rose, a bloom extinct for over 400 years.

Amelia Peabody embarks on her first Egyptian adventure armed with unshakable self-confidence, a journal for her thoughts, and, of course, a sturdy umbrella. On her way, she rescues Evelyn Barton-Forbes, who has been "ruined" and abandoned on the streets of Rome by her lover. With a typical disregard for convention, Amelia promptly hires her fellow countrywoman as a companion and takes her to Cairo, where strange visitations and a botched kidnapping convince Amelia that there is a plot afoot to harm Evelyn.

RITA Award finalist and Christy Award winner Julie Klassen delivers historical romances brimming with the eloquence and intensity of Jane Austen. In an abandoned gatehouse on an old estate, Mariah Aubrey lives in seclusion. She supports herself by writing novels in secret—at a time when such writing is considered improper and unladylike. Soon the wealthy and ambitious Captain Bryant leases the estate and is intrigued by the beautiful girl in the gatehouse.

Society's eligible women are in mourning. Lord Peter Wimsey has married at last, having finally succeeded in his ardent pursuit of the lovely mystery novelist Harriet Vane. The two depart for a tranquil honeymoon in a country farmhouse but find, instead of a well-prepared love nest, the place left in a shambles by the previous owner. His sudden appearance, dead from a broken skull in the cellar, only prompts more questions. The honeymoon is over, as Lord Peter and Harriet Vane start their investigations.

The indomitable Amelia Peabody and her husband, known to many as "the Father of Curses", are into archaeology and mischief again. This third in the series brings the reader once more into Egypt and the shady world of black market antiquities. The winter excavation season has hardly yet begun when Amelia stumbles onto what looks suspiciously like a ring of thieves.

This first installment of a cozy mystery series transports listeners back to the bygone era of 1923 Britain, where unflappable flapper and fledgling journalist Daisy Dalrymple daringly embarks on her first writing assignment, and promptly stumbles across a corpse.

Against the romantic backdrop of Edwardian Egypt, the irresistible Amelia Peabody and her charmingly unconventional family prove themselves to be formidable foes of villainy. In The Ape Who Guards the Balance, Amelia must muster all of her considerable skills of detection to unravel a snarled web of stolen archeological treasures, murderous cults, and fallen women.

Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after years fighting in the First World War. Unknown to his colleagues he is still suffering from shell shock, and is burdened with the guilt of having had executed a young soldier on the battlefield for refusing to fight. A jealous colleague has learned of his secret and has managed to have Rutledge assigned to a difficult case which could spell disaster for Rutledge whatever the outcome. A retired officer has been murdered, and Rutledge goes to investigate.

Major Robert Kurland has returned to the quiet vistas of Kurland St. Mary to recuperate from the horrors of Waterloo. However injured his body may be, his mind is as active as ever. Too active, perhaps. When he glimpses a shadowy figure from his bedroom window struggling with a heavy load, the tranquil façade of the village begins to loom sinister....

It's the early 1980s in Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Dermot's whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from the inside.