Historical Thriller

For over a century, the town of Gossamer Grove has thrived on its charm and midwestern values, but Annalise Forsythe knows painful secrets, including her own, hover just beneath the pleasant facade. When a man is found dead in his run-down trailer home, Annalise inherits the trailer, along with the pictures, vintage obituaries, and old revival posters covering its walls. A century earlier, Gossamer Grove has been stirred into chaos by the arrival of controversial and charismatic twin revivalists, and Libby Sheffield, working at her father's newspaper, receives an obituary for a reputable church deacon hours before his death.

In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers' brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold.

Childbirth can be dangerous even for the wealthy. So when opera singer Claire Buchanan shows Prudence and Geoffrey a postmortem cabinet photograph of her deceased twin sister and newborn niece, they express sadness but not surprise. The popular black-bordered portraits are the era's way of coping with the devastating losses that plague every family. What makes this death different is that Claire is convinced Catherine and her child were murdered.

Catherine Cook, unclaimed granddaughter of the great explorer James, Cook is on her way to America to re-connect with her mother’s family when fate intervenes and thrusts her into ultimate peril. All of her life, Kate has yearned to go to sea and to command a sailing ship in the Royal navy…an impossible dream for a young woman in 1797.

Lucy Harrington has returned to Kurland St. Mary to help with her friend Sophia Giffin's wedding. But her homecoming is made disagreeable by the presence of Major Robert Kurland, whose bungled proposal has ruffled Lucy's composure, and a meddling widow who has designs on her father, the village rector. Wary of the cloying Mrs. Chingford from the start, Lucy has doubts about the busybody's intentions with her father. But everyone else seems to think they make an ideal match—until the courtship is curtailed when Mrs. Chingford is found dead at the bottom of a staircase.

While attending the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Winnifred Wylde believes she witnessed a woman being kidnapped. She tries to convince her father, an inspector with the Chicago police, to look into reports of mysterious disappearances around the White City. Inspector Wylde tries to dismiss her claims as exaggeration of an overactive imagination, but he eventually concedes to letting her go undercover as secretary to the man in question - if she takes her pistol for protection and Jude Thorpe, a policeman, for bodyguard.

Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill—an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.

London, 1898. A vibrant young heiress has gone missing, and it’s up to Sherlock and Lucy to find her. Meanwhile, threatening letters from Egyptian revolutionaries begin turning up at newspaper offices, captivating Sherlock’s interest and sparking public fear and outrage. Then, the missing young woman is found dead in front of London’s most famous Egyptian monument.

After enjoying two weeks of well-deserved R and R at Pearl Harbor, Art Turner, his crew, and his boat are once again asked to go out and do the impossible…and to make it snappy, already! Webster Clayton has uncovered a Japanese plan to send a major invasion force to Guadalcanal. In order to soften up the marines there, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto intends sending in a battleship to bombard Henderson Field and obliterate the Cactus Airforce.

Some debts you cannot repay, even if you live forever. Seasoned imperial officer Marcus Sempronius Gracchus leads the 9th Roman Legion into a bloody battle against a fierce barbarian tribe. It's a battle he won't survive. When he awakens three days later, clawing his way from a shallow grave, Marcus must face the reality of his new existence. He will never see the afterlife...but that won't stop him from dying time and again over the next 2,000 years.

Anything can happen on Valentine Valley. People recover from amnesia, awake from comas, and rise from the dead - all to the delight of the daytime soap’s millions of fans. But while Valentine Valley may be glamorous onscreen, behind the camera the soap’s grueling production schedule punishes actors, directors, and writers in the name of ratings. Soap star Jennifer Connolly is near her breaking point, and a murderer is about to push her over the edge. As Jennifer struggles to care for her ill mother, a serial killer stalks the lot, committing a gory string of murders inspired by classic Hitchcock films.

Once, the Lamartine Hotel was a quiet refuge for New York’s stuffy fashionable set. But by the 1890s, fashion has moved uptown, and the lobby of the Lamartine has been overtaken by natty young sports, who pass their afternoons with billiards or shows of noisy derring-do. Their preferred damsel is Lila Williams, a delicate young telegraph operator whose shyness so charms them that they resolve to defend her against any ill-behaved characters. They are about to face their fiercest challenger, who rides in the gleaming armor of a millionaire.

In this third and final novel in the Lancaster Burning series, author Linda Byler takes us inside the home of Davey Beiler, the leader of this Amish district. He clearly feels the heat in more ways than one. Some of the younger members of his church are ready to testify against the man who has allegedly started at least several of the fires. Davey counsels patience and forgiveness.

Poppy Denby is intrigued when she is invited to attend the auction for the death mask of Nefertiti. Held on the country estate of Sir James Maddox, a famous explorer, the auction promises to be a controversial and newsworthy affair. Representatives from the world's leading museums are gathering to bid on the mask, which was discovered in Egypt. Poppy quickly sniffs out that the mask was not the only thing found that night: the underground chamber also contained a dead body.

Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery, the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death, brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese-American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II.

Elam Eskers lives his days in peace on his ranch in the small town of Phoenix, Oregon, with his ranch hand, Samson, and his dog, Dusk, keeping him company. Gone are the days when he was the man outlaws feared the most. When he doesn't seek trouble, though, it finds him. Quincy Meiner has a hunger for money. He will stop at nothing to steal the land that belongs to Elam and his neighbors. At first, Meiner is just a nuisance. But when the Meiner gang kill Elam's dog, terrorize his town and kidnap Roxanna, the only woman Elam has ever loved, it becomes personal.

Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and perpetually ill at ease, he spends his evenings quietly drinking and surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at a drab bistro in the unremarkable small French town of Saint-Louis. One day, she simply vanishes into thin air and Georges Gorski, a detective haunted by his failure to solve one of his first murder cases, is called in to investigate the girl's disappearance. He sets his sights on Manfred.

Mr. Shaitana is famous as a flamboyant party host. Nevertheless, he is a man of whom everybody is a little afraid. So when he boasts to Hercule Poirot that he considers murder an art form, the detective has some reservations about accepting a party invitation to view Shaitana's "private collection". Indeed, what begins as an absorbing evening of bridge is to turn into a more dangerous game altogether.

King George IV is petitioning Parliament for a divorce from his queen on the grounds of her adultery. But rumor has it that the king secretly married Maria Fitzherbert—long before he married the queen. Now Mrs. Fitzherbert has been robbed—and she's frantically calling on Rosalind for help. Because what those thieves took is proof that she and King George did really marry. That single piece of paper could destroy Mrs. Fitzherbert and her family—or it could prove the king guilty of bigamy.

July 8, 1921. Ireland. A British Officer is shot dead on a remote hillside south of Dublin. November 22, 2015. United Kingdom. Former police detective Jayne Sinclair, now working as a genealogical investigator, receives a phone call from an adopted American billionaire asking her to discover the identity of his real father. How are the two events linked? Jayne Sinclair has only three clues to help her: a photocopied birth certificate, a stolen book, and an old photograph.