Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process. What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her deathbed only hours earlier? Mark Easterbrook and his sidekick, Ginger Corrigan, are determined to find out. Maybe the three women who run The Pale Horse public house - and who are rumored to practice the "Dark Arts" - can provide some answers....

1893 is a tough year in Montana, and any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on as ranch hands at the secretive Bar-VR cattle spread, they're not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which they can enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harper's Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes.

Fifteen-year-old Gustine is a "dress lodger", a young prostitute who rents a beautiful blue dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele. To make sure she earns her fees and to keep her from running off with his fantastical gown, her pimp has set a malevolent old woman, known only as "the Eye", to follow her through the back alleys of Sunderland.

Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. Joyland is a brand-new novel and has never previously been published.

1368. War is coming between France and Spain, and England, and in Italy the pope and the Visconti princes are battling for bloody supremacy. The worst years of Sir William Gold's life are about to begin. Leaving the side of his commander, Sir John Hawkwood, William embarks on a journey to serve the Count of Savoy, finding fame and favour in his service. But when his wife and children are struck down by the plague, William uses the poisoning of the Duke of Clarence as an excuse to escape on a witch hunt across Southern France and embark on a pilgrimage that he'd always pledged to do.

May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She’s drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness. May 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Thomson had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she’d been strangled and left for dead. When Mallory wakes up in Catriona's body in 1869, she must put aside her shock and adjust quickly to the reality.

Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb. As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich.

In this tense, riveting mind game, New York Times bestselling novelist Nelson DeMille delivers a suspenseful short story in the tradition of his classic military novels The General's Daughter and Word of Honor. A band of soldiers in its last month of service in Vietnam goes out on a patrol through enemy territory with a female sniper in its path. Recounting the mission in shattering and sometimes gruesome detail, DeMille creates a concise masterpiece of moody suspense.

The ancient curse of Carnaby Castle has begun taking victims again—either that, or someone’s very cleverly done away with the new young bride of the philandering family patriarch, and the chief suspect is none other than Carnaby, London’s finest club steward. Anty Boisjoly’s wits and witticisms are tested to their frozen limit as he sifts the superstitions, suspicions, and age-old schisms of the mediaeval Peak District village of Hoy to sort out how it was done before Carnaby’s served his last scotch-and-soda.

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.

D-Day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but the Germans know it’ll be soon, and for Felicity "Flick" Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain’s most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans’ ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communications, and in the days before the invasion, no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe.

As Miss Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine, she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier’s yarn about a murderer he had known. Infuriatingly, just as he was about to show her a snapshot of this acquaintance, the Major was suddenly interrupted. A diversion that was to prove fatal.

In 1940, 18-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever. Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat.

1896. A new client at Baker Street claims he’s being threatened via the new art of the moving image. Eadweard Muybridge, pioneer of motion picture projection, believes his life is in danger. Twice he has been almost run down in the street by the same mysterious carriage, and moreover, disturbing alterations have been made to his lecture slides. These are closely guarded, yet just before each lecture an unknown hand has defaced images depicting Muybridge himself, which he has discovered, to his horror, only as he projects them to his audience.

A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. The private, quiet “Miss White" as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. Well she might, as Elinor occupies a "grace and favor" property, a rare privilege offered to faithful servants of the Crown for services to the nation.

India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her. Alone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who'll accept her - an enigmatic and mysterious man from America, a man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he's ill.

It is 1934. Returning to the West Country after their latest adventure in London, lady's maid Verity Hunter and cook Joan Hart are ready to embrace a quieter life. Their mistress, the glamorous young heiress Dorothy Drew, is attempting to rein in her enthusiasm for too many cocktails and takes up the offer of a place to rest and recuperate from an old family friend, Mrs Ashford. All seems well, until the day after they arrive, when everyone in the house is struck down by what appears to be mushroom poisoning. The deadly dish proves fatal for one unlucky soul.

Bo Creel is back at his family's Star C Ranch in Texas. Along with Scratch, he's finding out that home is where the hell-raising is. A rival ranch is trying to drive the Creel family out of business, using any means necessary. For Bo and Scratch, always suckers for a pretty face, come two young ladies who just might blur the battle lines. Desperate to raise cash, the Creel family sets of on a trail drive south to Rockport and a thriving cattle market on the Gulf of Mexico. That's when their rivals strike a devastating blow.

Joe Talbert, Jr. has never once met his namesake. Now out of college, a cub reporter for the Associated Press in Minneapolis, he stumbles across a story describing the murder of a man named Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern Minnesota. Full of curiosity about whether this man might be his father, Joe is shocked to find that none of the town's residents have much to say about the dead man - other than that his death was long overdue....

It is still the War of 1812 and Jack Aubrey - with his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin - has set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them.