Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

When Catherine Saxon, an American correspondent reporting on the war in Europe, is found murdered in her London digs, news of her death is concealed by British authorities. Serving as a linchpin between Scotland Yard and the Secret Service, Robert MacFarlane pays a visit to Maisie Dobbs, seeking her help. He is accompanied by an agent from the US Department of Justice - Mark Scott, the American who helped Maisie get out of Hitler’s Munich in 1938. MacFarlane asks Maisie to work with Scott to uncover the truth about Saxon’s death.

Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London's East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace - leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before - a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own legendary monikers, and, ultimately, got away with his heinous crimes.

Paris, November 1945: John Russell is walking home along the banks of the Seine on a cold and misty evening when Soviet agent Yevgeny Shchepkin falls into step alongside him. Shchepkin tells Russell that the American intelligence will soon be asking him to undertake some low grade espionage on their behalf - assessing the strains between different sections of the German Communist Party - and that Shchepkin's own bosses in Moscow want him to accept the task and pass his findings on to them.

Melissa North had assumed that after eight years of not setting eyes on each other, her youthful attraction to - or an infatuation with - Julian Delamere, once Viscount Dagenham and now earl of Carsely, would have faded to nothing and gasped its last. Unfortunately, during the intervening years, she has failed to find any suitable suitor who measures up to her mark, and she is resigned to ending her days an old maid. Then she sees Julian across a crowded ballroom, and he sees her, and the intensity of their connection shocks her.

An academic so conservative he thought Ronald Reagan was a pinko, Hale Markham rules Prescott University like an intellectual tyrant - until the morning he’s found dead at the bottom of one of Prescott’s famously beautiful ravines. Every liberal on campus hated the crotchety old crank, but which one is responsible for giving Markham his final push to the right? The case so intrigues the incomparable, reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe that he takes the unusual step of leaving the confines of his home.

Like most women, Elizabeth Miles assumes many roles; unlike most, hers have made her a woman on the run. Living on the edge of society, Elizabeth uses her guile to relieve so-called respectable men of their ill-gotten gains. But brutal and greedy entrepreneur Oscar Thornton is out for blood. He's lost a great deal of money and is not going to forgive a woman for outwitting him. With his thugs hot on her trail, Elizabeth seizes the moment to blend in with a group of women who have an agenda of their own.

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.

With Britain caught up in WWI, Jack Benningham, heir to the Earl of Stonebrooke, has declared himself a conscientious objector. Instead, he secretly works for the Crown by tracking down German spies on British soil, his wild reputation and society status serving as a foolproof cover. Blinded by patriotism and concern for her brother on the front lines, wealthy suffragette Grace Mabry will do whatever it takes to assist her country's cause.

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond.

English girl Sheila Matthews accepts an invitation to holiday in Poland, the country where her father died in mysterious circumstances. When German bombers begin pounding Warsaw, she decides against returning home and is recruited by the Polish underground. Playing a dangerous game as a double agent, Sheila must use all her skill to stay one step ahead of the Gestapo. But soon the Germans begin to suspect her and she flees to the forest, to be reunited with the enigmatic Captain Adam Wisniewski, now a wanted partisan.

It is 1895, and Sherlock Holmes is settling back into life as a consulting detective at 221B Baker Street, when he and Watson learn of strange goings-on amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford. A Professor Quantock has built a wondrous computational device, which he claims is capable of analytical thought to rival the cleverest men alive. Naturally Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore this challenge.

At a summons from Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy, midwife Sarah Brandt arrives at the elegant home of famed magnetic healer Edmund Blackwell to find his wife in labor - and the good doctor dead from an apparent suicide. Only Malloy sees what no one else wants to: that Blackwell was murdered in his own home. After a successful delivery, the Blackwell baby falls mysteriously ill.

After receiving a distressing letter from a friend, Lady Anne Addison wastes no time in traveling to Yorkshire to offer whatever help she can. She has no idea what she'll find there, but she certainly wasn't expecting to be met by tales of a werewolf terrorizing the area - nor the dead body she discovers upon arriving. Driven by curiosity and a keen intelligence, Lady Anne dismisses the notion of such a beast, but she's nonetheless drawn into the mysteries by the secrecy surrounding her friend and the infuriating yet enticing Lord Darkefell.

When Akhenaten finally goes too far and meets his bloody fate, the court of Egypt is plunged into chaos. The royal family's most ambitious players are locked in a contest for the throne that can only end in victory for one...and death for the others. Nefertiti returns from her exile, wielding more than just her wits. She has Tutankhamun, Egypt's rightful heir. Smenkhkare's idealism makes him popular with the common people, but will his sense of justice and maat protect him from the vicious politics of his relatives?

1920. Poppy Denby, an aspiring journalist, arrives in London to look after her ailing Aunt. She encourages Poppy to apply for a job at The Daily Globe, but on her first day, a senior reporter is killed and Poppy is tasked with finishing his story. It involves the mysterious death of a suffragette seven years earlier - an event some powerful people would prefer forgotten....

This collection includes four book-centered mystery novellas from four masters of the craft: The Scroll, Reconciliation Day, The Compendium of Srem, and The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy.

They struck in a pack, in the dead of night. They had crept in like thieves, like the cowards they were...but it wasn't robbery they had in mind. It was something much darker. Smoke Jensen was buying cattle 100 miles away from his Colorado ranch when he got the news. Drawing two horses from the remuda, he saddled up, rode off...and didn't stop until he reached his wife's side. She had been shot three times, and lay close to death. Smoke Jensen knew the outlaws had come to kill him. He wouldn't give them a second chance. He was going after them. And he wasn't taking any prisoners.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but he was born in 1581. Owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. From Shakespeare’s England to Jazz Age Paris to voyaging the Pacific alongside Captain Cook, Tom has seen a lot, and he now craves an ordinary life. Tom now has the perfect cover - working as a history teacher at a London school. Here, he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he’d never witnessed them first-hand. He can try to tame the past that is catching up with him. The only thing Tom can’t do is fall in love.

New adventures of the iconic sleuth, an icon of detective fiction. Readers, listeners, investigators, and artists have come across Sherlock Holmes and his mythical stories of crime and adventure for generations. Now comes an outstanding anthology of never-before-seen short fiction stories featuring the much-loved powers of deduction and unerring quest for the truth - however improbable it might first appear. The Book of Extraordinary New Sherlock Holmes Stories brings together some of the most renowned American and British crime and thriller authors of today.

England, 1920. Lady Eleanor Swift, adventurer extraordinaire and reluctant amateur detective, is taking a break from sleuthing. She’s got much bigger problems: Eleanor has two left feet, nothing to wear and she’s expected at the masked ball at the local manor. Her new beau Lance Langham is the host, so she needs to dazzle. Surrounded by partygoers with painted faces, pirates, priests and enough feathers to drown an ostrich, Eleanor searches for a familiar face. As she follows a familiar pair of long legs up a grand staircase, she’s sure she’s on Lance’s trail.