Historical Women Detectives

A heart-warming Victorian Christmas mystery with a touch of peril, this story is performed by award-winning narrators Simon Prebble and Wendy Tremont King. When Sir Henry Baskerville, now happily married, invites Sherlock Holmes to Baskerville Hall, that infamous baronial mansion in darkest Devonshire, the entire Baker Street team accepts his invitation for a family holiday. But Sir Henry has an ulterior motive and the powers of evil are at work.

Jane discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide gathering dies in a tragic accident whose circumstances Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snowbound guests. With clues scattered amid cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?

Cantankerous and vinegar-tongued Grandmama, from Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, is the leading character in this Christmas novel, which unfolds in the chilly, windswept Romney Marshes off the English Channel. Grandmama arrives on a holiday visit to the home of Charlotte's parents, where a fellow guest--an outcast from her own family--is subsequently murdered. Like the heroes before her in Anne Perry's Christmas novels, Grandmama is called upon to play the role of amateur detective.

Murder isn't a walk in the park...War widow fashionista, Ginger Gold, makes a gruesome discovery while walking her Boston terrier, Boss, through Kensington Gardens. A woman of ill-repute is dead. When Chief Inspector Basil Reed becomes a suspect, the blustery and often times pigheaded Superintendent Morris pulls him off the case. Ginger’s not about to be pushed around by the superintendent despite his warnings.

Willa Noble knew it was bad luck when it was pouring rain on the day of her ever-important job interview at the Dickinson home in Amherst, Massachusetts. When she arrived late, disheveled with her skirts sodden and filthy, she'd lost all hope of being hired for the position. As the housekeeper politely told her they'd be in touch, Willa started toward the door of the stately home only to be called back by the soft but strong voice of Emily Dickinson. What begins as tenuous employment turns to friendship as the reclusive poet takes Willa under her wing.

In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge—the widowed Gwen’s father-in-law and legal guardian—returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school. But there’s more going on than that.

The year is 1910, and in the small and seemingly sleepy English municipality of Haxford, there’s a new chief police inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion strikes something of an odd figure among the locals, who don’t see a need for such an exacting investigator. But it isn’t long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective. Luckily, Scorbion and the local barber are old acquaintances, and the barbershop employs a cast of memorable characters who are nothing less than enthralled by the enigmatic new chief police inspector.

Ireland, AD 670. When an eminent scholar is found murdered in his cell in the abbey of Lios Mór, fear spreads among his brethren; his door was secured from the inside, with no other means of exit. How did the murderer escape? And what was the content of the manuscripts apparently stolen from the scholar's room? Abbot Iarnla insists on sending for Sister Fidelma and her companion Brother Eadulf to investigate the killing. But even before they reach the abbey walls, there is an attempt on their lives.

Plagued with guilt, Freda Simonson, the only witness to the murder of the landlord of Langcliffe's tavern, believes that her testimony may have convicted the wrong man, but when she passes, the case seems closed. It just so happens, though, that Freda's nephew is courting the renowned amateur sleuth Kate Shackleton, who has decided to holiday in Langcliffe with her teenage niece, Harriet.

Louise Lloyd is finally living the quiet life she’d longed for, working in a parfumerie by day and spending time with her new friends every night at the Aquarius club in Paris. When a desperate mother asks for help locating her artist daughter, Louise initially refuses to keep her hard-won but fragile peace intact. But the woman comes with a letter of introduction from an old friend in Harlem, and Louise realizes she has no choice but to do what she can to find the missing young woman.

In spring 1889, Prudence and Geoffrey set sail from New York Harbor on a private yacht bound for Bradford Island, where her friend Eleanor Dickson is to be wed. The Sea Islands along the Georgia coast serve as a winter playground for the likes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Dicksons. Despite her Yankee pedigree, Eleanor is marrying a Southern gentleman, Teddy Bennett, and Prudence is thrilled to be the maid of honor.

Thomas Mundy checks in to London's Wrexley Hotel, but he never checks out. The maid finds him on the floor of his room, bludgeoned to death by his own walking stick. Inspector Witherspoon is soon on the case and learns Mundy was an unlikely victim for such a violent crime. But Mrs. Jeffries and the household staff uncover that Mundy was less an amiable businessman and more a duplicitous con man with enemies on both sides of the Atlantic. Now Witherspoon and his staff must determine who on their lengthy list of suspects had the motive to put Mundy in the red.

London, 1937. Following the gloomy days of the abdication of King Edward VIII, the entire city is elated to welcome King George. Just one of the many planned festivities for the historic coronation is a BBC radio adaptation of Queen of Scots, and the original playwright, Josephine Tey, has been invited to sit in on rehearsals. Soon, however, Josephine gets wrapped up in another sort of drama. The lead actress has been sleeping with Britain's most venerable newsman, Anthony Beresford - and his humiliated wife happens to work in the building.

November, 1923. Olive’s school chum, Gigi, invites Olive to London because Gigi’s dotty grandmother fears for her life—or so she’s said to Gigi. However Olive is surprised to find that the dowager is far from muddled. The sharp and imperious matriarch refuses to admit to her worries and sends Olive on her way. Without a client or case, Olive is swept into the glittering lifestyle of the “fast set,” and their decadent excess. But then among the cocktails and champagne, a murderer strikes during a frivolous party game, and Olive realizes the dowager’s fears were well-founded.

New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows.

As the 19th century draws to a close, reporter Emma Cross is sent by the Newport Observer to cover an elite house party at Rough Point, a "cottage" owned by her distant cousin Frederick Vanderbilt that has been rented as an artist retreat. To her surprise, the illustrious guests include her estranged Bohemian parents - recently returned from Europe - as well as a variety of notable artists, including author Edith Wharton.

December 1918: As a difficult year draws to a close, there is much to celebrate for 19-year-old Phoebe Renshaw and her three siblings at their beloved family estate of Foxwood Hall. The dreadful war is finally over; eldest daughter Julia's engagement to their houseguest, the marquis of Allerton, appears imminent; and all have gathered to enjoy peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. But the peace of Foxwood Hall is shattered on the morning of Boxing Day, when the marquis goes missing.

Claudine Burroughs, a volunteer in Hester Monk's clinic for sick and injured prostitutes, no longer expects closeness with her coldly ambitious husband and dreads the holidays. Then, at a glittering Yuletide gala, she meets the attractive poet Dai Tregarron, and suddenly her spirits lift. But an hour later, this fascinating man is enmeshed in a nightmare - accused of killing a young streetwalker who had been smuggled into the party.

Narrated by acclaimed British actor Edward Petherbridge, The Last Moriarty is set in London, 1895. On a cold November morning, a young American actress visits 221B Baker Street, desperate for Sherlock Holmes to protect her from the threats of a mysterious, menacing man who has recently appeared in her life. Holmes agrees to help, even though he has just promised the Prime Minister to solve the murder of John D. Rockefeller's security agent before the incident can derail an upcoming British-American summit.

December, 1925. A dark, smog-filled London doesn’t seem very Christmassy or exciting, but then Posie Parker, London’s premier female private detective, receives an urgent call from one of her oldest friends: Rufus, Earl of Cardigeon. Summoned to The Mermaid, an ancient hotel in Rye on the Sussex Coast, in the heart of smuggling country, Posie, together with her husband Richard, finds her friend in a real state. As the snow falls and Christmas lights go up, secrets are revealed, and Posie becomes involved in perhaps her most personal case so far.