Historical Womens Mystery

Award-winning author Alan Bradley returns with another beguiling novel starring the insidiously clever and unflappable 11-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce. The precocious chemist with a passion for poisons uncovers a fresh slew of misdeeds in the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey - mysteries involving a missing tot, a fortune-teller, and a corpse in Flavia’s own backyard. Flavia had asked the old Gypsy woman to tell her fortune, but never expected to stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned in the wee hours in her own caravan.

July 1816. Kendra Donovan could use a distraction. The FBI agent has been dealing with a serious case of cold feet after impulsively agreeing to marry Alec, the Marquis of Sutcliffe. And if that isn't enough, there is also the tantalizing possibility that maybe, just maybe she could return to her own timeline. When Reginald Lansing, the Earl of Craymore, is found mortally wounded on the Duke of Aldridge's land, Kendra gets the distraction that she's been looking for.

Last year, Maddie Schwartz was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost 20 years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl - assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.

There is only one place Kendra Donovan wants to travel - back to her own time period in the 21st century. But since that's not happening, she agrees instead to travel with her new guardian, the Duke of Aldridge, to one of his smaller estates in Lancashire. Their journey takes them through Yorkshire, a region whose breathtaking beauty masks a simmering violence brought on by the Industrial Revolution, which pits mill owner against worker.

New York, 1908: The days are getting longer—and warmer—in Manhattan. Molly Murphy Sullivan doesn’t want to leave her home in the city, but typhoid is back, and she’s expecting. So she heads north with the children to summer with her mother-in-law in Westchester County. Molly tells herself it won’t be so bad, after all the countryside is pretty, and she’s determined to make the best of it. Even if she’s leaving her husband, Daniel, behind. And at least she’s not the only one heading north. Her great friends, Sid and Gus, are headed to the Catskills to visit Sid’s family.

Mary is queen of Scotland, but she has been forced to flee her land and take refuge in an England that is ruled by her cousin, Elizabeth. But England, precarious in its Protestant state, set against the mighty powers of Spain, France and Rome, doesn't need a charismatic Catholic figurehead at large. So Elizabeth's chief advisor, Cecil, devises a plan in which Mary will live under guard with his trusted accomplice: Bess of Hardwick.

June 1940. France has fallen to the Nazis, and Britain may be next—but to many Americans, the war is something happening “over there.” Veronica Grace has just graduated from college; she and her mother, Violet, are looking for a fresh start in sunny Los Angeles. After a blunder cost her a prestigious career opportunity in New York, Veronica is relieved to take a typing job in L.A.—only to realize that she’s working for one of the area’s most vicious propagandists. Overnight, Veronica is exposed to the dark underbelly of her new home, where Nazis are recruiting Americans.

Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability - and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father, Frankie Dobbs, is not getting any younger.

Philippa Watson, a good-natured yet troubled 17-year-old, has just moved to Washington, DC. She’s lonely until she meets Judy Peabody, a brilliant and tempestuous classmate. The girls become unlikely friends and fashion themselves as intellectuals, drawing the notice of Christine Martins, their dazzling English teacher, who enthralls them with her passion for literature and her love of noirish detective fiction. When Philippa returns a novel Miss Martins has lent her, she interrupts a man grappling with her in the shadows.

The eccentric Olive Kettering swore someone was trying to harm her. Too bad no one listened, though plenty wanted her dead. When Olive is shot and killed, Mrs. Jeffries has no problem speaking her mind to see justice served.

In London, journalist Jo Clifford plans to debunk the belief in past lives in a hard-hitting magazine piece. But her scepticism is shaken when a hypnotist forces her to relive the experiences of Matilda, Lady of Hay, a noblewoman during the reign of King John. She learns of Matilda's unhappy marriage, her love for the handsome Richard de Clare and the brutal death threats handed out by King John, before it becomes clear that Jo’s past and present are inevitably entwined.

Tending to the soldiers in the trenches of France during the First World War, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford can't help but notice the photo of a young pilot's wife every time she tends to him. But then at the railway station, in a mob of troops leaving for the front, Bess glimpses a familiar face - the pilot's wife, with another man. Later, back in France, Bess sees a newspaper with a drawing of the woman's face on the front page. She'd been murdered - the very day Bess saw her.

Life’s always an adventure for the Athena Club...especially when one of their own has been kidnapped! After their thrilling European escapades rescuing Lucina van Helsing, Mary Jekyll, and her friends return home to discover that their friend and kitchen maid Alice has vanished - and so has their friend and employer Sherlock Holmes! As they race to find Alice and bring her home safely, they discover that Alice and Sherlock’s kidnapping are only one small part of a plot that threatens Queen Victoria, and the very future of the British Empire.

After fleeing London in infamy more than two years prior, Lady Kiera Darby's return to the city is anything but mundane, though not for the reasons she expected. A gang of body snatchers is arrested on suspicion of imitating the notorious misdeeds of Edinburgh criminals Burke and Hare - killing people from the streets and selling their bodies to medical schools. Then Kiera's past - a past she thought she'd finally made peace with - rises up to haunt her.

In late 1923, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and her husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, come to America for a honeymoon visit. In the midst of a pleasure trip, however, both work in a bit of business - Alec travels to Washington, DC, to consult with the US government, Daisy to New York to meet with her American magazine editor.

It’s early spring 1948 and Lane arrives in New Denver to find that her friend, Peter Barisoff, is not at home. Instead, in a nearby meadow, she encounters Tom, an Indigenous man in search of his ancestral lands. Lane is intrigued. Unfortunately, once Peter returns home, the day takes a gloomy turn when the trio uncovers human remains next to Peter’s garden, and Lane must tell her husband, Inspector Darling, that she’s inadvertently stumbled into his professional domain—again.

The divine Phryne Fisher returns in the 15th seductive installment in the classic Phryne Fisher whodunnit series. This one includes shipboard romances, champagne cocktails, erotic photographers, jealous husbands, mickey finns, blackmail, and attempted murder.

June 1920, Ireland: The streets of Dublin seethe with revolution as the Irish Republican Army clashes with British authorities. Roving assassination squads mean nowhere is truly safe, particularly for Verity Kent and her war hero husband, Sidney. Given their celebrity as society darlings and intrepid sleuths, they must tread carefully to go unnoticed—nearly impossible when they are called upon to search for Verity’s fellow spy and friend . . .

Two thousand years ago, Mary Magdalene hid a set of scrolls in the French Pyrenees: the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, her version of the life of Jesus and the events of the New Testament. Protected by supernatural forces, these sacred scrolls could be uncovered only by a special seeker, one who fulfills the ancient prophecy of L'Attendu, the Expected One.

Based on true crimes, The Specimen is a mesmerizing story about one woman’s search for truth and vengeance in the darkest of places—where the deadliest secrets lie hidden in plain sight on a freshly dusted shelf.