Historical Womens Mystery

The Gardener Estate is one of the most storied and beloved places on the West Coast: a magnificent house in vast formal grounds, home to a family that shaped California—and fought hard to conceal the turmoil and eccentricities within their walls. And now, just as the turmoil seems buried and the Estate prepares to move into a new future, construction work unearths a grim relic of the estate's history: a skull, hidden away some fifty years ago.

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day - with her nephew, Derek, and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Belinda, in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy.

Barbados, 1854: Emily Dawson has always been the poor cousin in a prosperous English merchant clan - merely a vicar’s daughter, and a reform-minded vicar’s daughter, at that. Everyone knows that the family’s lucrative shipping business will go to her cousin, Adam, one day. But when her grandfather dies, Emily receives an unexpected inheritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados - a plantation her grandfather never told anyone he owned.

July 1831. It's been 15 years since Sebastian Gage has set foot in Langstone Manor. Though he has shared little with his wife, Lady Kiera Darby, about his past, she knows that he planned never to return to the place of so many unhappy childhood memories. But when an urgent letter from his grandfather reaches them in Dublin, Ireland, and begs Gage to visit, Kiera convinces him to go.

Scotland, 1831. After a tumultuous courtship complicated by three deadly inquiries, Lady Kiera Darby is thrilled to have found both an investigative partner and a fiancé in Sebastian Gage. But with her well-meaning - and very pregnant - sister planning on making their wedding the event of the season, Kiera could use a respite from the impending madness. Commissioned to paint the portrait of Lady Drummond, Kiera is saddened when she recognizes the pain in the baroness' eyes.

After crossing from England on the SS Celestiana, Lady Eleanor Swift sets up her home-away-from-home in a lavish apartment in New York City. She is soon the toast of the town, with no high-class soirée complete without her presence. Of course, she drags her butler Clifford and Gladstone the bulldog along to every party, too. But when she witnesses the charming doorman of her building, Marty, knocked down and killed in a hit-and-run, she finds fashionable society suddenly closes rank. The only local detective interested in helping her find the culprit is street-smart beat cop, Officer Balowski.

Restless and uncertain of her future in the wake of World War I, former battlefield nurse Bess Crawford agrees to travel to Yorkshire to help a friend of her cousin Melinda through surgery. But circumstances change suddenly when news of a terrible accident reaches them. Bess agrees to go to isolated Scarfdale and the Neville family, where one man has been killed and another gravely injured. The police are asking questions, and Bess is quickly drawn into the fray as two once close families take sides, even as they are forced to remain in the same house until the inquest is completed.

Despite suffering a few initial setbacks, the former Beatrice Hyde-Clare has settled into her new position nicely. Thanks to Lady Abercrombie’s machinations, she has secured the admiration of society and finally earned the respect of her staff. Even the lessons in defending herself, which her husband, the Duke of Kesgrave, insists she take if she wants to continue in her dangerous avocation, are going well. But then she learns from a most unlikely source that Kesgrave’s malevolent uncle is scheming to destroy her happiness.

Ellie, ever-ready to aid her country, heads north, her safe-cracking tools in tow. But before she can rendezvous with the major, she witnesses an unnatural death. A man falls dead in the street in front of her, with a mysterious missive clutched in his hand. Ellie’s instincts tell her that the man’s death is connected in some way to her mission. After she is reunited with Major Ramsey, the pair discovers that the dead man had ties to a counterfeiting operation, supplying German spies with fraudulent British currency to use in their operations.

Molly Murphy's beau Captain Daniel Sullivan may be out of jail on bail, but he's still a ways from clearing his name, and his foul mood has Molly in search of a little breathing room when providence steps in in the form of a proposition from New York City's renowned theatrical impresario Tommy Burke. America has been very good to Tommy, and now that he's getting on in years, he'd like to pass some of that good fortune on to his family back in Ireland.

Harriet Andover had no intention of dying young like her silly siblings had. She intended to outlive them and outdo them as she always had. But Harriet discovers that the best intentions can lead to murder when she is strangled inside her mansion with a house full of holiday guests. As much as Inspector Witherspoon enjoys his job delivering justice, the last thing he wanted was a complicated murder case just a week before Christmas. He soon discovers that Harriet's own husband and grown stepchildren are not overcome with grief and neither are most of her friends.

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate?

Poppy Denby, Arts and Entertainment Editor at The Daily Globe, covers an exhibition of Russian art, hosted by White Russian refugees, including members of the surviving exiled Romanov royal family. There is an armed robbery, a guard is shot and the largest Faberge egg in the collection is stolen. The egg itself is valuable, but more so are the secrets it contains within - secrets that could threaten major political powers. Suspects are aplenty, including the former keeper of the Faberge egg, a Russian Princess called Selena Romanova Yusopova.

Phryne Fisher, scented and surprisingly ruthless, is not one to let sleuthing a horrific crime get in the way of an elegant dalliance. The redoubtable Phryne Fisher is holidaying at Cave House, a Gothic mansion in the heart of the Victorian mountain country. But the peaceful country surroundings mask danger. Her host is receiving death threats, lethal traps are set without explanation around the house and the parlour maid is found strangled to death.

England, 1926: Wedgefield Manor, deep in the tranquil Essex countryside, provides a welcome rest stop for Jane and her matchmaking Aunt Millie before their return to America. While Millie spends time with her long-lost daughter, Lillian, and their host, Lord Hughes, Jane fills the hours devouring mystery novels and taking flying lessons - much to Millie's disapproval. But any danger in the air is eclipsed by tragedy on the ground when one of the estate's mechanics, Air Force veteran Simon Marshall, is killed in a motorcar collision.

Thea Osbourne is only too happy to have a bit of peace and quiet. The only positive thing that came out of her recent house sitting disasters is her blossoming relationship with DI Phil Hollis and she relishes the thought of their spending some quality time together. Even meeting Phil’s childhood acquaintance, the eccentric Ariadne, cannot detract from Thea’s happiness. But the bad luck that plagues the hapless Thea and her beloved spaniel Hepzipah is never far away.

London, 1880. Kat Holloway, highly sought-after young cook to the wealthy of London, finds herself embroiled in murder when she’s accused of poisoning her employer, the loathsome Sir Lionel Leigh-Bradbury. Her only help as she works to clear her name comes from the mysterious Daniel McAdam, a handsome man-of-all-work who seems to know everyone and always happens to be in the right place at the right time.

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.

In this compelling new time-slip mystery, a little girl goes missing from her family’s castle in the Thousand Islands of New York. Eighty-five years later, a journalist teams up with a woman living on Koster Isle to find out what happened to Poppy, once and for all.

In this fifth delightful entry, Anthony and Agatha Award nominee Susan Wittig Albert re-imagines Beatrix Potter wearing her sleuthing cap as the village of Sawrey lies buried beneath a blanket of Christmas snow. While she and her animal friends investigate a puzzling death, Miss Potter wonders if she can acknowledge her fondness for Mr. Heelis and still remain loyal to her fiancé’s memory.