Historical Womens Mystery

The last Boleyn is Jane, Lady Rochford - widow of the disgraced George Boleyn. Caught in the intrigues of the Tudor court, she maneuvers for personal position as her family, in turn, tries to manipulate her. The king has married again; his bride is the deceptively astute Anne of Cleves. Her wits are tested as she senses a trap closing around her, with the Howards ready to take advantage of her fall.

Clara Falkenberg, once Germany's most eligible and lauded heiress, earned the nickname "the Iron Fräulein" during World War II for her role operating her family's ironworks empire. It’s been nearly two years since the war ended, and she’s left with nothing but a false identification card and a series of burning questions about her family's past. With nowhere else to run to, she decides to return home and take refuge with her dear friend, Elisa.

The sedate English countryside can host - or hide - any number of secrets. Frances, the widowed Countess of Harleigh, needs a venue for her sister Lily’s imminent wedding, away from prying eyes. Risings, George Hazleton’s family estate in Hampshire, is a perfect choice, and soon the guests have gathered to enjoy the usual country pursuits - shooting, horse riding, and romantic interludes in secluded gardens. But the bucolic setting harbors a menace, and it’s not simply the arrival of Frances’ socially ambitious mother. Mysterious accidents befall guests and staff alike.

London’s bright young things are partying, Soho’s nightlife is buzzing, and Augusta Peel is hiding in her basement. She has a reason to hide there: it’s home to her Bloomsbury workshop where she repairs old, neglected books. After a busy time during the war, all Augusta wants is peace and quiet. But events take a turn when Augusta agrees to chaperone nineteen-year-old Harriet Jones on a date. Failing to get her home on time, she ends up in a riotous nightclub. She can’t imagine the evening getting much worse when the police raid it. But then the murder happens.

For years, the Duchess of Fournier has buried a shameful secret connected to her remarkable, if bizarre, ability. While Audrey's gift has helped her solve cases alongside the captivating Bow Street officer Hugh Marsden, she longs to forget her previous committal to an insane asylum. But now, a blackmailer with a taste for violence is threatening former patients of Shadewell Sanatorium, and it appears the ghosts of Audrey's past have finally found her.

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.

A rash of poison pen letters has enveloped the sleepy English village of Walmsley Parva in cloud of suspicion and paranoia. But when rampant aspersions culminate in murder, enquiry agents Beryl Helliwell and Edwina Davenport must stamp out the evil-minded epistles....

Semi-retired private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is suffering from depression after a miscarriage following her adventure in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906. She and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, and they gratefully accept, expecting a peaceful and relaxing holiday season. Not long after they arrive, however, they start to feel the tension in the house's atmosphere.

London, December 1943. As the Russian army repels German forces from Stalingrad, Maggie Hope takes a much-needed break from spying to defuse bombs in London. But Maggie herself is an explosion waiting to happen. Traumatized by her past, she finds herself living dangerously - taking huge risks, smoking, drinking, and speeding through the city streets on a motorbike. The last thing she wants is to get entangled in another crime.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it - bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

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.

Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his "counting house" when he suffered an agonizing and sudden death. On later inspection, the pockets of the deceased were found to contain traces of cereals. Yet, it was the incident in the parlor that confirmed Miss Marple's suspicion that here she was looking at a case of crime by rhyme....

Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in Stoneygates, a rehabilitation center for delinquents. Her fears are confirmed when someone shoots at the administrator. Although he is not injured, a mysterious visitor is less fortunate - shot dead simultaneously in another part of the building. Pure coincidence? Miss Marple thinks not, and must use all her cunning to solve the riddle of the stranger's visit...and his murder.

This title was previously published as Murder with Mirrors.

Tabitha, Lady Chesterton, the Countess of Pembroke, is newly widowed at only 22 years of age. With no son to inherit the title, it falls to a dashing, distant cousin of her husband's, Jeremy Chesterton, known as Wolf. It quickly becomes apparent that Wolf had consorted with some of London's most dangerous citizens before inheriting the title. Can he leave this world behind, or will shadowy figures from his past follow him into his new aristocratic life in Mayfair? And can Tabitha avoid being caught up in Wolf's dubious activities?

Within just a couple of days, detective Leo Schultz’s life unravels. His son Rick is kidnapped and horrifically murdered. The very next day, Schultz’s car runs over a little girl, and he is identified by witnesses as the driver. Only his partner, PJ Gray, believes in his innocence. For city officials, this is not the end of it, as key members of the law and order systems are successively taken down.

In the winter of 1924, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher travels to a school friend's house to witness the estate's famous Guy Fawkes celebration. But she gets more than the quiet weekend at the quaint family manse that she was originally hoping for. The home is the site of some severe family tension. The Viscount and head of the family is a strict and unyielding sort, insisting that everyone - especially his children - meet his own unreasonable expectations. On the evening of the Guy Fawkes celebration, the Viscount is found dead on the floor of his study, killed by his own hand.

For almost 50 years, Katie Carroll has kept a box tucked away inside her wardrobe. It dates from her time working as a nurse in a west of Ireland mother and baby home in the 1960s. The box contains a notebook holding the details of the babies and young women she met there. It also holds many of the babies' identity bracelets. Following the death of her husband, Katie makes a decision. The information she possesses could help reunite adopted people with their birth mothers, and she decides to post a message on an internet forum.

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.

Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge. A year later, Virginia stands trial for murder. Survivors of the expedition willing to publicly support her sit in the front row. There are only five. What happened out there on the ice?