Mystery England

January 1889. As the newest member of the Curiosity Club - an elite society of brilliant, intrepid women - Veronica Speedwell is excited to put her many skills to good use. As she assembles a memorial exhibition for pioneering mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene, Veronica discovers evidence that the recent death was not a tragic climbing accident but murder.

While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate.

Around 6000 BC, a revolution took place on Orkney and the Western Isles of Scotland. An outstanding collection of stone circles, standing stones, round towers, and passage mounds appeared seemingly out of nowhere. And yet many such monuments were not indigenous to Britain, but to regions of the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean. Their creators were equally mysterious. Traditions tell of the Papae and Peti, "strangers from afar" who were physically different, dressed in white tunics, and lived aside from the regular population.

The setting itself is elemental P. D. James: the bleak coast of East Anglia, where atop a sweep of low cliffs stands the small theological college of St. Anselm’s. On the shore not far away, smothered beneath a fall of sand, lies the body of one of the school’s young ordinands. He is the son of Sir Alred Treves, a hugely successful and flamboyant businessman who is accustomed to getting what he wants—and in this case what he wants is Commander Adam Dalgliesh to investigate his son’s death.

A visit to the local village fete for a spot of fun and relaxation turns into a nightmare for Agatha Raisin when she discovers the body of the local landowner in the woods with an arrow in his chest and trousers round his ankles. Agatha’s old adversary, Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, declares the death a tragic accident, believing the victim has been hit by a stray arrow from an archery demonstration. Agatha is convinced of foul play, however, and is shocked when Wilkes eventually agrees … with her as his prime murder suspect.

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive Doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed.

In the seaside village of Sechelt, Emma O’Brea prepares a dinner to celebrate six years of marriage: ­a union she has polished to gleaming perfection, along with her showcase home. The next morning her husband leaves for work, never to return. At the same time, in nearby Vancouver, a simple-minded stock boy named Eddie Addison defends his tattered pride against the unwitting slights of a college girl, unleashing his rage in an act that will have far-reaching consequences.

Still grieving the death of his long-time partner, Chase reunites with his dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau for a seacoast holiday of historic sightseeing. Assigned a pair of guides from the tour company Wanderers, Chase and Billie join seven other like-minded Americans looking forward to an English getaway. All except for Ronald Gretz. The wealthy entrepreneur behind the international Golden Sunset nursing-home chain doesn’t like anything about walking, touring, or England.

Chase has two compelling reasons for returning to England—a group walk along the famed Coast to Coast trail in the picturesque Lake District, and a chance to further his relationship with Mike, the handsome Devonshire coroner he met on his last trip. The walkers, including Chase’s dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau, assemble at a Cumbrian hotel and begin their adventure with the traditional “baptism of the boots” in St. Bee’s Bay. But they’ve barely begun traveling eastward with their genial guide than the group dynamic turns unexpectedly rocky.

On a spring morning in 1951, 11-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother, Harriet. Yet upon the train’s arrival in the English village of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later, he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd. Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia? Back home at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ crumbling estate, Flavia puts her sleuthing skills to the test.

In a cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow has begun the last book he will ever write. It is the story about the sun-drenched summer days of his youth in Whistler Bay, and the blood-stained path of the killer that stalked his small vacation town. About the terrible secret he and his companions, Nat and Harper, discovered entombed in the coves off the bay. And how the pact they swore that day echoed down the decades, forever shaping their lives.

When an Oxford caretaker is killed by a fall down the library stairs and a professor is attacked, rumors fly that it's the work of a poltergeist who's been causing havoc at the college. The prof is a knitter, and a customer at Lucy Swift's shop, Cardinal Woolsey's. But Lucy thinks a very human killer is shifting the blame onto a ghost who can't defend itself, and she's determined to trap the real killer and get justice for the dead man.

February 1816: A race through the icy, twisting cobblestone streets of London ends inside an abandoned church - and a horrific discovery. Bow Street Runner Sam Kelly is called to investigate the grisly murder of Sir Giles Holbrooke, who was left naked and garroted, with his tongue cut out. Yet it becomes even stranger when symbols that resemble crosses mysteriously begin to appear across the dead man's flesh during autopsy. Sam turns to the one person in the kingdom who he believes can solve the bizarre murder - the Duke of Aldridge's odd but brilliant ward, Kendra Donovan.

The Yarn Studio’s Seaside Knitters have their hands full designing new classes for vacationers, as well as testing each other’s originality by creating a single blanket together. Birdie’s teenage granddaughter is also visiting for the season. Meanwhile, the Lazy Lobster and Soup Café’s local fare is gaining newfound attention with the addition of a well-known Boston chef. It’s sure to be another beautiful, busy time in their tight-knit town… Until Birdie spots a huge blaze from her balcony one evening, frighteningly close to knitter Cass’s lobster business.

Joanna and the Watsons receive an unexpected visitor to 221B Baker Street during a nocturnal storm. A rain-drenched Dr. Alexander Verner has just returned from an unsettling trip to see a patient who he believes is being held against his will. Joanna quickly realizes Verner's patient is a high-ranking Englishman who the Germans have taken captive to pry vital information about England’s military strategies for the Great War. The police are frantic to find him before the Germans can use him to decode all of England’s undeciphered messages.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit has solved many extraordinary cases over the years, but some were hushed up and hidden away. Until now. Arthur Bryant remembers these lost cases as if they were yesterday. Here, then, is the truth about the Covent Garden opera diva and the 17th reindeer, the body that falls from the Tate Gallery, the ordinary London street corner where strange accidents keep occurring, the consul’s son discovered buried in the unit’s basement, the corpse pulled from a swamp of Chinese dinners....

Now that peace reigns in Europe and Napoleon has been exiled to the island of Elba, Lady Arianna and her husband, the earl of Saybrook, are determined to put government sleuthing aside. But the head of British security has other ideas.... Rumors are rife that Napoleon may be plotting to take back the French throne and plunge the continent into another war. So when Saybrook learns that his Spanish cousin has gone missing on the island under mysterious circumstances, he and Arianna feel they have no choice but to undertake a secret mission to Elba.

While on a visit to London, American genealogist Jefferson Tayte’s old friend and colleague dies in his arms. Before long, Tayte and a truth-seeking historian, Professor Jean Summer, find themselves following a corpse-ridden trail that takes them to the Royal Society of London, circa 1708.

Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death.

Joanna and the Watsons are called in by the Whitechapel Playhouse to find Pretty Penny, a lovely, young actress who has gone missing without reason or notice. While on their search, the trio is asked by Scotland Yard to join in the hunt for a vicious murderer whose method resembles that of Jack the Ripper. It soon becomes clear that the Ripper has reemerged after a 28-year absence and is once again murdering young prostitutes in Whitechapel.