Victorian English Mystery

In The Limehouse Text, Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn discover a pawn ticket among the effects of Barker's late assistant, leading them to London's Chinese district, Limehouse. There they retrieve an innocent-looking book that proves to be a rare and secret text stolen from a Nanking monastery, containing lethal martial arts techniques forbidden in the West.

The award-winning Sherlock Holmes narrator David Timson leads us through Conan Doyle's most famous tale. This extended story brings the archetypal detective to the moors with his friend and biographer Dr. Watson to investigate the mystery of a beast terrorizing the neighborhood.

In The Adventuress, Emily and husband Colin have come to the French Riviera for what should be a joyous occasion - the engagement party of her lifelong friend, Jeremy, duke of Bainbridge, and Amity Wells, an American heiress. But the merrymaking is cut short with the shocking death of one of the party in an apparent suicide. Not convinced by the coroner's verdict, Emily must employ all of her investigative skills to discover the truth and avert another tragedy.

After the final curtain of Swan Lake, an animated crowd exits the Mariinsky theatre brimming with excitement from the night's performance. But outside, the scene is somber. A ballerina's body lies face down in the snow, blood splattered like rose petals over the costume of the Swan Queen. The crowd is silenced by a single cry - "Nemetseva is dead!" When the dead ballerina's aristocratic lover comes begging for justice, Emily must apply her own set of skills to discover the rising star's murderer.

Oxford student Jillian Leigh works day and night to keep up with her studies—so to leave at the beginning of the term is next to impossible. But after her uncle Toby, a renowned ghost hunter, is killed in a fall off a cliff, she must drive to the seaside village of Rothewell to pack up his belongings. Almost immediately, unsettling incidents—a book left in a cold stove, a gate swinging open on its own—escalate into terrifying events that convince Jillian an angry spirit is trying to enter the house.

Inspector Witherspoon has been assigned another tough case. The latest murder victim has possibly swindled his shareholders out of a huge sum of money. When the businessman is found with a bullet through is chest, all of them are suspects - but no one is telling the truth. It is up to Mrs. Jeffries and the household staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens to crack the case.

When a petty thief falls though a glass roof in his attempt to escape from the police, what should have been the death of him marks the beginning of a while new life. After his broken body is reconstructed by an ambitious young doctor, he is released from prison, and, with the help of Victorian London's extensive sewer system, he becomes the most elusive burglar in the city.

The instant Captain Declan Frobisher lays eyes on Lady Edwina Delbraith, he knows she's the woman he wants as his wife. The scion of a seafaring dynasty accustomed to success, he discovers that wooing Edwina is surprisingly straightforward - not least because she makes it plain that she wants him as much as he wants her.

Minerva Kenny is a dear woman, but her tendency to "borrow" things without asking has finally caught up with her. William Barrett has learned Minerva's shameful secret, and he's holding it over her head. Mrs. Jeffries and the staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens have hatched a scheme to save her - but when they try to recover the damning evidence from Barrett, they discover something more shocking: Barrett's corpse. Considering the victim's wicked ways, Minerva is far from the only suspect.

Spring, 1890. The long New York winter is over, the buds are blossoming, and romance is in the air. But not all’s right in Gilded-Age Manhattan. Genevieve, a society journalist, and her fiancé, Daniel, are working with photographer Dagmar Hansen on an investigation into the House of Refuge, a children’s workhouse, inspired by Daniel’s near incarceration when he was young. Genevieve is also working on her own piece for the Globe about the Sunflower Mission House, which burned down in a suspicious fire.

Sensible Violet Manville and her very ladylike half-sister Sephora are absolutely bored, thank you very much. Though neither of them would ever admit it aloud, they're missing the thrill of playing detective. So when Violet receives a letter from A Heartbroken Mother sent to her alter-ego, the Agony Aunt known to the world only as Miss Hermione, her pulse can't help but quicken. The daughter in question has gotten caught up in a cult: the Hermetic Order of the Children of Aed.

1885, London, England. When Violet's Aunt Adelia decides to abscond with her newest paramour, she leaves behind her role as the most popular Agony Aunt in London, Miss Hermione, in Violet's hands. And of course, the first letter Violet receives is full, not of prissy pondering, but of portent: Ivy Armstrong is in need of help and fears for her life. But when Violet visits the village from which the letter was posted, she finds Ivy dead. Soon Violet discovers that when you represent the best-loved Agony Aunt in Britain, both marauding husbands and murder are par for the course.

London, 1852. Genevieve Timmons has made her living posing as a spiritualist to swindle wealthy believers, until one misstep lands her in a jail cell awaiting the noose. Then a stranger, Mr. Lockhart, arrives to make her a peculiar offer. The lord he serves, Mr. Pemberton, has been grieving the mysterious death of his beautiful bride-to-be for six months. Although no foul play was ever uncovered, the young lord is convinced that she was murdered.

A former smuggler and thief, Ariq--better known as the Kraken King--doesn't know what to make of the clever, mysterious woman he rescues from an airship besieged by marauders. Unsure if she's a spy or a pawn in someone else's game, Ariq isn't about to let her out of his sight until he finds out.

No one in 1840s New York likes fires, copper star Timothy Wilde least of all. After a blaze killed his parents and another left him with a terrible scar, he has avoided flames of all kinds. So when a seamstress turned arsonist threatens Robert Symmes, a corrupt tycoon high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Timothy isn’t thrilled that Symmes consults him. His dismay escalates when his audacious and charismatic older brother, Valentine, himself deeply politically entrenched, decides to run against the incumbent, who they suspect is guilty of assault and far darker crimes.

Spirited debutante Lady Olivia McLeod, cherished daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Strathaven, has two interests: solving mysteries and winning the love of her rescuer and secret crush, the infamous Duke of Hadleigh. When Livy joins Lady Charlotte Fayne's charity for young ladies and discovers that it is a front for a covert investigative agency, she is thrilled. Livy dedicates herself to solving a deadly case. Little does she realize that the path to danger will also lead to her heart's deepest desire.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Book of the Year, 2007.
Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, 2006
A cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, an innocent man is stabbed to death. So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer.

December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills, only to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead. The driver manages to slow the train down so that the impact is minimised, but the passengers are alarmed. The first person to alight is Cyril Hubbleday, the man in charge of the excursion. He walks to the front of the locomotive—and, as he is talking to the driver, fireman and guard, he is shot dead by a sniper.

After an odd encounter at a grand masquerade ball, Lady Emily becomes embroiled in the murder investigation of one of the guests, a sometime actress trying to pass herself off as the mysterious heiress and world traveler Estella Lamar. Each small discovery, however, leads to more questions. Was the intended victim Miss Lamar or the imposter? And who would want either of them dead?

In 1903, tensions between Britain and Germany are starting to loom over Europe, something that has not gone unnoticed by Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves. An agent of the Crown, Colin carries the weight of the empire, but his focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence - burglaries that might have international ramifications. He and Emily travel to Tuscany where, soon after their arrival, a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor.