Victorian English Mystery

London, 1893: High up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O'Donnell's Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow but burning with questions: Why does the seamstress choose to jump out of that window? Why is there a cryptic message sewn into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?

Calista Langley operates an exclusive "introduction" agency in Victorian London, catering to respectable ladies and gentlemen who find themselves alone in the world. But now a dangerously obsessed individual has begun sending her trinkets and gifts suitable only for those in deepest mourning - a black mirror, a funeral wreath, a ring set with black jet stone. Each is engraved with her initials.

Ledbury, December 1892. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft looks forward to spending a quiet Christmas with his family. Then he receives news that an old friend stands accused of a brutal murder. Ravenscroft and Detective Sergeant Crabb travel to the old Worcestershire market town of Bromsgrove to investigate. But events soon take a deadly dramatic turn. As the bad weather closes in on the two detectives, Ravenscroft begins to wonder whether they will make it home for Christmas.

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

Anastasia is a completely average almost-eleven-year-old. That is, UNTIL her parents die in a tragic vacuum-cleaner accident. UNTIL she's rescued by two long-lost great-aunties. And UNTIL she's taken to their delightful and, er, "authentic" Victorian home, St. Agony's Asylum for the Criminally Insane. But something strange is going on at the asylum. Anastasia soon begins to suspect that her aunties are not who they say they are. So when she meets Ollie and Quentin, two mysterious brothers, the three join together to plot their great escape!

London 1885. Something's not right at Shoreditch Workhouse and reporter Penny Green is struggling to convince someone to listen. After spending time there undercover, she knows that more can be done for the deserving poor beneath its roof. But does anyone else care? When two workhouse inmates die in a fight, the police and the coroner accept the simplest explanation. Penny undertakes her own investigation with Inspector James Blakely's help and it's not long before they make themselves unpopular.

Harrow-on-the-Hill, March 1836: In a sense, orphans Ollie, John, and Arthur have always been treasure hunters. The mudlarks have gone from a hardscrabble life scavenging the banks of the Thames for bits and bobs to becoming students at a boarding school outside of London, thanks to the kind and generous intercession of Charles Dickens. But now they're missing—as is, apparently, a treasure map. When Charles arrives at the school, he's hit with another twist—the servant girl who was allegedly in possession of the map has been strangled in the icehouse.

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.

It’s 1876, and Charles Lenox has just given up his seat in Parliament after six years, primed to return to his first love, detection. With high hopes he and three colleagues start a new detective agency, the first of its kind. But as the months pass, and he is the only detective who cannot find work, Lenox begins to question whether he can still play the game as he once did.Then comes a chance to redeem himself, though at a terrible price: a friend, a member of Scotland Yard, is shot near Regent’s Park.

British private investigator, Thomas Kincaid, thinks he's seen it all...until a gorgeous, soaking-wet American shows up and demands he help her find a stolen family heirloom. Having had his heart crushed once before by a beautiful woman, Kincaid has no intention of tempting fate a second time. But Joanna Thorncroft isn't about to take no for an answer. Joanna has to find her mother's ring and discover the secrets it contains. Secrets that have brought her all the way across the Atlantic and onto the doorstep of a sinfully handsome detective.

In what promises to be a breakout in Charles Finch's best-selling series, Charles Lenox travels to the New York and Newport of the dawning Gilded Age to investigate the death of a beautiful socialite.

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.

Hours later, the man’s cold body lies in the city mortuary, alongside the woman he couldn’t save. And his sister, unconventional nurse Gemma Tate, tracks down troubled police inspector Sebastian Bell to unravel the truth. Sebastian has enough pressure to solve the murder of an aristocratic heiress without Gemma meddling in his case. But the cryptic sentences she brings him from her brother’s notebook could be a crucial lead. If only they knew what “milky way” meant.

1850: Charles Dickens is in Manchester, performing at the Queen's Theatre with his acting group. But his career on the stage is cut short when a man is shot dead - on set. With Dickens himself caught with the gun in his hands, he is immediately arrested. Along with the help of his good friend Superintendent Sam Jones, Dickens must do all he can to find the real killer, before he is locked up for a crime he didn't commit. Can Dickens convince the authorities of his innocence? Will he unmask the true assassin?

Ghostly images appear and float across the stage, objects levitate into the air, and a beautiful assistant disappears inside a glass box, then reappears inside a second glass box. All while the audience at the Crystal Palace, including amateur investigator Mikaela Forsythe, watch the performance. Is it real? Then, an evening with her friend, Theodora Templeton, attending the one-night performance by master illusionist Jean Luc Betard, takes a ghastly turn and plunges Mikaela headlong into murder when the illusionist's young assistant is found dead at the end of his newest stunt.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Laurens brings you a tale of unexpected romance that blossoms against the backdrop of dastardly murder. Well-born rakehell and head of an ancient family, Alaric, Lord Carradale, is finally preparing to find a bride. But loyalty to his childhood friend Percy Mandeville necessitates attending Percy's annual house party, held at neighboring Mandeville Hall. Alaric decides that as soon as he's free, he'll hie to London and find the mild-mannered lady he believes will ensure a peaceful life. But the following morning he comes upon the corpse of a young lady-guest.

Thirteen classic stories of horror and the supernatural by some of the greatest writers in the genre. This compilation includes a mix of well-known classics by authors such as Edith Nesbit, J. Sheridan Le Fanu and M. R. James, alongside several tales by less familiar names who were hugely popular and prolific in their day.

It is the summer of 1880, and DI Sam McQueen has been called away from the grey, damp streets of Edinburgh to investigate a case on the oppressively hot Mediterranean island of Malta. The local police chief is distinctly unwelcoming toward the interloper—but has no choice in the matter since Admiral Collingwood’s wealthy widow insists that her husband’s fatal fall from the roof of their villa was no accident.

Thomas Pitt, mainstay of Her Majesty’s Special Branch, is summoned to Connaught Square mansion, where the body of a junior diplomat lies huddled in a wheelbarrow. Nearby stands the tenant of the house, the beautiful, notorious Egyptian woman Ayesha Zakhari, who falls under the shadow of suspicion. Pitt’s orders are to protect—at all costs—the good name of the third person in the garden: senior cabinet minister Saville Ryerson. The distinguished public servant, whispered to be Ayesha’s lover, insists that she is as innocent as Pitt himself.

Aristocratic sleuth Charles Lenox makes a triumphant return to London from his travels to America to investigate a mystery hidden in the architecture of the city itself, in The Hidden City by critically acclaimed author Charles Finch...