Victorian Suspense

In the grey mist of the early morning a body is dumped on the shore of the Thames by a boatman in a metal canoe. The city is soon alive with talk of the savage Esquimaux stalking Victorian London and an eyewitness who claims the killer had an accomplice: a tall woman dressed in widow's weeds, with the telltale look of the degenerate Irish.

April 1865. Having been an eyewitness to the assassination of President Lincoln, Matthew Grand, a former captain of the 3rd Cavalry of the Potomac, has come to London on an undercover assignment to hunt down the assassin's coconspirators. Ambitious young journalist Jim Batchelor has been charged with writing a feature article on the visiting American. Both men are distracted from their missions by the discovery of a body in London's Soho district.

"The good old days" aren't all they're cracked up to be...at least in Jeanne M. Dams's turn-of-the-century novels. Her woman on the spot, Hilda Johansson, a maid in the Studebaker household in South Bend, sees what's going on among the rich, suffers what's going on among the less fortunate...and has no trouble telling it like it is.

This gripping historical crime fiction novel, based on fact, is set in Bradford, England, 1888. It explores the horrific murder of Johnny Gill; a murder and mutilation so gruesome, it stuns a nation. Even hardened detectives are affected by its savagery, swiftly comparing it to the work of Jack the Ripper.

Although Ophelia Garrett loved Cade Scott first, it was her sister he married and took home to his plantation. When Ophelia receives word of her sister's murder and Cade's arrest, she travels there on a mission to learn the truth. She soon finds the halls of Almenara are haunted by secrets, peril, and quite possibly her sister's ghost. Despite the cold, angry man Cade has become, Ophelia's heart refuses to believe he is a murderer. Vowing to do everything she can to prove his innocence, Ophelia must open wounds she'd hoped were long healed.

When 18-year-old Eliza Cross agrees to visit her school friend, Lady Celia, at her home for the summer, it's immediately clear how out of place she is at Caerdon Abbey. Eliza, orphan and charity student, can't help feeling different from the aristocracy who are living their lives in luxury. But when Celia's brother, Alan, the handsome Duke of Caerdon, comes home from France, Eliza finds herself irresistibly attracted to him - especially after he disciplines her on the very first morning after they meet.

Facing court-martial for disobeying orders, Lieutenant Samuel Kingston despairs when avaricious aristocrats imprison his father for a crime born of Samuel’s clash with one of their own as a boy. The young Anglo-Irishman’s only hope of freeing both is accepting a commission assisting William Walker and his filibusters win Nicaragua’s bloody civil war.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Princess Luisa has devoted her life to duty, quietly preparing to succeed her father as ruler. Nothing, however, primed her to live on the run, disguised as a personal secretary to a notorious English scoundrel. The earl is just the man to help her reclaim her throne, but Luisa is drawn to her powerful employer in ways she could never imagine.

The year is 1873, and Sybil Ingram has come to a crossroads. Once she was the toast of the London stage, but now that she's 28 years old - very well, nearly 30 - her draw isn't what it used to be, and her theater troupe is foundering. When her trusted mentor asks her to take the blame for his financial misdeeds, Sybil sees no choice but to retire from the life she loves and move to America to marry New York City hotel magnate Alcott Lammle.

When famous bounty hunter Thad McIntyre and lonely widow Jessie Alderman meet, a fiery romance flares between them, but terrible events threaten their happiness. A mysterious stranger also arrives in Echo Canyon. Is he friend or foe?

With the scandalous nature of her birth to live down, Isabella Fairmont dreams of a proper marriage—even if a passionless one. She saves her deepest desires for the novel she dares to pen, wherein a handsome lord with dark powers seduces her. But then her courtship with an appropriate suitor is threatened by the sudden attentions of the reclusive Earl of Black… whose pale blue eyes and brooding sensuality are exactly as she described in her book.

Five years after releasing the love of his life to another man, the Duke of Surrey struggles with deep remorse about his past decisions. Chained in a loveless marriage of convenience and strangled by duty, he wallows in regret and drink. Everything in his life changes, when on holiday in Paris, he meets a young boy and his former rival. Suddenly, he finds himself thrown into a whirlwind of deceit and lies as he searches for the meaning of truth and love. Just like innocence, deception carries a price.

Saddled with Chloe Gresham, his beautiful and irresponsible young ward, Sir Hugo Lattimer, a man driven by dark memories and a tormenting despair, has no intention of caring for her - until he falls in love.

Iain Sinclair, Marquis of Alynwick, is certain there is a special hell for him. An unrepentant rake, he holds nothing sacred - except for beautiful Elizabeth York. For years, Alynwick has tried to forget the woman he loved so well, and treated so badly. A woman who could hold nothing in her heart for him but hatred. All of society believes Elizabeth, the blind daughter of a duke, to be a proper young lady. But no one knows of her wanton affair with Alynwick.

A book of passion, of 16th century England, of greed and political ambition unto death. Historians and novelists have written extensively about the various aspects of Queen Elizabeth I’s long, rich, and tumultuous life. No one has ever given us a fully realized portrait of the greatest English monarch as a young girl. Concluding her brilliant Tudor trilogy, Robin Maxwell enters this new territory by introducing Elizabeth as a romantic and vulnerable teenager dangerously awakening to sexuality with the wrong man.

Gideon Waverley, heir to the Duke of Townsend, had everything a young man could need, a promising future, a title, charming good looks, great friends, and a family who adored him. Until his body turned him into a monster. He had no choice but to separate himself from the world, to hide his monstrous self from society, to cast away his future. But the brilliant and beautiful Eve Cornwell refused to believe he could not be saved, even as she refused to guard her heart.

Lucy Ashton had long ago given up her quest for true love. In the rarified society of Victorian England, Lucy plays the game—flirting, dancing and dabbling in the newly fashionable spiritualism. Even marrying when—and who—she’s supposed to. If the stuffy Duke of Sussex cannot spark the passion she craves, he can at least give her a family, a home of her own, and a place to belong. But when her polite marriage reveals a caring and sensual man, Lucy begins to wonder if she can indeed have it all.

Autumn, 1888. While the city is horrified by Jack the Ripper's murder spree another, less publicized killer is at large. Each murder takes place right after the Ripper killings, as the murderer appears to be taking advantage of the lack of police resources to tackle two major investigations at the same time. Inspector Albert Norris is charged with bringing the railway killer to justice, but clues are few and the killer's motive unclear.

A young banker, by the name of Mr Charles Petrie, returned home after riding his horse to dine with his wife, Grace, and her companion, Mrs Quinn. During and after dinner he had nothing to excite him save the receipt of a letter which somewhat annoyed him, and that his wife consumed rather more wine than he considered to be good for her health. Immediately after retiring to his room, he was seized with symptoms of irritant poisoning, and despite every effort made on his behalf, he succumbed to its effects.