Victorian Thriller

Worcester, April 1893. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft receives a strange note from a lonely old woman fearing for her life. But when he visits her, she is already dead. Did Miss Maud Fincher's heart give out or was she scared to death? Maud Fincher was part of a group of locals trying to speak to their deceased loved ones through the medium of séance. Ravenscroft thinks this is harmless nonsense . . . until the old lady's last surviving heir is murdered.

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: He's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairy-tale romance in London, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball; Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned; and the papers go mad.

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries's polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done. When the general office manager of Sutcliffe Manufacturing is murdered, no one is really surprised. Ronald Dearman was anything but a dear man. The tyrannical bully had more than enough enemies to go around.

Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman's Tale is a former bookseller's sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature's most tantalizing mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession.

Celeste struggles with finding her way from a dark past, until she gets a summer volunteer gig at the local historical fair. Enter: outrageous actors, dominating psychics, and ghosts stirred by a medium’s presence. With the help of the psychic’s son - who isn’t at all what her dream date would look like but rather endearing all the same - Celeste uncovers secrets about the village left hidden among the dilapidated buildings.

After she captured the interest of detective Sir Charles Sheridan during their first case together, Kathryn Ardleigh and Sir Charles are brought together once more by the demise of a local constable and the disappearance of a child. The sleuthing couple catches a trail of deadly greed and criminal mischief once again and, with the help of a shy woman who calls herself Beatrix Potter, Kate intends to uncover the sinister secrets of Gallows Green.

Sir Charles Sheridan is many things - an amateur scientist, a renowned photographer, and a skilled detective. And due to Victorian customs, he will soon become a baron - rendering him unable to marry American writer Kate Ardleigh. But even as customs keep them apart, a good murder case always seems to bring them together. The Countess of Warwick, known affectionately as Daisy, is the subject of endless rumors about her unladylike ways and temperament. But what happens during a weekend party at her Easton estate is uglier than any rumor. First, a stable boy is killed.

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?

A Study in Scarlet was the very first Sherlock Holmes novel. Here, in the most remarkably precise manner, Doyle produced two of the most well-known characters in English fiction. Their individual traits and their relationships, their ambitions and foibles are introduced against the backdrop of an exciting story of revenge and persistence, which starts in Victorian England but moves to the American West, and the environment of the early Mormon communities.

Lizard Village, 1903. It's the beginning of a new century, and wireless telegraph companies around the world are scrambling to develop the new communications technology. But Italian prodigy Guglielmo Marconi beats them to the punch by sending the first wireless signal across the Atlantic from his station on the Lizard. Naturally, his feat has bruised some egos, but no one expects sabotage—much less murder. After two apparently deaths at the Marconi transmission station, Charles, Lord Sheridan, an amateur forensic detective and avid wireless enthusiast, is asked to head an investigation.

This is the second volume of short stories by USA Today best-selling author, M. Louisa Locke, set in the gas-lit world of Victorian San Francisco. The first story, Beatrice Bests the Burglars, finds Mrs. O’Rourke, the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse cook, home alone and in danger. In Dandy’s Discovery, something odd is happening at the boardinghouse, but Dandy, the Boston Terrier, discovers the culprit and all is well.

This is a collection of four short stories from the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. "Madam Sibyl's First Client" was written specifically for this collection and it finds Annie Fuller, the young widowed boarding house keeper, just starting her career as a pretend clairvoyant. In "Dandy Detects", the Boston terrier that lives in Annie Fuller's boarding house helps uncover a crime, and in "The Misses Moffet Mend a Marriage", two elderly boarders use their dressmaking skills to avert a domestic tragedy.

Successful businessman Jeremy Marks wasn't highly regarded by any of the members of the West London Archery Club. Most of them considered him a buffoon and a bore. But everyone was stunned when the fellow was murdered during a lull in the club's annual archery competition. He'd been shot with arrows from a longbow during a raging thunderstorm. But those who knew Marks well understood that the unkempt "court jester" persona adopted by the late, unlamented man was as fake as the smile he wore.

This collection brings together three novellas by USA Today best-selling author M. Louisa Locke: Violet Vanquishes a Villain, Katherine Catches a Killer, and Dandy Delivers. These shorter works contain the light romance, humor, and suspense of the novels in her cozy Victorian San Francisco mystery series and are an excellent introduction to the gas-lit world of late 19th-century San Francisco.

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.

Legendary thriller writer David Morrell transports listeners to the fogbound streets of London, where a killer plots to assassinate Queen Victoria. The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, and their Scotland Yard companions, finds himself confronted by an adversary who threatens the heart of the nation.

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...

The Site of Marlborough Hall, 1903. The current Duke and Duchess of Marlborough have invited husband-and-wife sleuths Charles and Kate Sheridan to what is now Blenheim Palace, for Kate is working on a book about the age-old scandal that became known as the Marlborough Folly. But as she tries to pull together pieces of the mystery, Kate must set aside her research and lend a hand when a household maid is kidnapped—and, not long afterward, the duke and his mistress disappear. However, Kate my have set aside her work too soon.

A stranger who appears on Kat's doorstep turns out to be one Charlotte Bristow, legal wife of Joe Bristow, the man Kat once believed herself married to—who she thought died at sea twelve years ago. Kat is jolted by Charlotte’s claims that Joe was not only murdered but that he also had amassed a small fortune before he died. Charlotte makes the cook an offer she cannot refuse—if Kat can discover the identity of Joe's murderer, Charlotte will give her a share of the fortune Joe left behind. Kat must race to catch the real killer before she loses her job and possibly her life.

In this novella, Annie and Nate Dawson, the amateur sleuths from M. Louisa Locke's cozy Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, are visiting Nate's family at their ranch near San Jose, California. What was supposed to be a pleasant romantic interlude for the two of them, plus a chance for Annie to get to know Nate's family better, turns serious when a crime is uncovered. And, as in Locke's short stories from this series, Annie gets help in resolving the crisis from a very unexpected quarter.