Victorian Thriller

London, November 1890. Crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett faces a perfect storm of events. She and her husband Detective Sergeant Barrett are riding on a train that crashes. While rescuing other passengers, they find a woman who's been strangled to death.

On a dark, brooding evening on the Isle of Wight, Agnes Raybould and her companion find themselves an empty first-class compartment on the train. But before long a middle-aged man, clearly in high spirits after dining at his club, joins them, and begins a conversation. His name is Edwin Blanchard – and within moments of the train leaving the station, Agnes and her accomplice strangle him.

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.

While Kate winds her way through the elaborate manor, gaining inspiration for her next Gothic novel, Lord Charles discovers the reason behind their journey. It seems Prince Eddy, heir to the throne until his purported death in 1892, has actually been alive all these years. Deemed unfit to rule, he has been living secretly at Glamis under an assumed name. But now the prince has gone missing—on the very morning the body of one of his servants was found, her throat slashed in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Ripper's.

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.

A lovely American actress awakens in London on a cold morning in 1897 - lying face down on the concrete pavement outside the British Museum. She has no memories. She does not even know who she is, although she has a vague recollection of the name Sherlock Holmes. What she believes is that she has may have just killed someone, and that someone is definitely trying to kill her. As she searches for clues to her true identity, she will learn that she is not the only target.

Justine DeCabrillac, daughter of the nobility whose parents died in the chaos of the Revolution, is rescued from a decadent child brothel by a woman of the French Secret Police. Justine, too, becomes a great spy for France. Attacked on a rainy London street, Justine knows only one man can save her: Hawker, her oldest friend - her oldest enemy. London is crawling with hidden assassins, and someone is out to frame Hawker for murder. The two spies must work together to find who's out to destroy them.

London, 1849 When a boy is found drowned in the River Thames at Hungerford Stairs, novelist Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones of Bow Street are mystified to discover that the child is not the missing youngster for whom they have been searching. As Dickens and Jones delve deeper into London's poverty-stricken backstreets, they stumble across two more bodies. A serial killer is on the loose. And Charles is terrified that someone close to him may be one of the victims.

It is 1864 when Lizzie Martin takes up the post of companion to a wealthy widow who is also a slum landlord. Lizzie is intrigued to learn that her predecessor disappeared, supposedly having run off with an unknown man. But when the girl's body is found in the rubble of one of the recently demolished slums around the prestigious new railway station at St Pancras, Lizzie begins to wonder exactly what has been going on.

The sole survivor of his family’s gruesome murder years earlier, poor little Ned Lawton has struggled to put the dark events behind him. So, when a brash New York detective darkens his doorway demanding an interview, the wealthy young gentleman immediately shuts him out. But a rash of murders in America are mirroring of the London killings, and Patrick Kelly knows Ned might be the key to stopping the bloodshed.

A glittering French aristocrat is on the run, disguised as a British governess. England's top spy has a score to settle with her family. But as they're drawn inexorably into the intrigue and madness of Revolutionary Paris, they gamble on a love to which neither of them will admit.

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.

Sarah Bain and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly are crime-scene photographers for the Daily World newspaper. After solving a sensational murder, they're under pressure to deliver another big story. On a foggy summer night, they're called to the bank of the River Thames. The murder victim is an unidentified woman whose face has been slashed. But as Sarah takes photographs, she discovers that the woman is still alive.

Mirabelle Daws traveled all the way from Australia to Sheridan Square to visit her sister - only to die in the middle of a locked garden. All the residents of Sheridan Square have a key to the garden - but no one seemed to know that Mirabelle was planning to arrive. So the question facing Mrs. Jeffries is: Who wanted to make sure that Mirabelle's visit was very, very short-lived?

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.

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.

After almost a year of marriage, amateur sleuths Lord William and Lady Amy have put aside their investigating skills to prepare for their first child. It would be an easy thing, except dead bodies are once again popping up.

In Secrets of the Nile, Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, have joined his formidable mother on a holiday to visit the exotic treasures of Egypt. Their host, Lord Bertram Deeley, is a renowned amateur British collector of antiquities, who has invited his closest friends on a lavish cruise up the Nile to his home at Luxor. But on the first night of their journey, he suddenly collapses after offering a welcome toast, a victim of the lethal poison cyanide. Who amongst this group of his nearest and dearest would want to kill their generous host?

It is San Francisco in the summer of 1882, and Annie and Nate Dawson have finally found a good balance between the demands of family and work. Nate has an interesting legal case defending a young woman who has been left out of her mother’s will. Annie is looking into whether the financial difficulties facing the Potrero Woolen Mills are caused by bad management or bad luck.

Victorian Era England. Stetson revels in being unconventional. So when society shies away from her independent nature, the bold woman creates an imaginary boss and opens her own detective agency. And her keen observational skills, convincing disguises, and Holmesian methods quickly bring in a string of tough-to-crack cases. Struggling to squeeze a personal life in around a series of hazardous investigations, Stetson worries she'll never find a woman of like-passions. But with her heart set on true love despite the risk, she carries on hunting for the perfect relationship.