Historical

A seemingly idyllic picnic ends in a macabre murder that echoes a pair of slayings fourteen years earlier in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Who Cries for the Lost.

On Thanksgiving 1849, the richest man in Boston vanishes. A Harvard Medical College janitor finds cut-up pieces of a human body in professor John Webster's privy vault beneath his laboratory. He is charged with murder despite only circumstantial evidence, and the notorious trial that follows offers a spectacle that is as riveting as the O.J. Simpson trial of the 1990s. A young doctor, James Winchell Stone, who takes down the entire transcript of the trial using an early form of stenography, decides to use his deductive reasoning to solve the mystery of who actually killed Dr. George Parkman.

Nolichucky, the house on Burnt Mountain, appears to be a secluded family lake home, forever frozen in the 1930s. But beneath its placid exterior lies a secret history and a mysterious power that profoundly affects young Luke Brooks. After spending a seemingly peaceful weekend there with his father and two teenaged friends, Luke's life is forever changed and he must thereafter confront an unexpected and potentially world-altering destiny.

A brazen daylight robbery at Christie's becomes the talk of London, but Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are no longer in the business of solving crime. Holmes has retired to Sussex, to keep bees, and Watson, recently widowed, has returned to general practice. But when Watson, desperate for distraction, agrees to accompany his old friend to Vienna, to visit eminent neurologist, Sigmund Freud, it is not long before the pair are pulled back into the murky world of ruthless criminals bent on abduction, intimidation and murder.

Private Enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, along with his partner Thomas Llewelyn, has a long, accomplished history—he's taken on cases for Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office, and even the crown itself, fulfilling them all with great skill and discretion. None of those cases, however, are as delicate and complicated as the one laid before him by a delegation of men who, thirty years before, fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.

Sarah Malloy has just helped with the delivery of a bouncing baby girl at her women's clinic, when she receives a visit from an engaging and determined young woman writing an article for New Century Magazine. Louisa Rodgers explains that she is researching the dangers of patent remedies. Sarah is only too happy to tell Louisa exactly what she thinks of the so-called medicines. A few days later, Sarah receives a visit from a bereft Bernard Rodgers, who explains that his daughter, Louisa, has been found strangled in the lobby of the building where New Century has its offices.

When a German pilot bails out into the town square, members of the Housewives League are more intent on salvaging the parachute than capturing the enemy. The pilot escapes, and shortly after, the body of a Land Army girl is discovered. Blame falls on the missing pilot, but Lady Elizabeth believes otherwise and sets out to prove it. Meanwhile, her forbidden attraction to the charming American major, and her attempts to placate the hostility between the Yanks and the Brits, complicate her already challenging life.

It's 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic Services as a spy. Her goal is personal: to find her brother, who is being held as a POW in a Nazi labor camp. Through one high-risk mission after another, she is paired with the reckless and rebellious Nick Gallagher, growing ever close to him until the war's end brings with it an act of deep betrayal.

London, 1894. Albertine Honeycombe never wanted a husband and certainly not the one with fifteen children that her cousin, Aubrey, is trying to marry her off to. She reinvents herself as Countess Von Dagga, a private detective aiding the upper echelons of women in society. As the Countess, she is a married woman, with a conveniently absent husband who doesn’t exist, which allows her far more freedom than being single. When Lord Grendel, from whom she has recovered blackmail letters, is murdered, Albertine is suspect number one—having been the last person to see him.

Nancy Morris, a shopkeeper's daughter from Sandwich, becomes a governess with the help of a benefactor, Sir Gervase Damian. One day she helps a stranger whose advances she gently rebuffs, only to meet him again when she takes a new position in the North.

The horrors have only just begun... When Lady Violet Thorn's unbearable Aunt Igitha unexpectedly arrives at her doorstep and disrupts her peaceful existence, it sets off unsettling events eerily reminiscent of the infamous Montford Maniac’s reign. Violet must unravel the connection between her unwelcome guest and the brutal incidents – from savage beasts at her doorstep to horrifying public executions.

Set in 1910 Germany, Adolph is a piano builder who hasn't spoken since he was a boy. His dreams compel him to build a mystical piano that will help him speak again. His mother appears in his dreams to guide him, but there's a cost on this journey. Meanwhile, the piano is unlike any that Mr. Becker, Factory Manager at Steinberg Pianos, has ever seen. He believes that it will change the entire piano industry, and while it may be the key to everything that both Mr. Becker and Adolph want, its also an unwitting weapon of darkness.

A series of grave robberies in the 1920s go unsolved until reporter Michael Jacobs follows a new thread. His investigation leads him to a small town in the suburbs of Chicago named Elk Hills. While there, he finds out more haunting information than the police ever discovered. But with each interview bringing him closer to the truth, he finds himself becoming a part of the story he was looking to write.

A letter arrives for Camille at her sumptuous hotel in Manhattan. She is surprised anyone knows of her presence in New York, so opens it with wonder. The envelope is closed with a seal she recognizes; a family of some note within New York society. She frowns, speculating on its contents. The letter is a request to attend a gala at New York's famous Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. Her help has been entreated to solve a matter of national importance, with the letter's writer asking Camille for her utmost discretion.