Cozy Historical Fiction

London, 1922. Between gallivanting in his Rolls-Royce and darkening the doorways of London's hotspots, Lord Reginald "Rex" Bankes-Fernsby has almost succeeded in banishing the battlefield nightmares that plague his sleep. Pity he can't say the same about that nagging lack of direction in his life. If only he were like his best friend Freddie—self-assured, suave, and up to his ears in secrets. But when Freddie is murdered, Rex doubts the verdict. Was Freddie really cut down while up to no good, or was he killed in the line of duty?

Britain is in shambles, as it recovers from the cataclysm of WWI. Although the war has ended, it takes effort to preserve the peace against hidden enemies striving to undermine or replace the government. There is a desperate need for recruits to fight this invisible war. Sophie Burgoyne can trace her lineage back to the ancient French kings and dukes of twelve centuries ago.A long pedigree doesn't help her when she only has a few pounds in the bank. Sophie knows she must take action, or she and her father, the vicar of Havering-under-Lyme, will face the horrors of genteel impoverishment.

Emily and Colin Hargreaves make it a rule to spend as little time as possible with her parents in Kent, but are unable to refuse Lady Catherine Bromley’s invitation to join them for a pre-Christmas party that includes the family of Ala Kapur Singh, a powerful Punjabi maharaja who has come to England after receiving the Order of the Star of India.

Stephen Attebrook, a crippled knight facing poverty and ruin, seems condemned to a quiet life when he takes a position as deputy coroner in the small medieval town of Ludlow. But instead, he plunges into a web of murder, espionage, and intrigue. A death Attebrook rules an accidental drowning turns out to be a murder, and he must find the killer with little evidence pointing the way. Then a commission to return a runaway apprentice pitches him into the midst of a conflict between a rebellious earl and King Henry III that is about to erupt into civil war.

Mildred Kilgore and Earlynne Biddle are planning to open a bakery on the square - if they can come up with the right recipes. Charlie Dickens faces two of the biggest puzzles of his career as an investigative reporter, and one of them involves his wife. Cute little Cupcake's talent as a singer and dancer makes her a tempting target for an unscrupulous exploiter. Lizzy must enlist the Dahlias to protect her while she herself is confronted by a romantic puzzle. And Sheriff Norris is forced to reopen a puzzling mystery that the town thought was solved.

It is the winter of 1880, and the future looks promising for Annie and Nate Dawson. Nate's law practice is taking off. Annie has made the transition from pretend clairvoyant to a successful financial consultant. And they are looking forward to spending their first Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays together. For Robert Livingston, the owner of San Francisco's newest grand emporium, the holidays don't look so promising. Not if he can't figure out how to stop whoever is stealing from his department store, the Silver Strike Bazaar.

1957: In the beach town of Brighton, music is playing and guests are sunning themselves when a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair. Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police Force has a hunch that the fiendish murder may be connected to a notorious nightspot, but his captain and his colleagues are - as ever - busy with other more important issues. Inspector Steine is being conned into paying for the honor of being featured at the Museum of Wax, and Sergeant Brunswick is trying (and failing) to get the attention of the distraught Brighton Belles who found the body.

In this Gaslight Mystery from the national best-selling author of Murder in Murray Hill, midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy investigate foul play in the secretive high-society world of 19th-century New York City....

The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister.

Henrietta, the Dowager Countess of Woodridge, is on a mission to find Tom Winchester a title. Meanwhile, Evie, the Countess of Woodridge, has been offered a partnership. However, she has reservations about her abilities to juggle the business of being a lady detective and all her other responsibilities. When she finds herself in the midst of an investigation to discover the author of some threatening letters, all her relatives become involved, in the process, mastering the art of observation. Little do they know they are about to uncover a mystery hidden within a mystery.

Flavia is enjoying the summer, spending her days punting along the river with her reluctant family. Languishing in boredom, she drags a slack hand in the water - and catches her fingers in the open mouth of a drowned corpse. Flavia needs to put her super-sleuthing skills to the test to investigate the murder of three gossips in the local church and to keep her sisters out of danger.

After her arrival at that august city, Kitty discovers the cause for her sister's concern. The remains of a young woman with ties to Robert Crawford, Kitty’s fiancé, has been found. Testimony at the inquest soon points to him as the murderer. Terrified he may be charged with the crime, Kitty sets out to investigate.

After a weeklong passage over the Atlantic from Boston to Liverpool, Ginger Gold arrives at her childhood London home--Hartigan House--to find decade-old remains from some poor woman on the floor in the attic. Ginger's Boston terrier, Boss, noses out a missing phalange from under the bed. It's a mystery that once again puts Ginger alongside the handsome Chief Inspector Basil Reed. Who is the victim? And how did she end up in Ginger's home?

England, 1925. When a strange young woman is found murdered on the grounds of Unsworth Castle, the duke and his family are astounded at first, but quickly become enraged when the police begin asking all sorts of impertinent questions. And when suspicions dare to fall on one of their own, it is up to Mr. Quayle, Lord Unsworth's exceedingly efficient secretary, to find the true culprit and save the House of Unsworth from scandal and ruin.

Jack and Maggie Harris are adrift on ravaged streets during the London Blitz. Their home is gone. They have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. With only the memories of their greatest loss - the death of their child during a Christmas years before - Jack and Maggie settle in a seemingly deserted mansion for the night.

On Dr. Benjamin Bones’s first night in the quaint Cornish village of Birdswing, a shocking hit-and-run leaves him seriously injured and his unfaithful wife dead. As he recuperates, Lady Juliet, a fiery aristocrat who won’t take no for an answer, pulls him into a sleuthing partnership destined to change both their lives. Suspecting that Ben’s late wife was murdered, he and Juliet dive headfirst into the investigation, questioning Birdswing's most eccentric and suspicious residents.

It is hardly surprising Verity Lark can’t sleep at night with all the thoughts darting through her mind: her recent stay in Newgate, her debt to Colson Hardwicke, the horrible abuse suffered by the children at Fortescue’s that her reporting on the orphan asylum several years earlier had failed to uncover. And then of course there are the shooting lessons she has promised to give to the Duchess of Kesgrave. Verity has spent three months cruelly mocking the former spinster for her investigative pretensions, and now she is obligated to teach the woman how to fire a deadly weapon.

When Flavia de Luce is banished to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, she’s soon on familiar ground when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve. Girls have been disappearing with alarming regularity, leading Flavia to wonder not only how and why but what exactly is the academy's true purpose? Flavia must enter a shadowy world where truth and lies seem interchangeable and no one can be trusted.

New York City, 1919. Lillie Mead mourns the love she lost in the war. But when a wealthy British friend offers her a reporting job across the pond, she hopes accepting will help her rebuild her life. She barely has time to unpack before she’s assigned the scoop of a poisoned socialite’s death. As the clues take a turn for the scandalous, Lillie unearths shocking skeletons in the victim’s closet. But she never expected the threads of the beloved woman’s life to weave with hers. Can Lillie expose the truth before her own death makes the front page?

In many ways Niles should be as American as apple pie: raised by missionary parents, taught to respect his elders and be an honorable and upright Christian citizen dreaming of the good life on the sun-blessed shores of California. But Niles is also Japanese: reared in the aesthetics of Shinto and educated in the dance halls and backroom poker gatherings of Tokyo's shady underworld to steal, trick, and run for his life. As a gaijin, a foreigner - especially one with a gift for the artful scam - he draws suspicion and disfavor from Japanese police.