Cozy Historical Fiction

Chief Inspector Richard Owen dresses carefully at his house in Chiswick. He is due to meet Lady Camille Divine at Café Bonbon, a well-known nightclub, after a six-week separation when he decided to visit his late wife’s relatives in the South of France. He is due to go back to work at Scotland Yard after a two-month sabbatical, but he and Camille have some unfinished business.

Camille decides it's time to make her promised visit to Paris to see her old friend, Madame Tatou. She, Ottilie, and Cecily travel to France by aeroplane, a new experience for them all. They have a purpose in going to Paris, one that they hope will end in joy, but their plans are somewhat waylaid when Madame Tatou finds the body of her maid in a cupboard at her 7th Arrondissement apartment. The intrepid Camille, and her loyal maid, Cecily, set out to discover why Madame Tatou's maid was murdered, who wanted her dead...and why!

It is the Olympics of 460 BC. Nico's best friend, Timodemus, is a competitor in the pankration, the deadly martial art of ancient Greece. Timo is the hot favorite to win. His only serious rival is Parmonos, from Sparta. When Parmonos is found beaten to death, it is obvious Timodemus must be the killer. The Judges of the Games sentence Timodemus to be executed in four days' time. Complicating everything is the fact that Athens and Sparta are already at each other's throats. If an Athenian is found to have cheated by murdering a Spartan, it will be everything the hawks in Sparta need to declare open war.

Invited by society beauty Lady Violet Boynton-Dale to her ancestral home, Boynton Hall, to investigate dangerous threats which are being made against her brother, the dashing Explorer Alaric Boynton-Dale, Posie leaves London for the sun-dappled beauty of the Cotswolds. She finds that Boynton Hall is a place of opulent grandeur, but also of dark secrets, not least that Alaric is a man with jilted lovers and jealous husbands left trailing in his wake.

As her reputation steadily grows, Posie Parker is asked to accompany the utterly charming Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission of entrapment. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at the remote Maypole Manor in Kent, the cliff-top home of Lord Robin Glaysayer.

Trust is a delicate thing, and no one knows that better than Rosalind Thorne. Lady Melbourne has entrusted her with recovering a packet of highly sensitive private letters stolen from her desk. The contents of these letters hold great interest for the famous poet Lord Byron, who had carried on a notorious public affair with Lady Melbourne's daughter-in-law, the inconveniently unstable Lady Caroline Lamb. Rosalind is to take up residence in Melbourne House, posing as Lady Melbourne's confidential secretary. There, she must discover the thief and regain possession of the letters.

It's September in Brighton, and the city is playing host to weeks of endless rain and lashings of villainy. A trusted member of a local gang has disappeared part way through planning a huge heist, a violent criminal obsessed with boiling the heads of policemen has escaped Broadmoor and is rumoured to be headed towards the city, while at Gosling's department store, an American researcher has been found dead in the music section.

Someone is snatching priceless jewels right off the necks of British aristocrats. With his intimate access to the parlors and bedrooms of Regency London, the Richmond Thief strikes again and again. The Bow Street Runners, the city's only detectives, seem powerless to stop him. Enter Althea, lady scientist. As the young widow of a country gentleman, Lady Althea Trent is introduced to the upper-class social scene as yet another pretty face. But her own scientific inquiries and an invitation to act as an agent of Bow Street propel her into the hunt for the Richmond Thief.

It's the week of Hunter's Eve, a yearly celebration of monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night. But for Huntress Isabeau Agarwal, the event is a stark reminder that in her line of work, there is never a day's rest. Murders rock the city, and Isabeau is charged with solving them before the killer strikes again. One, a macabre accident during a dangerous magician's trick gone awry. The other, a slain politician, his disfigured body displayed atop Lamplight's most memorable landmark.

It's Christmas 1937 and an eclectic list of guests and staff have gathered for the grand re-opening of Maybridge castle, a newly renovated yet still crumbling hotel deep in the Cumbrian countryside. An innocent game of murder-in-the-dark will turn into a real game of life and death. And by the time the first sherries have been drunk, one of these people will be dead - and one of them the killer. Someone has changed the rules, but who?

In a bid to heal from the grief of a personal loss, forensic genealogist RaeJean Hunter takes on a straightforward case-identify human remains found on a nearby college campus, believed to be the 180-year-old remains of Mary Rogers, a woman who died mysteriously in 1841 and was believed to have been buried in the nearby cemetery that had washed away. It should be simple enough, a project to get her back in the game.

Lady Woodridge and Tom Winchester offer the new Lady Evans their support during her first foray into local society. To their surprise, Evie's reputation as a lady detective has preceded her, and she is engaged to solve the mystery of a theft.

When Ellison Russell is nearly killed at a benefactors' party, she brushes the incident aside as an unhappy accident. But when her house is fire-bombed, she's shot at, and the person sitting next to her at a gala is poisoned, she must face facts. Someone wants her dead. But why? And can Ellison find the killer before he strikes again? Add in an estranged sister, a visiting aunt with a shocking secret, and a handsome detective staying in her guesthouse, and Ellison might need more than cream in her coffee.

1903. Bookish, bespectacled Vita Carew longs to be left to her scientific studies. But, to her chagrin, she cannot avoid the event of the season, a gala at Pemberton Hall. This glamorous concert and sumptuous dinner will mark the Pemberton household’s return to society after a run of misfortune. But disaster strikes as soon as the seafood is served. Vita can only offer first aid as elegant guests fall suddenly ill on all sides. Worse still, she suspects a death has been covered up to avoid interrupting the carefully planned soirée.

Nothing ruins a night at the opera faster than a duchess falling to her death. Mrs. Ginger Reed, known by some as Lady Gold, is at the Royal Albert Hall with her husband, Basil Reed, a chief inspector at Scotland Yard, and the two of them are immediately at the scene. Was the duchess of Worthington’s fall accidental? Where was the duke? And what does Ginger’s grandmother-in-law, Ambrosia, the Dowager Lady Gold, have to do with the sordid affair? Something went terribly wrong with the dowager’s "sisterhood" of friends back in the 1860s, and it's all coming home to roost.

Kitchen maid Joan Hart and lady's maid Verity Hunter intend to enjoy their trip to the theater, especially as Verity's uncle Tommy is one of the leading men in the play. Act two of the play is curtailed when the lights come up in the interval, and the girls realize a man has been stabbed to death almost under their very noses. The case reunites the servant sleuths with their old ally, Detective Inspector Marks, and while the girls do their best to solve the case while keeping their jobs, the glitter and glamor of the theater may prove to be as dangerous as any battlefield.

Life couldn’t be better on Eaton Square Gardens, where the most prestigious families lived, until one of their own dies, and it’s murder. Ginger and Basil are on the case, but it’s not a simple glass of bubbly fizz. The more the clues present themselves, the trickier the puzzle gets, and Ginger feels she’s on a wild goose chase.

When the body of Isolde Newley's long lost husband is found in the grounds of St. Augustus churchyard, suspicion falls on Isolde and everyone close to her - especially her new love interest, the dashing Dr. Mainwaring. The mystery is exacerbated by the largest snowfall seen in North Yorkshire for years. No one can get in - or out - of the village.

With his dying breath, Bobby Lowell begs Ellison Russell, "Tell her I love her." Unable to refuse, Ellison struggles to find the girl the murdered boy loved. Too bad an epically bad blind date, a vindictive graffiti artist, and multiple trips to the emergency room keep getting in the way. Worse, a killer has Ellison in his sights, her newly rebellious daughter is missing, and there's yet another body in her hostas. Mother won't be pleased.

Nominated for both the Agatha and Anthony awards, national best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert introduces a garden club of lady sleuths in Depression-era Alabama. The Darling Dahlias have just inherited a new clubhouse and garden, complete with two beautiful cucumber trees. But before long, these genteel ladies must unravel the mystery about what’s buried beneath one of these trees and the enigma of the dead body that soon turns up.