Historical Cozy

There's no such thing as privacy in the tiny village of Birdswing. Everywhere Dr. Benjamin Bones turns, someone is spying from a window, listening through a wall, or gossiping over a garden fence. "The birds sing in Birdswing," says the vicar, Father Cotterill; and in February 1940, this is more true than ever. Waiting for Hitler to make his move and turn this "Phony War" into the real thing, Ben's fellow villagers are desperate for a distraction.

Flappers meet gangsters in the hottest jazz club in Soho. Step back into the roaring twenties with a captivating mystery set in 1920s London. When a night of jazz and dancing with the American ambassador’s niece ends in tragedy, apprentice detective Marjorie Swallow is thrust into a world of shady cocaine deals and opium dens. To discover the truth, she goes undercover as a dance hostess at the notorious Harlequin club and confronts the menacing Armstrong brothers. The quest for answers takes unexpected turns, with secrets lurking in the shadows of Soho and closer to home.

When one of her favorite people goes missing, aka Alfred, Ava goes into mama-bear mode. Nobody is going to get away with stealing her friend and butler. The immortal Vikings are the first names on her suspect list, but was it really them? The truth stone aids in the search, but Ava begins to doubt even that as everyone who has ever met Alfred becomes a suspect.

1862. When a group of young Australian women set sail for matrimony in Canada, they believe it’s the start of a happy new life. But when one of the intended brides goes missing, only Alyssa Chalmers, the one educated, wealthy woman in the group, is convinced the disappearance is no accident. She sets out to find out what happened. Has there been a murder? Alyssa is willing to move heaven and earth to find out the truth. She is about to discover that there is more to her voyage into the unknown than she bargained for, and it may well cost her life.

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.

Amory Ames is looking forward to a tranquil period of reconnecting with reformed playboy husband Milo after an unexpected reconciliation following the murderous events at the Brightwell Hotel. However, she is drawn into another investigation when Serena Barrington asks her to look into the disappearance of valuable jewelry snatched at a dinner party. Amory agrees to help lay a trap to catch the culprit at a lavish masked ball hosted by the notorious Viscount Dunmore.

When a dead man that she knows falls out of Lorry Lockharte’s new car right in front of the sheriff, it doesn’t look good. Still, being hauled into the sheriff’s station isn’t what Lorry had expected. After a lawyer comes out of nowhere to get her released, Lorry struggles to prove her innocence and find the real killer.

After one final insult, Lorry Lockharte leaves her abusive husband stranded at the Grand Canyon. Returning home, she finds their house repossessed and her elderly employer deceased. Her cousin gets her a job at the Rutledge Historical Society after the previous employee had a fatal accident with a steep set of stairs. On her first day of work, Lorry finds a dead body at the foot of those same stairs. When she learns the dead woman is the sister of the previous victim, Lorry suspects the two deaths are related. Will she discover the killer in time or will she be the next victim?

Murder's a bad stroke of luck! River Thames boat races between the London University colleges are an popular events, and Mrs. Ginger Reed is excited to attend for the first time, especially since the son of a good friend of her new husband, Chief Inspector Basil Reed, is racing. When a very unusual murder presents itself at the boat club, Lady Gold’s Investigations is hired to take on the case. Ginger’s determined to solve the mystery before someone else dies, but can she manage it without ruining another pair of Italian leather T-strap shoes?

Unregistered corpses are showing up among the cadavers in the mortuary of the London School of Medicine for Women. Unnatural deaths. Murders. The first known victim is recognized by Haley Higgins, a third-year pathology student. War-widow fashionista Ginger Gold feels a responsibility for the man's death and is determined to find his killer.

A large group of people enters the Rutledge Historical Society to see the new and much anticipated 1950s murder exhibit. After viewing the display, the group exits the building leaving two people behind. A few minutes later, one of the two is shot dead in front of the exhibit and the other one rushes out the back door and escapes. Was the perpetrator one of the group or was it the old woman’s daughter who has only a very weak (and stinky) alibi? Or could it have been someone else?

When Lorry Lockharte’s cousin, Kasey, is accused of murder, Lorry feels like once again she must work to find the murderer. Did Kasey do it, or is she truly innocent as she claims? Lorry isn’t so sure about this one. Not only did Kasey have the opportunity and the motive, but she picked up the murder weapon. Will Lorry find the murderer only to discover that it really is Kasey?

Mabs Millett is the reluctant heiress to Cheadle Abbey, one of Vanbrugh's monstrous piles. At a deb dance in the early fifties, she meets a financier who offers her a job as an assistant to the editor of the social diary on a magazine he has just bought.

Bombay, 1909. Genevieve Masefield and George Dillman make a living as detectives aboard the early twentieth century's most extravagant ocean liners. From the members of first class in all their finery, to the card cheats and pickpockets plying their trade, they've experienced more than their share of humanity. For their latest voyage, the Salsette boasts a pair of travellers who feign ignorance of each other but there is clearly no love lost between them. Then there’s an elderly man whose powers of deduction may be based on more earthly techniques than the mystical energy he claims to possess.

When Samuel Pepys and his loyal inquisitors, Abby Harcourt and Jacob Standish, are summoned to King Charles II’s court, they anticipate frivolous entertainment and unimaginable luxury. Instead, they find only death. One of the King’s beloved mistresses lies slain beneath a fallen chandelier, its rope cunningly sabotaged. Was her demise the work of a jealous rival, or a duplicitous courtier with dire secrets to hide?

She’s a deliciously scandalous woman who is no man’s bride.... He’s a black sheep, forced to return home. Together, they enter a make-believe betrothal that shocks London society....

When a neighbour’s lodger is found dead, Vita Carew, a sharp-witted science student, is the first on the scene. The police pronounce it an accident, a fatal fall, but Vita remains unconvinced. Her access to the post-mortem reveals the truth: Albert Flett was murdered. As Vita investigates, she uncovers a trail of evidence that suggests Albert’s quiet, unassuming ways were hiding a complex and dangerous secret life. When a prominent, eccentric old lady is also found dead under suspicious circumstances, Vita finds herself entangled in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a ruthless killer.

Prepare for tales of unexplained murders, long-concealed mysteries, strange visitors in the night, and a secret in Posie’s own past, about her parents, which haunts her to this very day. But something is afoot. Several of the guests are acting shiftily, and when a sparkling Christmas gift under the tree is revealed to be a ticking time bomb, designed to cause multiple murders and mayhem, Posie and Lovelace have to locate the perpetrator, fast. Who would want to cause such untold misery, and why?

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.

Posie Parker, Private Detective, travels to the south coast to investigate the death of Elsie Moncreiff, a Housekeeper, who has fallen from the White Cliffs of Dover in a gale. But the question is, was it bad luck, or was it murder? Elsie’s place of work was the glamorous cliff-side party house, White Shaw, and her employers were England’s renowned fashion designers, Petronella Douglas and Tony Stone, whose weekly parties - packed full of celebrities - are almost as famous as their clothes.