Historical Cozy

As much as Beatrice Hyde-Clare relished the challenge of figuring out who murdered a fellow guest during a house party in the Lake District, she certainly does not consider herself an amateur investigator. So when a London dandy falls dead at her feet in the entryway of a London Daily Gazette, she feels no compulsion to investigate. It was a newspaper office, after all, and reporters are already on the case as are the authorities.

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it - bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

Evie, the Countess of Woodridge, is hosting a house party to celebrate the end of summer. Some of the guests include a famous actress trying to revive her career, a theater critic renowned for his biting reviews, a newspaper owner in need of a scandal, and more than a few guests with motives for murder. Evie could not have hoped for a livelier group of guests to amuse her granny, Toodles, who has finally arrived for a visit and is eager for some entertainment. However, Evie gets more than she bargained for when one of the guests dies right before their eyes.

It is 1936. Undercook Joan Hart and lady's maid Verity Hunter are back in London after a long stay in the country. The capital is fraught and unsettled. Protests and riots are taking place regularly, fascism is on the rise and trouble in Europe is brewing, but the girls are still thrilled to be back in the Big Smoke, ready for some fun and frivolity. That is, until an old friend of Verity's contacts the servant sleuths, asking for help.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

The first three books of the acclaimed Ginger Gold Mystery series by USA Today best-selling author Lee Strauss: Murder on the SS Rosa, Murder at Hartigan House, and Murder at Bray Manor. It's 1923, and young war widow fashionista Ginger Gold makes a cross-Atlantic journey with her companion Haley Higgins to London England to settle her father's estate. When the ship's captain is found dead, Ginger is only too happy to lend her assistance to the handsome Chief Inspector Basil Reed.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A finger in a wedding cake is only the beginning in this deliciously shocking mystery featuring Flavia de Luce, “the world’s greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth” (The Seattle Times). Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop’s...

Harriet Andover had no intention of dying young like her silly siblings had. She intended to outlive them and outdo them as she always had. But Harriet discovers that the best intentions can lead to murder when she is strangled inside her mansion with a house full of holiday guests. As much as Inspector Witherspoon enjoys his job delivering justice, the last thing he wanted was a complicated murder case just a week before Christmas. He soon discovers that Harriet's own husband and grown stepchildren are not overcome with grief and neither are most of her friends.

Late spring, 1936. As Kitty Underhay steps onto the sun-drenched station platform in Nice, on orders from Whitehall to track down a missing man, she hopes there will still be time to lie by the pool, preferably with a cocktail in hand. But when she and her husband Matt take a brief evening stroll, instead of finding a perfect croissant, they stumble across a body. Kitty and Matt quickly realise it is Fred Bennett, the man from Whitehall they were hoping to find. Had he simply drunk too much fabulous French wine, or is something fishy going on in this seaside city?

On a cold night in February, the popular Lighterman's ball festivities are cut short when a guest of honor, Stephen Bremmer, goes into spasms and abruptly collapses. Once again Inspector Witherspoon returns to the Wrexley Hotel to investigate a murder. The victim was considered a boorish snob who felt entitled to anything and anyone he wanted. Yet despite his Oxford education, he was barely literate, lazy, and prone to make stupid mistakes - his last mistake turned out to be crossing a killer.

Katherine, her loyal maid Harriet, and her tenacious pug Emma soon find themselves knee-deep in troubled waters as they try to piece together the baffling clues to reveal the truth. To further complicate matters, Katherine's investigation is impeded by the incompetent detective hired by the Marquess of Bath to flush out the burglar. Now Katherine must juggle advising Prudence on how "not" to land a duke, while she dives into the investigation in the hopes of narrowing down the suspects without making waves amongst the aristocracy.

Maggie Hope is off to California to solve a crime that hits too close to home—and to confront the very evil she thought she had left behind in Europe—as the acclaimed World War II mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Susan Elia MacNeal continues. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST...

The rich and famous are converging on the iconic Savoy Hotel in swinging '60s London—including a famous Broadway producer with anger issues, a demanding Indian raja, and a gorgeous film star with certain kinky predilections. All is as it should be—until the murder of a showgirl threatens to scandalize the hotel.

An Iron Age goddess must grapple with becoming human in this delightful historical fantasy of myth and magic from the author of the instant hit Greenteeth. When Malt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned human by a wayward spell, she finds she's ill-equipped to deal with the trials...

November 1919. A relaxing few weeks by the seaside with her husband, Sidney, could almost convince Verity Kent that life has returned to the pleasant rhythm of pre-war days. Then Verity's beloved great-aunt Ilse lands on their doorstep. After years in war-ravaged Germany, Ilse has returned to England to repair her fragile health - and to escape trouble. Someone has been sending her anonymous threats, and Verity's Secret Service contacts can only provide unsettling answers.

In this electrifying sequel to the crowd-pleasing thriller Angel Killer, magician-turned-FBI-agent Jessica Blackwood must channel her past to catch a killer consumed by a desire for revenge. When a church combusts in rural Appalachia, the bizarre trail of carnage suggests diabolical forces are...

Inspector de Silva's back with a new case to solve when the arrival in the hill town of Nuala of the heir to an English earldom leads to a mysterious death. Throw in a mega-rich Romanian count, his glamorous countess and an enigmatic British army officer and the scene is set for another colourful and entertaining mystery.

There's a damsel in distress and accusations of attempted murder flying around, but it's not in the comfortable confines of the English countryside; it's in the very distant city of Damascus. Lennox must go and investigate, although he's not too keen on exotic locations, and his old retainer Greggs is distinctly averse to the very idea. Nevertheless, ex-Chief Inspector Swift persuades them, and they reach the ancient city to discover a movie crew, a spy, and a couple of mysterious ladies.

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR In the newest entry into the Nero Award-winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series, Lillian and Will are hot on the trail of a serial killer whose murders are stranger than fiction. The Pentecost & Parker series "takes gritty 40s noir, shakes it...

An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one, grisly solution -- a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve. First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism...