Historical Detective Mystery

It's late 1936, and King Edward is in turmoil, having fallen in love with the scandalously divorced and even more scandalously American Wallis Simpson. He wants to marry her but knows that doing so will jeopardize his crown. Edward confides in his dear friend Darcy, Georgie's husband, and the couple agree to hide Wallis in their home while Edward figures out what to do. But unbeknownst to Georgie and Darcy, Sir Hubert, the owner of the estate, has given a film crew permission to shoot a motion picture about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn on the grounds

Sir Charles Cartwright should have known better than to allow 13 guests to sit down for dinner. For at the end of the evening one of them is dead - choked by a cocktail that contained no trace of poison. Predictable, says Hercule Poirot, the great detective. But entirely unpredictable is that he can find absolutely no motive for murder.…

On a brisk fall day, a six-year-old boy and his nanny vanish without a trace during a trip to the London Tower. When the boy’s father, Lord Rollings, is summoned to the Tower to receive ransom instructions, he immediately puts Sherlock and Lucy on the case. The clues are scant and the tension is high - every moment that passes could bring the boy closer to danger.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

London, 1898. A vibrant young heiress has gone missing, and it’s up to Sherlock and Lucy to find her. Meanwhile, threatening letters from Egyptian revolutionaries begin turning up at newspaper offices, captivating Sherlock’s interest and sparking public fear and outrage. Then, the missing young woman is found dead in front of London’s most famous Egyptian monument.

Automne 1830, dans un Paris fiévreux encore sous le choc des Journées révolutionnaires de juillet, le gouvernement de Louis-Philippe, nouveau roi des Français, tente de juguler une opposition divisée mais virulente. Valentin Verne, jeune inspecteur du service des mœurs, est muté à la brigade de Sûreté fondée quelques années plus tôt par le fameux Vidocq. Il doit élucider une série de morts étranges susceptible de déstabiliser le régime. Car la science qui progresse, mêlée à l'ésotérisme alors en vogue, inspire un nouveau type de criminalité.

Ledbury, December 1892. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft looks forward to spending a quiet Christmas with his family. Then he receives news that an old friend stands accused of a brutal murder. Ravenscroft and Detective Sergeant Crabb travel to the old Worcestershire market town of Bromsgrove to investigate. But events soon take a deadly dramatic turn. As the bad weather closes in on the two detectives, Ravenscroft begins to wonder whether they will make it home for Christmas.

The Cleaves family gather in a small country churchyard for their son's funeral. But they don't recognize the dead man in the coffin. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft is alarmed by the behavior of the Upton Undertakers. What are they hiding? And who killed this man? Then another member of the Cleaves family is found dead. Ravenscroft begins to suspect something grisly is afoot—could someone be involved in body snatching?

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified - but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman?

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sits the corpse of Mrs.Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: "You see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Mrs. Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he'd ever met....

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong - with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.

In a remote house in the middle of Dartmoor, six shadowy figures huddle around a table for a seance. Tension rises as the spirits spell out a chilling message: "Captain Trevelyan...dead...murder." Is this black magic or simply a macabre joke? The only way to be certain is to locate Captain Trevelyan. Unfortunately, his home is six miles away and, with snowdrifts blocking the roads, someone will have to make the journey on foot....

Edinburgh, 1869: Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson is adjusting to her new life in Victorian Scotland. Her employers know she’s not housemaid Catriona Mitchell—even though Mallory is in Catriona’s body—and Mallory is now officially an undertaker’s assistant. Dr. Duncan Gray moonlights as a medical examiner, and their latest case hits close to home. Men are dropping dead from a powerful poison, and all signs point to the grieving widows… the latest of which is Gray’s oldest sister. Poison is said to be a woman’s weapon, though Mallory has to wonder if it’s as simple as that.

Spring, 1909, and Lady Hardcastle, amateur sleuth and all-round eccentric, is enjoying a well-deserved rest. But a week after a trip to the cattle market, Spencer Caradine, a local farmer, turns up dead in the pub, face-down in his beef and mushroom pie. Once again, it is up to Lady Hardcastle and her maid, Florence, to solve the case. Armed with wit and whimsy, not to mention Florence’s mean right hook, the pair set out to discover what really happened and why. Was it poison or just ill luck?

Georgie, back home at her estate in Eynsleigh, impatiently awaits the birth of her baby. But she has plenty to occupy her: Her new chef, Pierre, has arrived from Paris, and Sir Hubert, who owns Eynsleigh, is back from his latest expedition. It's time for Georgie to throw her first house party to celebrate his return and show off her new chef. The dinner party is a smashing success. Sir Mortimer Mordred—famous author of creepy Gothic horror novels—is one of the guests. He recently purchased a nearby Elizabethan manor nearby because it has a famous poison garden.

Christmas Eve, and the Lee family's reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. When Hercule Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man....

Wherever Christopher Rowe goes, adventure - and murder - follows. Even a chance to meet King Charles ends in a brush with an assassin. All that's recovered from the killer is a coded message with an ominous sign-off: more attempts are coming. So when Christopher's code-breaking discovers the attack's true target, he and his friends are ordered to Paris to investigate a centuries-old curse on the French throne. And when they learn an ancient treasure is promised to any assassin who succeeds, they realize the entire royal family is at stake - as well as their own lives.

Worcester, 1888. Nicholas Evelyn, the elderly cathedral librarian, has disappeared. A priceless medieval manuscript has been stolen. Its glass case smashed with a candlestick. Ravenscroft is sent from the grimy streets of Whitechapel to investigate. Aided by his trusty companion Constable Tom Crabb, Ravenscroft soon discovers that behind the cathedral’s facade lurks a dark world of death and deceit. Could the murder relate to an unsolved mystery dating back nearly 40 years?

Worcester, April 1893. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft receives a strange note from a lonely old woman fearing for her life. But when he visits her, she is already dead. Did Miss Maud Fincher's heart give out or was she scared to death? Maud Fincher was part of a group of locals trying to speak to their deceased loved ones through the medium of séance. Ravenscroft thinks this is harmless nonsense . . . until the old lady's last surviving heir is murdered.

Penny dreadful writer Kate Ardleigh solves one mystery after another in this bundle collection of the first three titles in Robin Paige's Victorian Mystery series.