Historical Detective

It’s the holiday season, and Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby have landed a headlining gig at the Brighton Hippodrome, the biggest theater in the city, an achievement only slightly marred by the less-than-savory supporting act: a tableau show of naked “living statues”. But when one of the girls goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there’s something far more sinister than obscenity afoot in the theater.

Warwickshire, 1934. Deep in a hamlet in the Warwickshire countryside, Red Hollow Hall is a male-only sanitorium run by the charismatic psychiatrist Dr Moon. However, all is not well, and Dr Moon's patients are leaving Red Hollow in droves. Recent disturbances, which originally appeared to be pranks, have descended into something more sinister, and now the men believe they have a malevolent visitor - the mermaid of Red Hollow. The ghost of a murdered girl, they believe the mermaid, wreaks bloody revenge on unsuspecting men each time the hamlet floods.

1313. En Terre Sainte, une compagnie de brigands attaque une cité isolée. Leur chef, Roncelin de Fos, parvient à s'emparer de la ville, sans se douter qu'elle intéresse fortement deux personnages clés : le Grand maître des Templiers et le légat du Pape. Roncelin prend la fuite avant d'être récupéré par le Temple. Pour payer sa dette, il devra retrouver le seul rabbin capable de décrypter le message que les Templiers ont découvert dans les souterrains du Temple de Salomon.

The frontier zone of Archenfield in Herefordshire is a no-man's-land, which acts as a bulwark between Norman-controlled English soil and the Welsh border. Soldier Ralph Delchard and lawyer Gervase Bret arrive in Hereford for what looks like one of their more straightforward assignments from the crown, to settle conflicting claims to land in Archenfield. Ralph and Gervase are shocked to discover the murder of a principal witness, a wealthy landowner who was burned alive in his own home. No clues remain except an enigmatic red dragon cut into the turf in front of the house.

It’s 1890 and the newly famous Sherlock Holmes faces his worst adversary to date - a diabolical villain bent on destroying some of London’s most admired public figures in particularly gruesome ways. A further puzzle is that suicide closely attends each of the murders. As he tracks the killer through vast and seething London, Holmes finds himself battling both an envious Scotland Yard and a critical press as he follows a complex trail from performers to princes, anarchists to aesthetes.

London 1884. When a thief robs Fleet Street reporter Penny Green, she finds herself caught up in a horrifying murder. Someone is terrorizing the residents of St Giles Rookery, and Scotland Yard sends Inspector James Blakely to investigate. When the serial killer claims a victim outside the slums, Victorian London is sent into panic. Can Penny's friendship with the people of St Giles uncover the culprit? She and James must overcome their complicated relationship to work together, but each new murder threatens to derail their work for good.

Virtuoso storyteller Umberto Eco conjures up a gloriously rich portrait of 14th century Franciscan Italy with such grace, ease, wit, and love that you will become utterly intoxicated with the place and time. The story is performed by Theodore Bikel who has starred in numerous Broadway hits, including The Sound of Music, Zorba, and Fiddler on the Roof.

Posie Parker once failed a client. And now that client is dead. Elsie Moncreiff, a housekeeper, has fallen from the White Cliffs of England in a howling storm. But the question is, was it bad luck, or was it murder?Armed with just her guilty conscience and a less-than-helpful Sergeant Rainbird for company, Posie vows to get to the bottom of things. But what she finds is not at all what she was expecting.

Julius Caesar left his gardens to the citizens of Rome, a peaceful sanctuary across the Tiber. Now the gardens and their sacred grove are dangerous haunts, especially for women alone. 'Don't go to the Grove,' people mutter, but when her husband has to leave Rome, it falls to Albia to supervise his building project in an old grotto. Why has someone buried tattered scrolls by obscure philosophers - and does it involve a worse crime than terrible writing? Soon that puzzle is overtaken.

On a cold February night in Regency London, a dark curtain falls on the Sans Pareil Theatre following the death of April Clare, a promising young actress, whose body is found in mysterious circumstances. Detective Stephen Lavender and his dependable deputy, Constable Woods, quickly discover that nothing is quite as it seems. As successive mysteries unfold, they soon realise that it is not only the actors from the Sans Pareil who are playing a part.

Sugawara Akitada is the son of impoverished nobility toiling at a low-level job in the Ministry of Justice. When an old friend, Professor Hirata, asks him to investigate a colleague's blackmail, Akitada takes leave of his stultifying job for a temporary post at the Imperial University. There he finds gossip and rivalry abounding.

December 1940. New Year's Eve draws closer, but crowds will not be gathering on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate. After a quiet Christmas, the area has suffered London's most devastating air raid since the start of the Blitz and waves of incendiary bombs have burnt the heart of British book publishing to the ground. Detective Inspector John Jago finds a desolate woman sitting among the ruins of her family business and must break the news – her husband's been found shot dead at their home in Soho.

Among the workhouses and pudding shops of South London, Private Detective William Arrowood is presented with far grittier, more violent, and considerably less well-paid cases than Sherlock Holmes. Arrowood has no doubt who is the better detective, and when Mr. and Mrs. Barclay engage him to find their estranged daughter, Birdie, he’s sure it won’t be long before he and his assistant, Barnett, have tracked her down.

The Saint is on holiday in Naples when a brawl interrupts his lunch; a tweedy English tourist has casually addressed an Italian as Dino Cartelli - provoking the paunchy individual so named to set his hulking henchman on the bewildered Briton. The Saint intervenes, and soon the disagreement is all but forgotten...until the following morning’s newspaper headlines reveal that the Englishman has been murdered.

Inspector de Silva is caught up in the excitement when a professional theatre company comes to Nuala, but matters take a dark turn when the company's actor manager is murdered. Our inspector has a new case to solve, and he has to consider some very unpalatable motives for the crime. He will need all his persistence, coupled with his wife, Jane's, invaluable help to unmask the villain of the piece.

1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914. Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse.

A servant has been murdered and the baby in her charge abducted. Fidelma of Cashel has solved even more horrendous crimes in her career as an advocate of the ancient Brehon Courts of Ireland. But this case is different. For both Sister Fidelma and her companion, Brother Eadulf of Saxmund's Ham, the case is unique because of the personal emotions involved. The baby who has been abducted is their own son. What is the motive for their crime? Could someone seeking vengeance on Fidelma and Eadulf have done the deed? They have made a lot of enemies in their pursuit of justice.

It's fair to say that Freddy Pilkington-Soames is not having a good day. His grandmother is threatening to marry a lounge lizard, his old friend has lost her lover, a racehorse has been kidnapped, a priceless diamond has gone missing, and everybody seems to think he should sort it all out.

LOS ANGELES, 1932: Lulu Wong, star of the silver screen and the pride of Chinatown, has a face known to practically everyone, especially the Chow sisters—May, Gemma, and Peony—Lulu’s former classmates and neighbors. So the girls instantly know it’s Lulu when they discover a body one morning in an out-of-the-way stable, far from the Beverly Hills home where she lived after her fame skyrocketed. The sisters suspect Lulu’s death is the result of foul play, but the police don’t seem motivated to investigate.

About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons.