Historical Detective

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently random underlinings. However, when she writes down the letters, they spell out a very disturbing message: "Mary Jordan did not die naturally." And 60 years later, Mary's enemies are still ready to kill....

It is early in the twelfth century, and the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud rages with renewed vigor. In the battle of Lincoln, the sheriff of Shropshire is captured, and the king himself is detained by his enemies. An exchange of prisoners is arranged: the sheriff will be bartered for a young Welsh lordling who has been captured during a misguided assault on a convent.

According to the courts, Jacko Argyle bludgeoned his mother to death with a poker. The sentence was life imprisonment. But when Dr. Arthur Calgary arrives with the proof that confirms Jacko's innocence, it is too late - Jacko died behind bars followinga bout of pneumonia. Worse still, the doctor's revelations reopen old wounds in the family, increasing the likelihood that the real murderer will strike again.

Olive Belgrave is delighted with her new flat at South Regent Mansions where she’s made several friends, including the modern career woman, Minerva, who draws a popular cartoon about a flapper for a London newspaper. But then Minerva comes to Olive for help after catching a glimpse of a disturbing sight—a dead body. At least, that’s what Minerva thought she saw, but there’s not a dead body anywhere in the posh building, and the residents are continuing with their lives as they normally do. Is Minerva seeing things? Is she barmy? Or is there a more sinister explanation?

On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene. Faced with what initially appears to be a motiveless murder, Colbeck is intrigued by the murder weapon - a noose. When it emerges that the victim had worked as a public executioner, Colbeck realises that this must be intrinsically linked to the killer's choice of weapon.

This audiobook uncovers 10 amazing true crimes that exploded into the national news, shocking Americans from coast to coast - crimes that were eventually forgotten - until now. Many of these incredible cases went unexplored for decades.

In June of 1893, the future Nicholas II travels to London for a royal wedding, bringing with him his private security force and his ballerina mistress, Mathilde Kchessinska. Rumored to be the target of a professional assassin known only as La Sylphide, and the subject of conspiracies against his life by his own family who covet his future throne, Nicholas is protected by not only private security, but the professional forces of both England and Russia.

Jane and her family are looking forward to a peaceful holiday in the seaside village of Lyme Regis. Yet on the outskirts of town an overturned carriage forces the shaken travelers to take refuge at a nearby manor house. And it is there that Jane meets the darkly forbidding yet strangely attractive Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth. What murky secrets does the brooding Mr. Sidmouth seek to hide? Jane suspects the worst - but her attention is swiftly diverted when a man is discovered hanged from a makeshift gibbet by the sea.

As a bard's daughter, Gwen has spent her life traveling from castle to castle and village to village with her family, following the music. In the winter of 1141, Gwen's family is contracted to provide the entertainment for the coming-of-age celebration of a lord's son. But before the celebration can begin, Gwen's father is found over the body of his friend, with a harp string as the murder weapon and blood on his hands. With the lord of the castle uninterested in finding the true killer, it is up to Gwen to clear her father's name before her father's music is silenced...forever.

Margaret Starling wasn't the sort of woman anyone expected to be murdered. She was a wealthy upper-class widow. But money alone won't protect you when someone decides it's high time you met your maker. Margaret wasn't as well-regarded as she'd always thought she was. But Mrs. Jeffries and Inspector Witherspoon know that justice isn't a popularity contest, and they won't rest until they sift through the suspects to catch a sinister scrooge.

Another day, another dead woman in Ellison Russell's study. Only this one claimed to be Mrs. Anarchy Jones. As Ellison juggles mothers, daughter, unhappy wives, and near-miss murder attempts, one thing is clear - someone will go to any lengths to hide the truth. Can Ellison and Anarchy catch a killer before the body count rises? Or will Ellison be the next corpse in the study?

During the height of the Great War, playboy Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, vanishes in thin air while horseback riding in Hyde Park The strikingly handsome playboy prince is initially believed to have arranged his disappearance so he can enjoy a brief rendezvous with one of his secret lovers. But when his absence continues on for days, the royal family grows concerned and summons Scotland Yard, who can only recover scant, unrevealing clues.

Droitwich, April 1890. A nine-year-old girl vanishes without a trace from the local churchyard. Her father, the salt tycoon Sir Charles Chilton, is beside himself. There's no price he won't pay for his daughter's safe return. AND SOMEONE OUT THERE IS COUNTING ON IT. Sir Charles calls on Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb to investigate.

In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge—the widowed Gwen’s father-in-law and legal guardian—returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school. But there’s more going on than that.

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.

September, 1923. Despite closing her first case, high society lady detective Olive Belgrave hasn’t found a new client. She’s taken a job as a hat model to pay for her poky boarding house room. But then a job offer comes her way—make discreet inquiries about a famous author who’s disappeared. Olive travels to the English countryside to hunt for the missing mystery author. But soon after she arrives in the sleepy village, a body is discovered. Then a second murder focuses the police’s attention on Olive, and she must clear her name before the murderer pens a plot that frames her.

Called out by Scotland Yard into the teeth of a violent blizzard, Inspector Ian Rutledge finds himself confronted with one of the most savage murders he has ever encountered. Rutledge might have expected such unspeakable carnage on the World War I battlefields, where he’d lost much of his soul - and his sanity - but not in an otherwise peaceful farm kitchen in remote Urskdale. Someone has murdered the Elcott family at their table without the least sign of struggle.

Selling two million copies in earlier editions, this is the second of the rediscovered Sherlock Holmes adventures. "Acquired" from a widow whose husband was descended from the distaff side of Holmes's family, this mystery finds Holmes solving a double murder in London's theater district.

Everyone at the party had a secret. Someone killed to keep theirs. London, 1922. Draper’s daughter Marjorie Swallow is 24, independent, and determined to live life to the full. A secretarial post with enigmatic American detective Mrs Jameson looks just the ticket. And soon she’s in the thick of it. When the bohemian party they attend ends in murder, there is no shortage of suspects. Half of Bloomsbury wanted Mrs Norris dead – but who wielded the knife? Was it the handsome but troubled artist? The vivacious young actress? Or even the aristocratic lady novelist?

The gathering has the appearance of a smart autumn house party - stunning women and powerful men enjoying a few days of leisurely pleasure in a setting of exquisite beauty. In fact, the guests are Irish Protestants and Catholics gathered in a reluctant parley over home rule for Ireland, a problem that has plagued the British Isles since the reign of Elizabeth I. When the meeting's moderator, government bigwig Ainsley Greville, is found murdered in his bath, the negotations seemed doomed.