Historical Fiction Cozy Mystery

Parrots are flying loose all over a convention hotel, making trouble and imitating everything everyone says. Monkeys are swinging from chandelier to chandelier. Michael is a teacher moonlighting as an actor in the show Porfiria, Queen of the Jungle, and the cast, crew, and their exotic animal...

For fans of Ginger Gold and Basil Reed — this is the wedding you’ve been waiting for! The bride and groom prepare for their big day, but of course, things don’t go exactly as planned. Told from the alternating points of view of many of the beloved characters in the world of Ginger Gold, you’ll find yourself holding your breath, anticipating that happily ever after.

Now in paperback - a novel that "handily fulfills its promise of intrigue and romance." (Publishers Weekly) Determined to secure another London season without assistance from her new brother-in-law, Mary Alsworthy accepts a secret assignment from Lord Vaughn on behalf of the Pink Carnation. She...

Welcome to Rydding, the hidden village you might stumble across if you need a home and a fresh start. For Elwyn Howell, the village is a lifesaver when she finds it just as she’s run out of strength and hope while running for her life. The abandoned healer’s cottage welcomes her, even though she’s given up on that calling. She opens a tea shop instead, using her knowledge of herbs and her empathic gift that allows her to select the perfect tea for each customer. Soon, she’s feeling at home in the village community.

When a local publican is murdered, Inspector Witherspoon takes Mrs. Jeffries' advice to heart. He is going to trust his own instincts - but that keeps Mrs. Jeffries in the dark. She must rouse the household staff to action and hope the Inspector doesn't arrest the wrong person before they can solve the crime.

“Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.” —New York Times Book Review With more than forty novels to his credit and still going strong, the legendary Elmore Leonard has well earned the title, “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek)...

Rosalind is pleased when she's invited to Cassel House to help her friend Louisa prepare for her upcoming wedding. But that's not the only event on her agenda. The trip will also afford Rosalind the chance to see Devon Winterbourne, the newly minted duke of Casselmaine. Devon and Rosalind were on the verge of betrothal before the infamous Thorne family scandal derailed their courtship. Now Rosalind wonders if there's a chance their love might reignite.

Victorian London is a cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives—known as “The Murder Squad”—to investigate thousands of murders every month. Created after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure to capture Jack the Ripper, The Murder Squad suffers rampant...

Beloved author Mary Stewart's long-lost novella, now available again for the first time in 40 years. In 1879 a wealthy young woman elopes with an impoverished fisherman, leaving her family, who live on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, distraught. In 1968, 23-year-old Perdita West, secretary to the famous author Cora Gresham, visits Lanzarote, the strangest and wildest of the Canary Isles, on a research trip. They meet Cora's estranged son, Mike, and fall in love with the unusual, beautiful little island.

Career diplomat Alec Halsey has been elevated to a marquessate he doesn't want. His lover has decided she won't marry him after all. What's more, the suspicion that he murdered his brother still lingers in London drawing rooms. So returning to London after seven months' seclusion may have been a mistake.

Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, will not do the bidding of Hell and Fury Hawes. It does not matter how difficult it is to find new murder mysteries to investigate, especially ones where the victim was stabbed with a chisel. She absolutely refuses to lift a finger to help him figure out who killed one of his associates.

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1936, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir...

After enduring years of her nobleman father's cruelty and abuse, Celestina Lunde is ready to take her own life rather than enter into an arranged marriage with an equally brutal man. But just when she is about to leap through the window of her tower bedroom, a brawny Highland warrior arrives at her home and changes everything.

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.

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day - with her nephew, Derek, and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Belinda, in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy.

One morning in April 1924, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher finds herself in a most unenviable position. Despite her best attempts to elude the inevitable, she must face her darkest fears and with all the strength and courage she can muster, must confront the one person she has tried hardest to avoid - the dentist. But upon arriving for her appointment, she finds the waiting room deserted and adjoining examination room locked, with no hint of either Dr. Talmadge or his nurse.

The unflappable ornamental blacksmith-turned-detective Meg Langslow returns in this latest bird mystery by award-winning author Donna Andrews. Aficionados of Murder with Peacocks and Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos will revel in Andrews's trademark dry humor, offbeat characters, and...

1922. Ladies’ assistant Mabel Canning is delighted to accompany young heiress Roxy to a glamorous ballroom event. When she arrives, Mabel can’t wait to practice her foxtrot skills. But a mysterious man warns her that Roxy is in danger. And he’s dead before the music stops... After a narrow escape, Roxy stumbles into Mabel’s arms with her daffodil-yellow dress splashed with blood. Never one to rely on the police, Mabel swiftly gathers the murder club ladies on a hunt for clues. Can they catch the killer before they strike again?

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.

While in Bath preparing for her upcoming marriage to Lord Darkefell, Lady Anne learns of a profoundly accurate mystic working in town whose uncanny predictions have stunned the gullible and the skeptical alike. Certain there's a harmless rational explanation for the medium's supposed otherworldly abilities, Anne's tolerance turns to defiance when the seer's dark pronouncements begin having a decidedly harmful affect on her friends - and a troubled local vicar takes his own life.