Historical Fiction Cozy Mystery

It's September in Brighton, and the city is playing host to weeks of endless rain and lashings of villainy. A trusted member of a local gang has disappeared part way through planning a huge heist, a violent criminal obsessed with boiling the heads of policemen has escaped Broadmoor and is rumoured to be headed towards the city, while at Gosling's department store, an American researcher has been found dead in the music section.

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries's polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done. When the general office manager of Sutcliffe Manufacturing is murdered, no one is really surprised. Ronald Dearman was anything but a dear man. The tyrannical bully had more than enough enemies to go around.

It's the week of Hunter's Eve, a yearly celebration of monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night. But for Huntress Isabeau Agarwal, the event is a stark reminder that in her line of work, there is never a day's rest. Murders rock the city, and Isabeau is charged with solving them before the killer strikes again. One, a macabre accident during a dangerous magician's trick gone awry. The other, a slain politician, his disfigured body displayed atop Lamplight's most memorable landmark.

It's Christmas 1937 and an eclectic list of guests and staff have gathered for the grand re-opening of Maybridge castle, a newly renovated yet still crumbling hotel deep in the Cumbrian countryside. An innocent game of murder-in-the-dark will turn into a real game of life and death. And by the time the first sherries have been drunk, one of these people will be dead - and one of them the killer. Someone has changed the rules, but who?

Spring 1925. Abigail Dixon arrives in Somerset to report on the high-society wedding of an American car tycoon’s son and an English aristocrat’s daughter. But when a man is murdered on a trout-fishing expedition, and the quaint village abuzz with gossip of a local woman discovered dead in London, Abigail quickly finds herself entangled in a web of murder and scandal. As she investigates, Abigail unearths some dark secrets lurking within Darrington Manor and clues linking the two murders.

1903. Bookish, bespectacled Vita Carew longs to be left to her scientific studies. But, to her chagrin, she cannot avoid the event of the season, a gala at Pemberton Hall. This glamorous concert and sumptuous dinner will mark the Pemberton household’s return to society after a run of misfortune. But disaster strikes as soon as the seafood is served. Vita can only offer first aid as elegant guests fall suddenly ill on all sides. Worse still, she suspects a death has been covered up to avoid interrupting the carefully planned soirée.

Invited by society beauty Lady Violet Boynton-Dale to her ancestral home, Boynton Hall, to investigate dangerous threats which are being made against her brother, the dashing Explorer Alaric Boynton-Dale, Posie leaves London for the sun-dappled beauty of the Cotswolds. She finds that Boynton Hall is a place of opulent grandeur, but also of dark secrets, not least that Alaric is a man with jilted lovers and jealous husbands left trailing in his wake.

As her reputation steadily grows, Posie Parker is asked to accompany the utterly charming Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission of entrapment. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at the remote Maypole Manor in Kent, the cliff-top home of Lord Robin Glaysayer.

Murder's a beach! A family holiday turns deadly at Brighton Beach. When Ginger and Basil and their family check into the Brighton Beach Boutique Hotel on a lovely warm day in June of 1926, a shocking discovery upsets their plans to relax in the sun and surf. There’s a murderer amongst the holidayers: Is it the starlet? The earl? The disgruntled businessman? In this Agatha Christie-style addition to the Ginger Gold Mystery series, not only will Ginger not finish her book, she and Basil might not get out of the hotel alive.

When Ellison Russell is nearly killed at a benefactors' party, she brushes the incident aside as an unhappy accident. But when her house is fire-bombed, she's shot at, and the person sitting next to her at a gala is poisoned, she must face facts. Someone wants her dead. But why? And can Ellison find the killer before he strikes again? Add in an estranged sister, a visiting aunt with a shocking secret, and a handsome detective staying in her guesthouse, and Ellison might need more than cream in her coffee.

As Lady Darriby-Jones enjoys a spot of tea with an esteemed guest on the Darriby estate, news of a murder crashes the party, leaving her with a bitter aftertaste. Lady Darriby-Jones knows she faces a murder investigation with a twist—the victim's a local constable, and all eyes are on the hapless and recently demoted DCI Rude Manners as the prime suspect. While Manners may have excelled at incompetence and whining, murder seems a tad ambitious for his resume. While the town gossips, Lady Darriby-Jones dons her detective hat, ready to untangle the truth from a web of incompetence.

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.

Seth, the seven-year-old Earl of Woodridge, is spending Christmas at Halton House and he would like nothing better than to help trim the tree with the Christmas decorations his father had carved for him. But no one has any idea where these decorations are. Determined to make the young Earl's wish come true, Evie and her bodyguard, Tom Winchester, set out to a nearby village where the young Earl had lived in the hope that they might recover the lost decorations. They find themselves among a group of people who might all be suspects in the murder of a local villager.

1918 Italy. When a deadly blizzard traps Fiona Figg and Kitty Lane in the Dolomite Mountains, it’s all downhill from here. Their hotel is snowed-in, and no one can get in or out. Then a man is found dead in his locked hotel room – and the killer is still on the premises. But with no murder weapon and too many suspects, their investigation is treading on thin ice.

1920s, Pasadena, California: People are dropping dead after communion services at Daisy's church; Detective Sam Rotondo has finally professed his love for Daisy; and Daisy sees swaying trees in her crystal ball, a prop in which she doesn't place any faith. But when the crystal ball's image leads Daisy to her client's missing butler, and then a bunch of bootleggers, Daisy unknowingly bumps into the man responsible for the parishioners' deaths. She doesn't recognize him, but he recognizes her and that lands Daisy at the top of his to-be-murdered list.

It's 1924, and spiritualist-medium Daisy Gumm joins with friends Flossie and Harold to help Lily Bannister, whose abusive husband nearly killed her. Meanwhile, Mrs. Pinkerton - Daisy's best client - is in a tizzy, insisting Daisy use her (fake) spiritualist talent to end the engagement between her daughter and a most unsuitable man. To Daisy's surprise, the two cases collide, placing her in the middle. Now, Daisy must prove Lily's husband and Mrs. P's soon-to-be-son-in-law are in cahoots with nefarious human traffickers...before it's too late.

With his dying breath, Bobby Lowell begs Ellison Russell, "Tell her I love her." Unable to refuse, Ellison struggles to find the girl the murdered boy loved. Too bad an epically bad blind date, a vindictive graffiti artist, and multiple trips to the emergency room keep getting in the way. Worse, a killer has Ellison in his sights, her newly rebellious daughter is missing, and there's yet another body in her hostas. Mother won't be pleased.

Nominated for both the Agatha and Anthony awards, national best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert introduces a garden club of lady sleuths in Depression-era Alabama. The Darling Dahlias have just inherited a new clubhouse and garden, complete with two beautiful cucumber trees. But before long, these genteel ladies must unravel the mystery about what’s buried beneath one of these trees and the enigma of the dead body that soon turns up.

Dense fog masks foul play in the streets of London, as Ann Granger brings us her seventh Victorian mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife, Lizzie. It is March 1870. London is in the grip of fog and ice. But Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross has more than the weather to worry about when the body of a young woman is found in a dustbin at the back of a Piccadilly restaurant.

When schoolteacher Lorna Buchanan witnesses a strange ceremony on the grounds of St. Anne’s College, she is sacked by the tyrannical headmistress - and becomes entangled in a web of mysticism and murder. Set in a cozy 19th-century English spa town, The Malvern Mystery follows Lorna as she investigates a deadly crime clouded by deception, greed, and ancient rituals.