Historical Mystery Thriller

The descendant of adventuring-dead-aristocrats, Clarissa Knightley supplements a modest inheritance by penning gothic novels that cost more than they earn. Upon learning that she has mysteriously inherited a share of an earl's estate, she rashly packs up her household. In remote Gravesyde Priory, she hopes to find a safe haven and family who will welcome her and her young nephew. Instead, she discovers a drunken American army captain, his African servant, and ancient, surly caretakers.

Gates of Fire puts you at the side of valiant Spartan warriors in 480 BC for the bloody, climactic battle at Thermopylae. There, a few hundred of Sparta’s finest sacrificed their lives to hold back the invading Persian millions. The time they bought enabled the Greeks to rally - saving, according to ancient historian Herodotus, “Western democracy and freedom from perishing in the cradle.” How did the Spartans accomplish this superhuman feat? This is what the King of Persia hopes to learn from the sole Spartan survivor.

1940, England. After a series of run-ins with his superiors, Flying Officer Angus Mackennelly is posted to Squadron 696—the Maverick unit full of misfits and outsiders. Angus has just returned from gunning down enemy aircraft when he is given a shocking top-secret mission. A spy is in their midst, feeding information to the Germans, and Angus is tasked with exposing him. MI6 pin their suspicions on one of the squadron's foreign pilots, but Angus is not convinced. He needs to get closer to the men in his unit to try and unravel their secrets.

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady’s maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colorful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch’s Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night’s screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another. One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film.

2 CHILDREN FOR SALE. In 1931, near Philadelphia, ambitious reporter Ellis Reed photographs the gut-wrenching sign posted beside a pair of siblings on a farmhouse porch. With the help of newspaper secretary Lily Palmer, Ellis writes an article to accompany the photo. Capturing the hardships of American families during the Great Depression, the feature story generates national attention and Ellis's career skyrockets. But the piece also leads to consequences more devastating than he and Lily ever imagined - and it will risk everything they value to unravel the mystery and set things right.

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.

From the authors of the best-selling series CHERRINGHAM When a well-dressed man arrives in Mydworth, with a nasty head wound and no memory of who he is, or why he is there - Kat and Harry look after him. But it quickly becomes clear that this 'Lost Man' is, for some unknown reason, on the run - and his pursuers are desperate to find him. As Kat and Harry retrace the man's strange journey back to London's East End, they find themselves up against dangerous people who - with time running out - will do absolutely anything to stop the Lost Man from remembering.

Set in the years before and during the 1st Punic War, the series follows the exploits of a young, hot-headed swordsman. From a lad on his father's farm, to a Legion training camp, to the Capital of the Republic, Alerio Sisera learns that sharp steel and quick reflexes are not always a Legionary's best assets.

Autumn, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift is invited to her old school, St Mary’s, as a guest speaker. Her favorite teacher, Mrs. Wadsworth, has asked that Eleanor talk about her intrepid travels around the globe - travelling the Silk Road by bicycle, crossing the Himalayas and even befriending the Maharaja of India. But in the circumstances, perhaps it would have been a good idea to talk about her career as a daring detective. Because no sooner has Eleanor brushed up on her times tables than she is greeted by terrible news: Mrs. Wadsworth has been murdered.

It was 1970 in a defeated Rhode Island fishing town. Vietnam and Nixon dominated the national news. Both the near and distant future looked bleak. But they were five inseparable high school friends with something incredible in common: an unwavering resolve to look after each other no matter what hell life threw at them. And they were on a mission. The plan was simple: Go off the grid before they turned 18 to avoid the draft. They’d sell some grass, stack some cash, then head west and start a commune. What could possibly go wrong?

With Molly Murphy’s wedding to NYPD Captain Daniel Sullivan quickly approaching, the Irish P.I. heads to the Westchester County countryside,where Daniel’s mother can counsel her on a bride’s proper place. Surprisingly, Molly seems to be agreeing with her future mother-in-law’s advice. Molly promises to leave her detective work behind and settle down after becoming Daniel’s wife…but she isn’t married yet. So when she gets word of a possible case, Molly sneaks back into the city to squeeze in a little more sleuthing before the wedding bells can ring.

Nothing is simple when you're 35th in line for the British crown, least of all marriage. But with love on their side and plans to elope, Lady Georgiana Rannoch and her beau, Darcy O'Mara, hope to bypass a few royal rules....

When a Catholic priest hangs himself during the pope's inauguration, his friend and ex-priest Alex Harker is dragged into a secret war that has been playing out on the fringes of society since the birth of Christ. The suicide sets into motion a planned timetable of terrifying events that will irrevocably change the world as we know it.

From New York Times bestselling authors Andrews & Wilson, First Ranger is American Sniper meets The Patriot, an action-packed and deeply emotional account of the birth of American Special Forces during the Revolutionary War. The year is 1776, and General George Washington faces an impossible war. Outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered by the might of the British Empire, his Continental Army teeters on the brink of destruction. General Howe’s forces are closing in on Manhattan, ready to crush the rebellion before it ever takes root.

When Senator Prescott Bush demands the mummified head of Pancho Villa for Yale's Skull & Bones Society's trophy case, a pulp writer named Lassiter winds up holding the bag. Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist whose fiction has graced numerous anthologies of crime noir. Set in 1957, Head Games is a quirky, action-packed caper hailed as a "fun, deft debut" (Publishers Weekly).

Thirty-year-old society matron Lola Woodby has survived her loveless marriage with an unholy mixture of highballs, detective novels, and chocolate layer cake until her husband dies suddenly, leaving her his fortune, or so Lola thinks. As it turns out, all she inherits from Alfie is a big pile of debt. Pretty soon Lola and her stalwart Swedish cook, Berta, are reduced to hiding out in the secret love nest Alfie kept in New York City.

As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry - and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

Summer 1924. On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999. Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet’s suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace’s mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge – something history has forgotten but Grace never could.

Jun Nakayama was a silent-film star in the early days of Hollywood. By 1964, he is living in complete obscurity, until a young writer, Nick Bellinger, tracks him down for an interview. When Bellinger reveals that he has written a screenplay with Nakayama in mind, Jun is intrigued by the possibility of returning to movies. But he begins to worry that someone might delve too deeply into the past and uncover the events that abruptly ended his career in 1922. Like the changing social and racial tides in California - and the unsolved murder of his favorite director.

Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.