Historical Mystery Women Sleuth

Frances and her husband, George, have two points of interest in Paris. One is an impromptu holiday to visit the Paris Exposition. The other is personal. George’s Aunt Julia has requested her nephew’s help in looking into the suspicious death of renowned artist Paul Ducasse. Though Julia is not entirely forthcoming about her reasons, she is clearly a woman mourning a lost love. At the exposition, swarming with tourists, tragedy casts a pall on the festivities. A footbridge collapses. Julia is among the casualties. However, she was not just another fateful victim.

After a murder scandal nearly sent her husband to the gallows, Audrey, the Duchess of Fournier, has retreated to the countryside to distance herself from gossip—and from the Bow Street officer who proved as irritating as he was intriguing. But when Audrey's friend Charlotte, the Countess of Bainbury, dies mysteriously on Fournier Downs parkland, she summons the only person she trusts to uncover the truth: Principal Officer Hugh Marsden.

Major Robert Kurland has returned to the quiet vistas of Kurland St. Mary to recuperate from the horrors of Waterloo. However injured his body may be, his mind is as active as ever. Too active, perhaps. When he glimpses a shadowy figure from his bedroom window struggling with a heavy load, the tranquil façade of the village begins to loom sinister....

Following the post mortem of a stowaway which reveals neither cause of death nor identity, Dr Kay Scarpetta travels to Paris in search of information. In Paris she is given a secret mission, a mission which could ruin her career...

With London's streets deserted, a young flower girl is murdered. But why was she out so late on the foggiest night of the year? Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard has nowhere to even begin looking for a suspect. However, Mrs. Jeffries, his housekeeper, is even more accomplished at detection than she is at household management. A policeman's widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the inspector in the right direction to solve the mystery.

In March of 1926, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her friend and collaborator, Lady Lucy Gerald, head off for several days to a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country. Working on a book of architectural follies, they plan to research and photograph it. Leaving her husband and young twins behind, Daisy is expecting a productive weekend at Appsworth Hall, with the only potential difficulty being keeping Lucy from offending the current owner, a manufacturer of plumbing products. Alas, it's not to be quite so simple.

Orlando Edison is a stockbroker using London's infatuation with foreign mining ventures to make a fortune. He has curried favor with the nation's most respected aristocrats, even inviting three influential investors - known as the Merry Gentlemen - to be part of his latest enterprise. Edison is welcomed in the highest circles and moves with ease among the rich and powerful. But a few days before Christmas, he is found murdered.

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 crime-solver's work is never done.

Amory Ames is a wealthy young woman who questions her marriage to her notoriously charming playboy husband Milo. Looking for a change, she accepts a request for help from her former fiance, Gil Trent. Amory accompanies Gil to the luxurious Brightwell Hotel in an attempt to circumvent the marriage of his sister Emmeline to Rupert Howe, a disreputable ladies' man. Amory sees in the situation a grim reflection of her own floundering marriage.

With men departing to fight for king and country, women have new opportunities at home. Dorothy Peto and her fellow suffragettes propose forming the Women’s Police Volunteers to assist police keep order. At first, the suggestion is derided, yet the force is stretched thin. As Dorothy and her friends train and organize to help refugees fleeing the war and guide terroried Londoners to shelter during the Zeppelin raids, the ‘ladies in blue’ gain a grudging acceptance. During one nightly bombing raid, Dorothy discovers the body of a beautiful Belgian refugee in Seven Dials.

Lady Arianna Hadley and her husband, the Earl of Saybrook, want nothing more than to savor a quiet life embellished by the occasional cup of the finest chocolate. However, when they receive orders to travel to Scotland and capture an elusive traitor, they feel their duty to the Crown must come first. In a laboratory in Scotland, they discover the corpse of a chemistry professor - and cryptic papers hinting at a dangerous new discovery now in enemy hands. Racing against time, Arianna and Saybrook pursue their most cunning and dangerous adversary

Former FBI agent Kendra Donovan's attempts to return to the 21st century have failed, leaving her stuck at Aldridge Castle in 1815. And her problems have just begun: in London, the Duke of Aldridge's nephew Alec - Kendra's confidante and lover - has come under suspicion for murdering his former mistress, Lady Dover, who was found viciously stabbed with a stiletto, her face carved up in a bizarre and brutal way.

Newly installed superintendent of the Virginia State Police, Judy Hammer, and her right hand and confidant, Andy Brazil, are at their wits’ end trying to protect the public from the politicians – and vice versa. And amid the mayhem, an island off the coast of Virginia declares UDI –...

It’s 1958, and Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy has not left the Pinnacle Hotel in fourteen months. She suffers from agoraphobia, and what’s more, it’s her father’s hotel, and everything she needs is there. She’s always been good at finding things. Fifteen years earlier, she discovered her mother dead. Now, she’s finding trouble inside her sanctuary. At a party for artist Billie Bell, his newest work is stolen, and Evelyn’s fake boyfriend, movie star Henry Fox, is accused of the theft. But just as Evelyn sets out to prove Henry’s innocence, she finds Billie Bell dead.

September 1939, and the worries of war follow Josephine Tey to Hollywood, where a different sort of battle is raging on the set of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Then a shocking act of violence reawakens the shadows of the past, with consequences on both sides of the Atlantic, and Josephine and DCI Archie Penrose find themselves on a trail leading back to the house that inspired a young Daphne du Maurier—a trail that echoes Rebecca’s timeless themes of obsession, jealousy, and murder.

In Death in the Floating City, Emily is surprised to receive a plea for help from her childhood nemesis, Emma, whose father-in-law has been murdered and whose husband has vanished. Digging into the mystery, Emily unearths a centuries-old puzzle - and raises the ire of those who will do anything to keep their secrets hidden.

There is only one place Kendra Donovan wants to travel - back to her own time period in the 21st century. But since that's not happening, she agrees instead to travel with her new guardian, the Duke of Aldridge, to one of his smaller estates in Lancashire. Their journey takes them through Yorkshire, a region whose breathtaking beauty masks a simmering violence brought on by the Industrial Revolution, which pits mill owner against worker.

England 1912. Danby Hall is the only home Lady Cecilia Bates has ever known. Despite the rigid rules of etiquette and her mother's fervent desire to see her married off, Cecilia can't imagine life anywhere else. But now, with an agricultural depression sweeping the countryside, the Bates family's possession of the hall is suddenly in peril. A possible solution arrives in the form of the imperious American heiress Annabel Clarke. The Bates and their staff arrange a grand house party upon the heiress's arrival. Then a guest dies after sipping from a glass meant for Annabel....

Bailey Fowler, a confessed murderer, escaped from prison 16 years ago. Now, by sheer chance, the cops stumble on him--and a case long dead comes murderously back to life. Royce Fowler, old and sick, ready it "miraculously back to life." His son's reappearance gives Royce a last chance to heal an...

December 1903: While Wilbur and Orville Wright's flying machine is quite literally taking off in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with its historic fifty-seven second flight, their sister Katharine is back home in Dayton, Ohio, running the bicycle shop, teaching Latin, and looking after the family. A Latin teacher and suffragette, Katharine is fiercely independent, intellectual, and the only Wright sibling to finish college. But at twenty-nine, she's frustrated by the gender inequality in academia and is looking for a new challenge. She never suspects it will be sleuthing . . .