Historical Thriller

It’s early spring of 1947 in idyllic King’s Cove, and the Hughes ladies, mère et filles, are gardening and sorting through the jars of food that have been put up for the winter. But while cleaning up after the roof of their root cellar has caved in slightly, they are horrified to discover a small skeletal hand embedded in the mess. Panicked, they call Lane Winslow, the ex-British secret service agent, and, not without some misgivings about the state of their tense relationship, Lane calls Inspector Darling.

In the wake of a humbling incident aboard a canal boat in the Cotswolds, young Captain Horatio Hornblower arrives in London to take command of the Atropos, a 22-gun sloop barely large enough to require a captain. Her first assignment under Hornblower's command is as flagship for the funeral procession of Lord Nelson.

In the slums of 18th-century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift - an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects. Then one day, he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume" - the scent of a beautiful young virgin.

March 1833. Kiera and her husband, Sebastian Gage, have decided to settle in Edinburgh for the winter with their infant daughter. This also allows Kiera to enjoy long hours painting in her studio, making progress on the portraits she soon hopes to unveil in her own exhibit. She's thrilled when she receives an invitation to the auction of the late Lord Eldin's coveted art collection, and she and Gage eagerly accept. When the floor collapses beneath the gathering, killing one of their fellow bidders, Kiera and Gage are lucky to escape with their lives.

July 8, 1921. Ireland. A British Officer is shot dead on a remote hillside south of Dublin. November 22, 2015. United Kingdom. Former police detective Jayne Sinclair, now working as a genealogical investigator, receives a phone call from an adopted American billionaire asking her to discover the identity of his real father. How are the two events linked? Jayne Sinclair has only three clues to help her: a photocopied birth certificate, a stolen book, and an old photograph.

It is late March 1868. In Munich, composer Richard Wagner is completing his new opera Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg. It has been a difficult few years for him, and much depends upon the success of this new work. Following the tense auditions, an anonymous note warns Wagner that the premiere will be the date of his ruination.

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond.

Only the past can save the future for Winston Churchill, and it’s a past with many secrets.There is vast treasure hidden in an almost impregnable Central African fortress surrounded by cliffs. The mountain is a honeycomb of ancient tombs and palaces, as well as the ancient burial place of a Nubian queen mysteriously wedded to a Roman. Young Winston Churchill, a prisoner during the Boer War, is offered a secret deal for freedom by Britain’s enemy Louis Botha

In 1914 collisions between motor cars and horse-drawn carriages are an everyday occurrence on the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. But when an out-of-control driver smashes into a buggy driven by Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp, their lives change forever. Constance, the oldest, demands payment for the damages but quickly realizes that she is dealing with a madman.

Seeking to wrest power, members of the Pazzi family draw their blades in a church and slay the beloved Giuliano. But Lorenzo de' Medici survives the attack and seeks revenge on everyone involved, plunging the city into murderous chaos. Bodies are dragged through the streets, and no one is safe. Five women steal away to a church to ply their craft in secret. Viviana, Fiammetta, Isabetta, Natasia, and Mattea are painters, not allowed to be public with their skill but freed from the restrictions in their lives by their art.

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.

When Aunt Adeline goes missing, it is up to her niece, Charlotte, to uncover the clues of her deeply hidden family secrets and the town she calls home.

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

"Ken Follett has done it once more . . . goes down with the ease and impact of a well-prepared martini." —New York Times Book Review His name was Feliks. He came to London to commit a murder that would change history. A master manipulator, he had many weapons at his command, but against him...

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for.

October 1912. The inhabitants of Littleton Cotterell emerge from their homes after a week of torrential storms to the gruesome news that one of Sid Hyde’s prized sheep has been mauled to death. As rumours abound of a vicious beast stalking the Gloucestershire countryside in search of prey, Lady Hardcastle and her fearless lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, set out to find what is surely a rational explanation. Then Hyde himself is brutally killed in a similar attack, and the villagers go from curious to terrified.

A sordid scandal rocks the Glass household and threatens to ruin Matt's family unless he can suppress it. But after word gets out, and a rare magical coronet is stolen, he and India find themselves scrambling to recover the heirloom and suppress the gossip before reputations are ruined. To make matters worse, someone is sending threatening letters to the magicians of London, stirring up trouble between the artless and magicians. Tensions are rising, but India and Matt choose not to investigate - until the author of the letters is assaulted.

Molly Murphy always knew she'd end up in trouble, just as her mother predicted. So, when she commits murder in self-defense, she flees her cherished Ireland, under cover of a false identity, for the anonymous shores of late 19th-century America. When she arrives in New York and sees the welcoming promise of freedom in the Statue of Liberty, Molly begins to breathe easier. But when a man is murdered on Ellis Island, a man Molly was seen arguing with, she becomes a prime suspect in the crime.

Rescued from a pandemic’s wreckage and raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft, orphan Nora Beady cares little for Victorian conventions. While other young ladies busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora perfects her sutures and anatomical illustrations. Women face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft’s private clinic, Nora is his most trusted - and secret - assistant. That is, until the new surgical resident, Dr. Daniel Gibson, arrives.

Belfast, 1985. Amid the Troubles, Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggles with burnout as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point-blank range and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances.