Historical Thriller

Accused of treason and stripped of his knighthood, Crispin Guest has survived on the gritty streets of London by reinventing himself as The Tracker, an investigator for hire who can locate lost objects and uncover secrets. When the merchant Nicholas Walcote hires Guest to investigate his young wife Philippa for adultery, he discovers an underground world of danger and dirty dealings. Philippa is indeed hiding something—but she's not the only one. Walcote himself is rumored to possess a holy relic so powerful that some would even kill for it.

1310 AD. There is a new power in the Aegean, and its ships fly the black and white of the Knights of Saint John. Thomas Schwyzer has served the black knights for as long as he can remember. He would do anything for Grandmaster Foulques and his fellow brother sergeants. They are his family. His friends. Without them he would have no place in this world. His faithful years of service have not gone unrecognized.

September, 1356. Poitiers. The greatest knights of the age were ready to give battle. On the English side, Edward, the Black Prince, who'd earned his spurs at Crecy. On the French side, the king and his son, the dauphin. With 12,000 knights. And then there is William Gold. A cook's boy - the lowest of the low - who had once been branded as a thief. William dreams of being a knight, but in this savage new world of intrigue, betrayal and greed, first he must learn to survive.

“In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable - a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent.

1784 London. Miss Tiffany Woodall didn’t murder her half-brother, but she did bury him in the back garden so that she could keep her cottage. Now, the confirmed spinster has to pretend to be Uriah and fulfill his duties as the Duke of Beaufort’s librarian while searching Astwell Palace for Uriah’s missing diamond pin, the only thing of value they own. Her ruse is almost up when she is discovered by Mr. Samir Lathrop, the local bookseller, who tries to save her from drowning while she's actually just washing up in a lake after burying her brother.

Victorian adventuress Veronica Speedwell is whisked off to a remote island off the tip of Cornwall when her natural historian colleague Stoker's brother calls in a favor. On the pretext of wanting a companion to accompany him to Lord Malcolm Romilly's house party, Tiberius persuades Veronica to pose as his fiancée. But upon arriving, it becomes clear that the party is not as innocent as it had seemed. Every invited guest has a connection to Romilly's wife, Rosamund, who disappeared on her wedding day three years ago, and a dramatic dinner proves she is very much on her husband's mind.

Lady Eleanor Swift and her loyal butler Clifford are busy lending a hand with preparations for the big day. The grand dining room at Henley Hall is overflowing with home-sewn flags, paint, and royal rosettes. Even Gladstone the bulldog and his new friend Tomkins the ginger cat are invited! But just days before the event, Mr. Prestwick-Peterson, the chairman of the celebrations committee, is found dead in the village hall: strangled with handmade red, white, and royal blue bunting.

On a snowy day in December 1946, Lane Winslow - a former British intelligence agent who’s escaped to the rural Canadian community of King’s Cove in pursuit of a tranquil life - is introduced to the local hot springs. While there, she overhears nearby patrons speaking Russian. When one of those patrons is found dead in the change room, Lane’s linguistic and intelligence experience is of immeasurable value to the local police force in solving the murder.

New York City, 1972: A dabbler in mathematics and chess, Catherine Velis is also a computer expert for a Big Eight accounting firm. Before heading off to a new assignment in Algeria, Cat has her palm read by a fortune-teller. The woman warns Cat of danger. Then an antiques dealer approaches Cat with a mysterious offer: He has an anonymous client who is trying to collect the pieces of an ancient chess service, purported to be in Algeria. If Cat can bring the pieces back, there will be a generous reward.

London, 1941: Miss Jane Treen is at her desk, strong black coffee in hand and fluffy ginger cat by her side, when her top-secret government work is interrupted by an urgent call to Devon. A woman has been found dead in a lake in a place where she shouldn’t have been. Jane needs to gather the clues and find the killer before someone else from the agency gets hurt… Shy and handsome code-breaker Arthur Cilento is bewildered by the arrival of the efficient Miss Treen and her cat Marmaduke.

When Jox McNabb is expelled from school he is forced to look to his future. Inspired by the sight of a Hurricane flying over him, he becomes determined to join the RAF. And after basic training, Jox is posted to RAF Montrose with the growing group of other recruits he has met along the way.

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.

Skilled Royal Air Force bomber pilot Sam Lambert is exhausted, and his veteran crewmen have just been replaced by an inexperienced new team. Victor von Löwenherz, a German night fighter pilot who intercepts RAF bombers in his Junkers Ju 88, looks on with horror at the Nazi regime. And Hansl, a German boy in the small market town of Altgarten, sleeps at home. Lambert and his crew prepare for a bombing raid on the Ruhr area. It’s a night that many will never forget. Bomber is a masterful, gripping minute-by-minute account of what occurs over the next twenty-four hours.

In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England's industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive?

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. The trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn't know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor. Spanning the entirety of World War II, Five Decembers is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.

England 1616. Robert Belstrang, ex-magistrate bored with country life, comes to London to investigate the strange disappearance of Thomas Jessop, son of a poor Catholic neighbor. He locates the youth in Bedlam asylum, silent and starving himself. When he tries to free Jessop, he is warned off the case by a politic lawyer, Anstis. Soon after, Belstrang finds himself drugged, robbed and falsely imprisoned. Once released Belstrang persists in his investigation, but he is thwarted at every turn: unseen forces are at work who seemingly want Thomas Jessop to die.

A severed foot. Fingerprints left on a wine glass. A secret cipher code. The scent of orange and cinnamon left behind by the murderer. Mikaela Forsythe, adventuress, author, and now private investigator, is back. She is pulled into a deadly case that may just see her friend, actress Theodora Templeton, sent to prison for murder when a severed foot is found in her bed, and a high-ranking official has gone missing. Is it a crime of passion or something far more sinister?

James Jesus Angleton was the master, a legend in the time of spies. Founder of U.S. counterintelligence at the end of World War II, ruthless hunter of moles and enemies of America, his name is synonymous with skullduggery and intellectual subterfuge. Now, best-selling author William F. Buckley, Jr., presents a subtle and thrilling fictional account of the spymaster's life.

July 1910. Lady Hardcastle and her tireless sidekick Flo have finally embarked on a long-overdue seaside break. But just as they’re wavering between ice creams and donkey rides, their fellow guests start to go missing - and the duo find themselves with a hysterical hotel manager and a case to solve. The first to disappear is Dr Goddard, a scientist doing something terribly top-secret for the government.

A dark sorcerer. His widowed apprentice. A Victorian gothic romance for all time. In the midnight fog of Victorian London, the young widow Elizabeth Buckingham was destitute and alone, sustained only by her vow of revenge against whoever—or whatever—caused her Egyptologist husband’s uncanny demise. Everything changes when a mysterious encounter at a fortuneteller shop leads Elizabeth to join the Esoteric Order of Magisophists, a secret society and college of magic.