Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy anyone who stands in his path.

“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.

It is St. John’s Eve in the summer of 1834 when Benjamin January - Creole physician and music teacher - is shattered by the news that his sister has been arrested for murder. The Guards have only a shadow of a case against her. But Olympe - mystical and rebellious - is a woman of color, whose chance for justice is slim. As Benjamin probes the allegation, he is targeted by a new threat: graveyard dust sprinkled at his door, whispering of a voodoo death curse. Now, to save Olympe’s life - and his own - Benjamin knows he must glean information wherever he can find it.

When slave owner Simon Fourchet asks Benjamin January to investigate sabotage, arson, and murder on his plantation, January is reluctant to do any favors for the savage man who owned him until he was seven. But he knows too well that plantation justice means that if the true culprit is not found, every slave on Mon Triomphe will suffer. Abandoning his Parisian French for the African patois of a field hand, cutting cane until his bones ache and his musician’s hands bleed, Benjamin must use all his intelligence and cunning to find the killer - or find himself sold down the river.

Tabitha and Wolf are hoping to spend a quiet Christmas at Glanwyddan Hall, the Pembroke estate in Wales. However, before they even leave London, they receive unsettling news of disturbing pranks happening on the estate. Is this just some local youthful mischief, or is something more sinister afoot? Moreover, why is the dowager countess so determined that they not cancel their visit? With the dowager guarding a secret, Tabitha and Wolf are thrust into a desperate quest to uncover the truth. As danger looms, they must navigate treacherous paths to safeguard their loved ones.

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King enjoys immense popularity and a resounding chorus of critical acclaim for her exquisite mysteries. The God of the Hive continues the thread King began in The Language of Bees, in which Mary Russell and her famous husband, Sherlock Holmes, face trouble with Scotland Yard and the deadliest of adversaries.

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless polish immigrant-born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world-are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. Two men - ambitious, powerful, ruthless - are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fueled by their all-consuming hatred.

Prague, 1939. Les troupes du Reich entrent dans la ville. De sa fenêtre, Herbert Levin aimerait les faire disparaître comme, sur scène, un illusionniste escamote ses colombes. Lui-même magicien sous le nom du " Grand Nivelli ", l'homme espère trouver chez les SS, ces grands mystiques amateurs d'occulte, un public trop naïf pour percer son secret. Car Levin est juif, comme toute sa famille... Croire ou ne pas croire... C'est toute la tragédie de ces années barbares, où nul ne veut croire au mal absolu. Levin y sera bientôt confronté, là-bas, dans la boue de la Pologne, au cœur gris de l'enfer..

When guests arrive at a séance to contact a man's lost sons, it becomes clear that everyone has dark secrets - secrets that result in the death of a guest.

In nine short stories, seven of which have never previously been available in print, and one brand-new, never-before-seen Sherlock Holmes mystery - available together for the first time - Laurie R. King blends her long-running brand of crime fiction with historical treats and narrative sleight of hand.

It’s Mallory Atkinson’s first Christmas in Scotland. Victorian Scotland, that is. Also, as the twenty-first-century detective learns, Christmas really isn’t a thing in Victorian Scotland. It’s all about Hogmanay. But her boss, Dr. Duncan Gray, treats her to an early gift of tickets to the event of the season: a Charles Dickens reading. There, they bump into Lady Inglis—the lovely widow who has sent Gray sexy letters trying to entice him back to her bed.

In November 1964, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara went to the Congo with two hundred men, intent on making it his first step in taking over Africa and South America. He failed, thanks in large part to the efforts of an intrepid band of Green Berets. Licking his wounds, he retreated to Cuba to recruit more men and try the same thing in Bolivia. He failed there, too. In fact, he died there, and thus, despite his incompetence, became a glorious martyr to the cause. But who was trying to kill him, really - and who was trying to keep him alive?

Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and perpetually ill at ease, he spends his evenings quietly drinking and surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at a drab bistro in the unremarkable small French town of Saint-Louis. One day, she simply vanishes into thin air and Georges Gorski, a detective haunted by his failure to solve one of his first murder cases, is called in to investigate the girl's disappearance. He sets his sights on Manfred.

They have defeated their Muslim enemies, crushed the unstoppable Mongol horde, and now the Mamluks turn their full attention to the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. Only the port city of Acre remains in the hands of the Crusaders. The boys in Brother Foulques de Villaret’s Hospitaller Army of Children are approaching manhood, but their training is far from complete. Foulques needs more time. The Hospitallers, Templars, and Teutonics all need more time. Before preparations can be made, the Mamluks are at the gates of Acre.

Personable, good looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer "Duff" Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend.

From the authors of the best-selling series CHERRINGHAM. When Sir Harry's Aunt Lavinia invites her friends from The Arts Club down to Mydworth Manor for a weekend of Bohemian fun, she's not expecting a prince to turn up too, eager to join in the frolics. But when a body turns up in the prince's bedroom, it's up to Harry and Kat to find the killer.

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.

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.

Cambridge in 1352 is rife with terrible clashes between the fledgling university and the townspeople. Matthew Bartholomew, physician and teacher at Michaelhouse College, is trying to keep the peace when a student is murdered and the town plunges into chaos. At the same time, a skeleton is discovered that is rumoured to belong to a local martyr, and Bartholomew has his hands full investigating both deaths while the rioting intensifies....

When a set of bound manuscripts written on magician-made paper is brought to the Glass Library, Sylvia and the professor send the owner away. After all, the library collects books about magic, not containing it. But the murder of the bookbinder who bound them sees the books returned to the library, along with Gabe in his role as consultant for Scotland Yard. When his investigation uncovers a link to Sylvia’s past, they’re even more determined to find the murderer. But they’re not the only ones searching for answers.