Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

While Wolf contemplates whether or not to continue investigating, it seems that the dowager has taken matters into her own hands and is investigating a case independently. But why has she gone missing from her home for two nights, and what mischief has she gotten herself into? Tracking down the elderly woman takes Tabitha and Wolf into some of the darkest, most dangerous corners of the city. What on earth is the exasperating dowager caught up in that she seems to have become entangled with London’s prostitutes?

Colorado, 1880. Gracy Brookens has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands of babies in her lifetime. The only midwife in a small mining town tucked in the Tenmile Range, Gracy is a gifted and important resource for the women of her hardscrabble community. For years she has advised expectant mothers through their pregnancies, guided them through the tortures of labor, and then helped them heal.

This lush novel, set in 1766 England and America, evokes an era ripe with riot and revolution, from the teeming streets of London to the sprawling grounds of a Virginia plantation. Mack McAsh burns with the desire to escape his life of slavery in Scottish coal mines while Lizzie Hallim is desperate to shed a life of sheltered subjugation to her spineless husband. United in America, their only chance for freedom lies beyond the Western frontier - if they're brave enough to take it.

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.

1926: Harriet Stone, a liberated, educated Black woman, and Lovey, the orphaned, biracial, 12-year-old she is bound to protect are Harlem-bound, embarking on a new, hopefully less traumatic, chapter in their lives. They have been invited to move from Connecticut by Harriet’s cousin, Junetta Plum, who runs a boarding house for independent-minded single women. It’s a bold move since Harriet has never met Junetta, but the fatalities of the Spanish flu and other tragedies have already forced her and Lovey to face their worst fears.

Believers in the theory of nominalism have set some Cambridge colleges at the throats of those who believe them to be heretics, and Michael, the senior proctor, has his work cut out to keep the peace. When a nominalist is murdered during a riot, Michael is certain he will easily find the killer amongst the Dominicans, but before he can get any sense out of them his junior proctor, Walcote, is found hanged, and he discovers that his trusted ally had arranged secret meetings at the St Ragelund Convent....

Britain is in shambles, as it recovers from the cataclysm of WWI. Although the war has ended, it takes effort to preserve the peace against hidden enemies striving to undermine or replace the government. There is a desperate need for recruits to fight this invisible war. Sophie Burgoyne can trace her lineage back to the ancient French kings and dukes of twelve centuries ago.A long pedigree doesn't help her when she only has a few pounds in the bank. Sophie knows she must take action, or she and her father, the vicar of Havering-under-Lyme, will face the horrors of genteel impoverishment.

Many others in the village have said that they would like to see the colonel dead, but a number of people have a more specific interest in his death: the colonel’s young wife, Anne; her lover, the artist Lawrence Redding; Archer, a local man given a harsh sentence by the colonel for poaching. Even the colonel’s daughter, Lettice, desperate for money, says, “If only father would be decent and die, I’d be all right.” These complexities lead to any number of dead ends for investigators. The only one able to see through the blinds and obscurities is Miss Marple, an elderly but sharp-eyed spinster.

More than one hundred years after Columbus blundered onto Hispaniola, the West Indies are held in Spain's iron fist, and no threat to that absolute rule is tolerated. But such total control cannot last, and one threat will emerge as the most dangerous of all: the buccaneers. Camped on the shore of Hispaniola, these half-wild men eke out a living hunting the island's feral livestock. Among them, Jean-Baptiste LeBoeuf lives out his exile, content that no one in the hunters' camp is curious about his past. But when a hurricane sweeps through the Caribbean, it upends their rough existence.

December 1899. After the death of her beloved grandmother, Cleopatra Fox moves into the luxury hotel owned by her estranged uncle in the hopes of putting hardship and loneliness behind her. But the poisoning of a guest throws her new life, and the hotel, into chaos. Cleo quickly realizes no one can be trusted, not Scotland Yard and especially not the hotel’s charming assistant manager. With the New Year’s Eve ball approaching fast and the hotel’s reputation hanging by a thread, Cleo must find the killer before the ball, and the hotel itself, are ruined.

Georgie may be figuring out what it means to be a new mother but she does know one thing for sure: she absolutely despises the strict nanny who was foisted upon her by her meddlesome sister-in-law. In search of a new nanny, Georgie travels to London to see her old friend ZouZou only to find her about to depart for a funeral, after the unexpected death of a young man in her social circle. It quickly becomes clear there’s more than one mysterious death around town, when another friend reveals he’s also just returned from the funeral of a school friend, who seemingly died in a boating accident.

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.

The year 1964: Life on the North Dakota farm hasn’t always been easy for Marjorie Trumaine. She has begun working as a professional indexer to help with the bills - which have only gotten worse since the accident that left her husband, Hank, blind and paralyzed. When her nearest neighbors are murdered in their beds, though, Marjorie suddenly has to deal with new and terrifying problems. Sheriff Hilo Jenkins brings her a strange amulet, found clutched in the hand of her murdered neighbor, and asks her to quietly find out what it is.

The year is 1703, and Matthew Corbett, professional "problem solver", is missing. Last seen by his friends in New York before he departed on a lucrative, seemingly straightforward mission for the Herrald Agency in Charles Town, he's been too long absent. His comrade-in-arms Hudson Greathouse has an increasing sense the young friend he thinks of as a son must have met with some unexpected peril.

This fascinating third volume in the Britannia's Fist series will have you pondering how easily history could have been swayed differently. What if other countries had become involved in America's Civil War? Historian Peter G. Tsouras presents the third installment in his Britannia's Fist alternate history series.

London, 1923. Newly minted research assistant Saffron Everleigh is the first woman to hold the position at University College of London. When she attends a dinner party for the school, she expects to engage in conversations about the university's large expedition to the Amazon. What she doesn’t expect is for Mrs. Henry, one of the professors’ wives, to drop to the floor, poisoned by an unknown toxin. Dr. Maxwell, Saffron’s mentor, is the main suspect, and evidence quickly mounts.

Josie Bianci was killed years ago on a train during a terrorist attack. Gone forever. It’s what her sister, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, has always believed. Yet all it takes is a few heart-wrenching seconds to upend Kit’s world. Live coverage of a club fire in Auckland has captured the image of a woman stumbling through the smoke and debris. Her resemblance to Josie is unbelievable. And unmistakable. With it comes a flood of emotions - grief, loss, and anger - that Kit finally has a chance to put to rest: by finding the sister who’s been living a lie.

Following the death of her husband, Lady Darby has taken refuge at her sister's estate, finding solace in her passion for painting. But when one of the house guests is murdered, her brother-in-law asks her to aid the insufferable Sebastian Gage - a fellow guest with some experience as an inquiry agent. While Gage is clearly more competent than she first assumed, Kiera isn't about to let her guard down, as accusations and rumors swirl.

Orphaned as an infant, Susan Trinder was raised by Mrs. Sucksby, “mother” to a host of pickpockets and con artists. To pay her debt, she joins legendary thief Gentleman in swindling an innocent woman out of her inheritence. But the two women form an unanticipated bond and the events that follow will surprise every listener. Fingersmith was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize, and was chosen as book of the year 2002 by more organizations than any other novel. Sarah Waters was named Author of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards.

In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden to the bloody battlefield. Not far from the safety of the Abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal to the empress to hang as traitors. With a heavy heart, Brother Cadfael agrees to bury the dead, only to make a grisly discovery: 95 bodies lie in a row, and the extra corpse tells Cadfael that the killer is both clever and ruthless. But one death among so many seems unimportant to all but the good Benedictine.