Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

The Thebes State Penal Farm in Mississippi is up a dark river, surrounded by swamps and impenetrable piney woods. It’s the Old South at its most brutal - a place of violence, racial terror, and even more horrific rumors. Of the few who make the journey, black or white, even fewer return.

Gemma Tate has a new job and a new address. She is putting her past – her memories of nursing in the Crimean war – behind her. But when Jacob Harrow, a journalist with ties to Crimea, is found brutally killed, Gemma is pulled into the investigation. Police inspector Sebastian Bell works alone. But when all signs point toward a dark secret Harrow brought back from the war, he realizes he needs Gemma’s help to untangle the mystery. But raking up the past has devastating consequences when Gemma’s friend, another nurse from Crimea, is found murdered in her boarding house…

This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

At the dawn of the Jazz Age, Morris Markey arrives in New York to become a writer. Having served in France, he needs to be in a place so distracting he cannot hear himself think. New in town, Markey hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first Big Story. Finally one night he spots Joseph Elwell, a man about town known for courting wealthy married women, with a glorious girl in a dress of silver and dollar green.

The Goldsmith’s Conspiracy is the final book in the best-selling Glass and Steele series. Tensions between the artless and magicians are flaring, but India and Matt discover someone is deliberately fuelling the flames. Relentlessly pursuing his own agenda, Lord Coyle employs the former master of the Watchmaker’s Guild to make trouble and be a thorn in India’s side. But India has the ear of the government now, and her own political influence is growing, something which pushes Lord Coyle over the edge.

Still struggling to define the nature of their new marriage, Sebastian and Hero find themselves occasionally working at cross-purposes as their investigation uncovers dark secrets at the heart of the Tennyson family and an enigmatic young French lieutenant who is concealing mysteries of his own.

It is 58 BC, and the mighty Tenth Legion, camped in Northern Italy, prepare for the arrival of the most notorious general in Roman history: Julius Caesar. Marcus Falerius Fronto, commander of the Tenth, is a career soldier and long-time companion of Caesar's. Despite his desire for the simplicity of the military life, he cannot help but be drawn into intrigue and politics as Caesar engineers a motive to invade the lands of Gaul.

Le Caire, de nos jours. Le cryptologue portugais Tomás Noronha se voit confier le décryptage d'un manuscrit original. Son nom ? Die Gottesformel, "La Formule de Dieu". Son auteur ? Albert Einstein lui-même. L'enjeu ? Le mode d'emploi d'une bombe nucléaire surpuissante. Précipité malgré lui au cœur d'une affaire d'espionnage international, Noronha plonge dans les secrets de l'atome... et dans un mystère bien plus grand encore.

Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.

It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

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.

England, 1925. When Lord Edgington receives an invitation to spend the Christmas holiday with an old colleague from the police, he expects fine food, good conversation and the warmth of a roaring fire. But on arriving at Mistletoe Hall with his family, they discover the house deserted and no explanation for where their host or his servants could be.

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.

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.

Georgie, or Lady Georgiana Rannoch, is busy planning her upcoming nuptials to Darcy O'Mara. Unfortunately, what has started as a simple wedding has become quite a royal headache and grand affair, thanks to a guest list that includes the queen and the appointment of princesses as Georgie's bridesmaids. “If only Darcy and I had eloped!” she thinks, as she attempts to organize her wedding and find a place for her and her husband-to-be to live. Just as she despairs of ever finding a home, her godfather offers his fully staffed country estate. But something sinister is afoot....

The arrival of two eligible gentlemen at Netherfield Park sends ripples of excitement through nearby Meryton. But Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy are not the only additions to the neighbourhood raising eyebrows. An unremarkable cottage in the woods between Netherfield and Meryton also has new tenants. One of them — a lively little girl with an adventurous spirit, a love of the outdoors, and a past shrouded in mystery — draws the notice of more than one local.

I was so excited when Darcy announced out of the blue that we were flying to Kenya for our extended honeymoon. Now that we are here, I suspect he has actually been sent to fulfill another secret mission. I am trying very hard not to pick a fight about it, because after all, we are in paradise! Darcy finally confides that there have been robberies in London and Paris. It seems the thief was a member of the aristocracy and may have fled to Kenya. Since we are staying in the Happy Valley, we are well positioned to hunt for clues and ferret out possible suspects.

. Mister Slaughter opens in the emerging metropolis of New York City in 1702, and proceeds to take both Matthew and the reader on an unforgettable journey of horror, violence, and personal discovery. The journey begins when Matthew, now an apprentice problem solver for the London-based Herrald Agency, accepts an unusual and hazardous commission. Together with his colleague, Hudson Greathouse, he agrees to escort the notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter from an asylum outside Philadelphia to the docks of New York.

A haunting and enigmatic tale that will keep you awake and wondering long after you've finished this classic mystery. Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling.... St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return....

Seule au cœur de la bibliothèque vaticane, Patricia Escalona, éminente paléographe, étudie le "Codex Vaticanus", l'un des plus anciens exemplaires de la Bible. Un document aussi sacré qu'exceptionnel qui causera sa perte : elle est égorgée, et un message codé est laissé près de son corps. D'abord suspecté, Tomás Noronha, historien et cryptologue, finit par apporter son aide à Valentina, l'inspectrice chargée de l'enquête. Alors que les meurtres s'enchaînent, ils vont devoir plonger dans les mystères du livre sacré pour comprendre les motivations de l'assassin.