Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

No matter how fabulously he’s being courted, infamously dour “art hog” Arthur Wordell isn’t keen on favoring the new Guggenheim Museum with his extensive collection. Even at the urging of his beloved daughter, Nadia. Then, the night after the museum’s fête, Arthur takes a 20-story plunge from the window of his Times Square office. Nadia thinks it’s no mere coincidence. Eccentric, yes. Suicidal, no. Private Investigator Nero Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, agree.

Taita, the pharaoh's advisor and hero of Desert God and River God, once again finds himself caught up in a whirlpool of ruthless intrigue that threatens the very foundations of the beloved empire he has pledged his life to protect. Plunged into dangerous and deadly waters more treacherous than the Nile, he must use his intelligence, alchemy, and cunning to protect his pharaoh and keep safe all he loves.

Robert McCammon brings the hero of his previous novel, Matthew Corbett, to 18th-century New York, where a killer wields a bloody and terrifying power over a bustling city carving out its identity - and over Matthew's own uncertain destiny.

The unsolved murder of a respected doctor has sent ripples of fear throughout a city teeming with life and noise and commerce. Who snuffed out the good man's life with the slash of a blade on a midnight street? The local printmaster has labeled the fiend "the Masker," adding fuel to a volatile mystery...

With her commission in her coat and a well-found deck beneath her feet, Catherine Cook, granddaughter of the great explorer, prepares to set sail. With her new frigate and her master and commander’s warrant, Kate is ready to begin her career in the Royal Navy. Yet as every sailor knows, not all seas run smoothly. As Kate and her crew set out to defend British and American shipping from French and Spanish marauders, the young, improbable captain is sailing straight into deadly peril. For her old nemesis, Pierre Meraux, survived their last encounter and is out for vengeance.

On December 7, 1941, the United States was thrust into the largest global conflict of all time. From adversity rose a generation of heroes both at home and abroad whose courage, valor and sacrifice would restore a world gone mad! Yet not all of WWII’s heroes were flesh and blood… they were also made of steel and forged in the fire of combat.

Czechoslovakia, 1935: Viktor Kosárek, a newly trained psychiatrist who studied under Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle surrounded by forests, on a site that is well known for concealing dark secrets going back many centuries. The asylum houses six inmates - the country's most treacherous killers - known to the terrified public as the Devil's Six. Viktor intends to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon he calls The Devil Aspect.

January 1150. Another attempt at peace has brought the kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys together. Not everyone wants the conference to succeed, however, including King Madog of Powys, who happens to be a participant. So when the body of a woman turns up in an incriminating location, Queen Cristina is loath to involve anyone in the investigation but … Gareth and Gwen.

April 1284. As a newly widowed lady-in-waiting to the very pregnant Queen Eleanor of England, Catrin never expected to return to Wales again. She was definitely unprepared to be confronted with murder when she got there - or to find herself face-to-face with Rhys, the childhood friend she lost 20 years before. Rhys had never intended to return home either, but a lifetime of war has deposited him right back where he started - impoverished and owing service to Catrin's older brother.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

London, 1889. Lady Rosalynd, a fervent champion of women’s rights, is no stranger to challenging the status quo. But when a brutal murder casts suspicion on Rosalynd’s beloved cousin and implicates the enigmatic Duke of Steele's brother, her fiercely guarded independence is put to the ultimate test.

Florence Nightingale's charity gala could turn from posh to perilous. Can Sherlock and Lucy save the evening and serve up justice? London, 1902: a charity bash sponsored by none other than "The Lady with the Lamp" is the talk of the town. The gala's coming up soon at the Carlton Hotel, where the new King dines and César Ritz reigns, But when a crucial researcher is murdered, the gala's not just about gourmet dishes by Escoffier anymore – it's a recipe for disaster.

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 the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs' career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty's government". She soon finds herself investigating a web of activities being conducted by the emerging Nazi Party.

After enjoying two weeks of well-deserved R and R at Pearl Harbor, Art Turner, his crew, and his boat are once again asked to go out and do the impossible…and to make it snappy, already! Webster Clayton has uncovered a Japanese plan to send a major invasion force to Guadalcanal. In order to soften up the marines there, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto intends sending in a battleship to bombard Henderson Field and obliterate the Cactus Airforce.

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.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but he was born in 1581. Owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. From Shakespeare’s England to Jazz Age Paris to voyaging the Pacific alongside Captain Cook, Tom has seen a lot, and he now craves an ordinary life. Tom now has the perfect cover - working as a history teacher at a London school. Here, he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he’d never witnessed them first-hand. He can try to tame the past that is catching up with him. The only thing Tom can’t do is fall in love.

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....

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is another mystifying manor-house stumper for Wodehousian bon-vivant and problem-solver Anty Boisjoly, when his clubmate asks him to determine who died first after a duel is fought in a locked room. The untold riches of the Tenpenny Tontine are in the balance, but the stakes only get higher when Anty determines that, duel or not, this was a case of murder.

An American art expert raised in a world of European wealth and privilege, Lanny Budd is dedicated to his socialist ideals and to combatting the twin scourges of Nazism and Fascism. In 1937, a chance encounter in New York with Professor Charles Alston—his boss at the Paris Peace Conference and now one of President Roosevelt’s top advisors—provides Lanny with the opportunity to make a profound difference.

Captain Jack Aubrey, RN, arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a despatch vessel. But the War of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen's past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance.