Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King has won sweeping critical acclaim and an impressive collection of awards for her writing. Although other writers have tried, no one has matched King's ability to capture the allure of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary sleuth, Sherlock Holmes.

January 1910. A journalist has been killed in a suspicious blaze. Everything points to a group of suffragettes, but the apparent culprit insists she is innocent. When Lady Hardcastle receives a letter from a suffragette requesting her urgent help, the retired spy turned sleuth knows only she stands between an accused young woman and the gallows. Evidence at the scene makes Lizzie Worrel’s innocence difficult to believe, and with the police treating it as an open-and-shut case of arson, Lady Hardcastle faces a barrage of resistance as she tries to dig out the truth.

Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is both a star and a smokescreen. An unwilling darling of the Nazis, the chanteuse’s position of privilege allows her to go undetected as an ally to the resistance. When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve knows it won’t be long before the Gestapo succeeds in torturing information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing her by any means necessary - including assassination.

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.

In the summer of 1897, Fiona MacGillivray and her 11-year-old son, Angus, arrive in Vancouver in time to hear the news gold discovered in the Klondike! Fiona immediately sets off for Skagway, Alaska, intent on opening a theatre. After one encounter with infamous gangster Soapy Smith and his henchman Paul Sheridan, she decides to pursue her ambitions on the other side of the border in Dawson City. As a dying man breathes his last, he passes on to Sheridan a map pointing due north to the fabled Gold Mountain, where hills of gold keep the heat from hot springs contained in a valley as warm as California.

In the shadowed depths of the Vatican’s Secret Archives, archaeologist Marcus Russo, Father Michael Dominic, and investigative journalist Hana Sinclair uncover a chilling artifact—a centuries-old music box intricately crafted and bound with symbols of forgotten rites of alchemy. What begins as an academic curiosity quickly turns into a dire warning, as whispers of its sinister origins surface. The box, linked to an enigmatic 18th-century composer, Vincenzo Malvagio, holds within it a melody unlike any other—a composition rumored to have the power to summon forces beyond human comprehension.

A far-from-warm welcome greets Hercule Poirot as he arrives for lunch at Lucy Angkatell's country house. A man lies dying by the swimming pool, his blood dripping into the water. His wife stands over him, holding a revolver. As Poirot investigates, he begins to realize that beneath the respectable surface lies a tangle of family secrets and everyone becomes a suspect.

Wide Is the Gate followed the 1943 Pulitzer Prize-winning Dragon’s Teeth and introduces Lanny as a secret double agent fighting the Nazis as a supporter of the resistance in Germany. Lanny is living in England with his wife of almost five years, Irma Barnes, the twenty-three-million-dollar heiress. But Lanny is conflicted continuously in his heart and soul for the workers and social justice. He attempts to commit to Irma, to “behave” himself and lead a normal aristocratic life.

Agatha Award-winning author Rhys Bowen’s charming combination of intrigue and romance blended with a touch of humor shines when performed by Audible Hall of Fame narrator Katherine Kellgren, whose deft range and impeccable accent work make it hard to believe this isn’t a multicast performance.

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his 11th life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August", she says. "I need to send a message". This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

A revolution in the Middle East has a direct and deadly impact upon the summer term at Meadowbank, a picture-perfect girls' school in the English countryside. Prince Ali Yusuf, Hereditary Sheikh of Ramat, whose great liberalizing experiment is coming to chaos, knows that he must prepare for the day of his exile. He asks his pilot and school friend, Bob Rawlinson, to care for a packet of jewels. Rawlinson does so, hiding them among the possessions of his niece Jennifer Sutcliffe, who is bound for Meadowbank.

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for.

Vittorin, a young Austrian officer, has just been released from a Russian POW camp toward the end of the Great War. In Vienna his family, his girlfriend, and his old job await him, but Vittorin can’t think of settling down until he has settled the score with the sadistic camp commander, Staff Captain Selukov. Private obsession and political turmoil mix as Perutz leads his hero on a manhunt into the thick of the Russian civil war. In and out of prison, starving in the gutters of Moscow, thrown into revolutionary battle, Vittorin pursues his elusive quarry across postwar Europe. At each turn, he encounters only Fate’s joker, until, back in Vienna, Fate plays him the biggest joke of all.

When a notorious cad is bludgeoned to death with a candlestick in the library at the most important ball of the London social season, Cleo finds herself in the prime position to solve the crime. After all, she stumbled across the body soon after the victim’s demise and is a witness to the evening’s events.

Outside the pale of the Abbey of Saint Peters and Saint Paul, in September of the year of our Lord 1140, a priestly emissary for King Stephen has been reported missing. But inside the pale, what troubles Brother Cadfael is a proud, secretive 19-year-old novice. Brother Cadfael has never seen two men more estranged than the Lord of Aspley and Meriet, the son he coldly delivers to the abbey to begin a religious vocation. Meriet, meek by day, is so racked by dreams at night that his howls earn him the nickname the Devil's Novice. Shunned and feared, Meriet is soon linked to the missing priest's dreadful fate. Only Brother Cadfael believes in Meriet's innocence, and only the good sleuth can uncover the truth before a boy's pure passion, not evil intent, leads a novice to the noose.

New Year’s Eve, 1932. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool arrive on the tiny Greek island of Lamperos to celebrate the holiday with what turns out to be a rather odd community of locals living in a dilapidated house. A dark sense of foreboding overshadows the beautiful island getaway when the guests play a New Year’s Resolutions game after dinner and one written resolution gleefully threatens to perform “the last and first death of the year.”

Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability - and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father, Frankie Dobbs, is not getting any younger.

Acclaimed author and historian Alan Furst has written several historical fiction novels, such as Blood of Victory and Kingdom of Shadows. In Dark Star, André Szara is a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Through Szara’s character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed.

From seat number nine, Hercule Poirot is almost ideally placed to observe his fellow air travelers on this short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sits a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite. Ahead, in seat number 13, is the Countess of Horbury, horribly addicted to cocaine and not doing too good a job of concealing it. Across the gangway in seat number eight, a writer of detective fiction is being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in.

An orchestral conductor has been found dead and Detective Inspector Jack Robinson needs the delightfully incisive and sophisticated Miss Fisher's assistance. Hugh Tregennis has been murdered in a most flamboyant mode by a killer with a point to prove. But how many killers is Phryne really stalking? At the same time, the dark curls and disdainful air of mathematician and code-breaker Rupert Sheffield are taking Melbourne by storm. They've certainly taken the heart of Phryne's old friend from the trenches of WWI, John Wilson. Phryne recognises Sheffield as a man who attracts danger and is determined to protect John from harm.