Traditional Detective Mystery

In March of 1926, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her friend and collaborator, Lady Lucy Gerald, head off for several days to a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country. Working on a book of architectural follies, they plan to research and photograph it. Leaving her husband and young twins behind, Daisy is expecting a productive weekend at Appsworth Hall, with the only potential difficulty being keeping Lucy from offending the current owner, a manufacturer of plumbing products. Alas, it's not to be quite so simple.

When the Catriona Beldame is found murdered and her home set ablaze, Hamish Macbeth must clear his own name and then work to solve yet another murder to bring peace and quiet back to his beloved village. His investigations are complicated by a romance with a female forensic expert. Perhaps the Scotish Highlands' most stubborn bachelor will get married at last!

Mary Russell is used to dark secrets - her own and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond. And what of the other person to whom Mary Russell has opened her heart: the couple's longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson?

Christmas, 1141 A.D. Abbot Radulfus returns from London, bringing with him a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross (known as the Foregate), a man of presence, scholarship and discipline, but neither humility nor the common touch. When he is found drowned in the mill-pond, suspicion is cast in many directions, not least toward a young man who came in the priest's train, sent to work in Brother Cadfael's garden. For he has little obvious priestly calling. Indeed, he soon attracts the friendship of a girl both beautiful and formidable. To Brother Cadfael, once wordly, now dedicated, if gently cynical, is left the familiar task of sorting the complicated strands which define guilt and innocence.

A savage murder interrupts a May-December marriage and leaves Brother Cadfael with a dark, terrible mystery to solve. For the key to the killing - and a secret - are hid among the lepers of Saint Giles. Now Brother Cadfael's skills must ferret out a sickness, not of the body, but of a twisted soul - in the fifth Brother Cadfael Chronicle, a work that displays Ellis Peters' special genius at her best.

Breathless and painstakingly researched, this is a stunning debut mystery in which Sherlock Holmes unmasks Jack the Ripper. Lyndsay Faye perfectly captures all the color and syntax of Conan Doyle’s distinctive nineteenth-century London.

In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day - with her nephew, Derek, and her soon-to-be stepdaughter, Belinda, in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article on the museums of London, she soon discovers that the Museum of Natural History is a hothouse of professional rivalry and jealousy.

Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are sent to suburban Surrey to investigate the murder of a high-ranking police officer. Alastair Gilbert was bludgeoned to death in his kitchen, and the list of potential suspects is long--the man's arrogance earned him widespread enmity both in the village where he lived, and in police circles. But Duncan and Gemma must put aside their personal feelings--for the victim, as well as for each other--to solve the most troubling case either has faced.

Ishmael Jones is someone who can't afford to be noticed, someone who lives under the radar, who drives on the dark side of the road. He's employed to search out secrets, investigate mysteries and shine a light in dark places. Invited by his employer, the enigmatic Colonel, to join him and his family for Christmas, Ishmael arrives at the grand but isolated Belcourt Manor in the midst of a blizzard to find that the Colonel has mysteriously disappeared. As he questions his fellow guests, Ishmael concludes that at least one of them - not least Ishmael himself - is harboring a dangerous secret.

When a marriage proposal appears imminent for the beautiful - if rebellious - Lady Rose Summer, her father wants to know if her suitor's intentions are honorable. He calls on Captain Harry Cathcart, the impoverished younger son of a baron, to do some intelligence work on the would-be fiance, Sir Geoffrey Blandon.

For years now, readers of the Russell Memoirs have wondered about the tantalizing mentions of Japan. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes had spent three weeks there, between India ( The Game) and San Francisco ( Locked Rooms). The time has finally come to tell that story. It is 1925, and Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive home to find...a stone. A stone with a name, which they last saw in the Tokyo garden of the future emperor of Japan.

Lady Katherine would rather chase clues than suitors. Her reputation as a matchmaker could give her the cover she needs to follow in her detective father's footsteps. If she catches the Pink Ribbon Killer before he strikes again, she'll win her dowry and her independence in the process. One look through the exclusive Northbrooke estate house party doubles her suspect list. With the help of her trusty maid and her precocious pug, Katherine risks it all to unmask the killer. But is winning her freedom worth putting another debutante in mortal danger?

Former London policeman Alan Banks relocated to Yorkshire seeking some small measure of peace. But depravity and violence are unfortunately not unique to large cities. His new venue, the quaint little village of Eastvale, seems to have more than its fair share of malefactors---among them a brazen Peeping Tom who hides in night's shadows spying on attractive, unsuspecting ladies as they prepare for bed.

June 1920. In a house with a red door lies the body of a woman who has been bludgeoned to death. Rumor has it that two years earlier, she'd painted that door to welcome her husband back from the Front - only he never came home. Meanwhile, in London, a man suffering from a mysterious illness first goes missing and then just as suddenly reappears. He is unable to explain his recovery. Inspector Ian Rutledge must solve the cases.

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

If you haven’t already fallen in love with this internationally acclaimed series by M. C. Beaton, then this cunningly crafted mystery will do the trick. Loaded with authentic Scots dialog vivid enough to make you smell the heather-scented air, Death of a Macho Man is Beaton at her best. Hamish Macbeth - Lochdubh’s one-man police force - has suddenly become a prime murder suspect when a belligerent newcomer turns up dead. To save his career, Macbeth must delve into this Macho Man’s unsavory past. Suddenly, suspects are everywhere....

Meet Detective Inspector Dan Hellier, a man who needs to redeem his career and catch a killer. Soon after DI Hellier returns home to Exeter under a cloud, the body of a talented young singer is found in the woods. When her death reveals links to the boss of a recording studio, a predatory gang and a school music teacher, Hellier knows he has his work cut out. Before more innocent people are put in danger, Hellier will need to untangle the web of lies and work out which of many suspects are guilty of murder.

Dave Robicheaux felt the bone-grinding pain rip through his body as the .45 did its damage. Through the agonizing haze that enveloped him, he heard an almost inhuman laugh - the hideous, victorious cackling of Jimmie Lee Boggs - a sound he would never forget. It had started out as an ordinary prisoner transfer, then turned into a blood bath when the convicted murderer got hold of a gun.

London, 1850: A young Charles Lenox struggles to make a name for himself as a detective...without a single case. Scotland Yard refuses to take him seriously and his friends deride him for attempting a profession at all. But when an anonymous writer sends a letter to the paper claiming to have committed the perfect crime - and promising to kill again - Lenox is convinced that this is his chance to prove himself. The writer's first victim is a young woman whose body is found in a naval trunk, caught up in the rushes of a small islets in the middle of the Thames.

This lush and haunting novel tells of a city steeped in decadent pleasures and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal. It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evening's festivities are interrupted - by murder. The ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has been strangled to death.