Victorian English Mystery

In 1903, tensions between Britain and Germany are starting to loom over Europe, something that has not gone unnoticed by Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves. An agent of the Crown, Colin carries the weight of the empire, but his focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence - burglaries that might have international ramifications. He and Emily travel to Tuscany where, soon after their arrival, a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor.

The Dead Witness gathers the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the 19th century and into the early 20th - including a wide range of overlooked gems creating the finest ever anthology of Victorian detective stories. "The Dead Witness", the 1866 title story by Australian writer Mary Fortune, is the first known detective story by a woman, a suspenseful clue-strewn manhunt in the Outback. This forgotten treasure sets the tone for the whole anthology....

Hauntingly read by Justin Avoth. 'Robert Dinsdale mixes history and mythology with great panache . . . Richly textured and with an appropriately labyrinthine plot, this is a book that explores the monster inside man — and vice versa. Book of the Month' Sunday Times Man or monster? Hero or...

Forever untangling the branches of her strange family tree, Edwina Blackwood is at a turning point. Her parents’ disappearances still strike her as unaccountably odd. Her sister’s questionable life and untimely death have left her shaken. Spellfire has transformed her home and livelihood to ash. And now a devious stalker is on her trail. With supernatural detective Ian Cameron by her side, Edwina can’t get out of London fast enough.

London, 1849 When a boy is found drowned in the River Thames at Hungerford Stairs, novelist Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones of Bow Street are mystified to discover that the child is not the missing youngster for whom they have been searching. As Dickens and Jones delve deeper into London's poverty-stricken backstreets, they stumble across two more bodies. A serial killer is on the loose. And Charles is terrified that someone close to him may be one of the victims.

London, 1851, and the Great Exhibition is on. A soaring success despite months of dour predictions, it is the event of the year, on front pages and wagging tongues the world over—and Miss Kara Levett is thrilled to be in the middle of it. The daughter of a baron and an exhibitor herself, she happily demonstrates her elaborate automatons and case clocks to the crowds. But her situation grows perilous when a man is murdered in the Crystal Palace and she becomes the prime suspect.

Gideon Waverley, heir to the Duke of Townsend, had everything a young man could need, a promising future, a title, charming good looks, great friends, and a family who adored him. Until his body turned him into a monster. He had no choice but to separate himself from the world, to hide his monstrous self from society, to cast away his future. But the brilliant and beautiful Eve Cornwell refused to believe he could not be saved, even as she refused to guard her heart.

Leigh Hawthorne, a widow and local farmer in Tucker Springs, receives an unusual letter from a man out west who wants to marry a woman with ranching expertise. Could this solve all of Leigh’s problems? Hoping to find a better life, Leigh embarks on a journey to Chance City, Oklahoma. Fired for breaking Pinkerton rules, former detective Cyrus Decker just wants to live a quiet life as a cattle rancher. The problem is that he knows nothing about ranching - and his bank account shows it.

Dublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. He has been savagely beaten, his head almost severed; there is no sign of a murder weapon, and the office door is locked, apparently from the inside. Thousands of pounds in gold and silver are left untouched at the scene of the crime. Augustus Guy, Ireland's most experienced detective, teams up with Dublin's leading lawyer to investigate the murder. But the mystery defies all explanation.

In 1894 colonial India, Lady Diana's family has lost their fortune in a global financial slump, but even worse, her brother Adi is accused of murder. Desperate to save him from the gallows, Captain Jim and Lady Diana rush back to Bombay. However, the traditional Parsi community finds Jim and Diana's marriage taboo and shuns them. The dying words of Adi's business partner, a silversmith, are perplexing. As Captain Jim peels back the curtains on this man's life he finds a trail of unpaid bills, broken promises, lies, and secrets.

London, 1882. Alec Lonsdale, a young reporter on the Pall Mall Gazette, is working on a story about a fatal house fire. But the postmortem on the victim produces shocking results: Patrick Donovan's death was no accident. But why would someone murder a humble shop assistant and steal part of his brain? When a second body is discovered, its throat cut, and then a third, Lonsdale and his spirited female colleague, Hulda Friederichs, begin to uncover evidence of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest echelons of Victorian society.

The young Victoria remembers nothing but Kensington Palace. Arriving as a baby, she has been brought up inside its musty, mold-ridden walls. Others may see the value of Kensington's priceless artifacts and objets d'art, but the palace is a jail cell for young Victoria.

After 15 years away, Kate Hamilton never expected to end up back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland, full time. And she definitely didn't expect to be leading the charge of recreating the town as a Victorian village and tourist attraction. The Barton mansion, meant to be the centerpiece of the Victorian village, has proven to be a veritable goldmine of documents about the town's 19th-century history, and Kate is convinced the papers hide something of value. Then a dead body turns up in the town library - mere hours before the documents were meant to arrive there themselves.

Oliver McCaron, earl of Armbruster, is an influential, self-made man who lives life by his own rules. Though he's never lacking for female attention, there's only one woman he wants. And she's the one woman who won't have him...again. Widowed Lady Fieldhurst has spent the last 17 years avoiding Oliver, after one glorious night together. Her parents had already planned out her life - she was never to become Oliver's wife, despite their plans to run away. To protect her secret, she had to follow their wishes and marry the elderly earl they had chosen.

Facing court-martial for disobeying orders, Lieutenant Samuel Kingston despairs when avaricious aristocrats imprison his father for a crime born of Samuel’s clash with one of their own as a boy. The young Anglo-Irishman’s only hope of freeing both is accepting a commission assisting William Walker and his filibusters win Nicaragua’s bloody civil war.

Ninety-nine days remain in Isobel Amsel's sentence, and the world keeps spinning - just not for Isobel. Her twin brother disappears for unknown reasons, and she's left pacing in her cage like a tiger. While Isobel's rebellious adopted daughter, Sao Jin, keeps her on her toes, Riot is left to sort out his crumbling finances. And find a ring, which proves far more difficult than he imagined. With Isobel's release date closing in, Riot tries to sort out his life, his motivations, and his impending wedding, while Bel faces the question of what marriage and motherhood really mean.

Someone, somewhere, had been strangled. Psychic Jenny Watkins' second vision comes through the eyes of the victim. While she doesn't know when or where the strangulation took place, she does get a good look at the killer. With little else to go on besides an image in her mind, Jenny races to put a name to the face before he strikes again.

Florida, 1884. It's a new year and Cassie Gwynne is determined to be done with the unseemly business of murder. Unfortunately, fate has other plans . . . The very next day, she happens upon the body of a newcomer to town—customs collector Chester Pence—floating beneath the boardwalk. Never one to shy away from a puzzle, Cassie can't resist getting involved in the investigation. It's no secret that Chester made a number of enemies in his short time in Fernandina: confiscating a beleaguered bride's wedding dress and a bossy businessman's cigars among many other mean acts.

Solve a murder, bring a killer to justice... but at what cost? Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor's clerk John Davies as his assistant. When a faceless body is found on an...

Beset on all sides, time is running out: to solve the case, and to save his future... Harry Probert-Lloyd has inherited the estate of Glanteifi and appointed his assistant John as under-steward. But his true vocation, to be coroner, is under threat. Against his natural instincts, Harry must...