Victorian Thriller

Ever since she moved to Raven Creek, Washington, Phoebe Winchester knew she would have to grow accustomed to having a lot on her plate. She’s beginning to make the Victorian manor she inherited from her dear and adventurous Aunt Eudora feel more like home, successfully running the bookstore and tea shop, The Earl’s Study, and learning to harness her recently discovered magical powers. But when she discovers a dead body at an estate sale, even Phoebe wonders if this is simply too much.

Kathryn Ardleigh is becoming accustomed to the high-society circles of her recently Lorded husband Charles Sheridan. And she has found a kindred spirit in Jennie Jerome Churchill, whose carefree lifestyle has made her a frequent topic in the tabloids. But there is a more serious scandal threatening Jennie—and the political future of her son Winston. She is being blackmailed by someone who has made a heinous accusation—someone who claims to have proof that Winston's father was none other than the notorious Jack the Ripper...

Harriet Andover had no intention of dying young like her silly siblings had. She intended to outlive them and outdo them as she always had. But Harriet discovers that the best intentions can lead to murder when she is strangled inside her mansion with a house full of holiday guests. As much as Inspector Witherspoon enjoys his job delivering justice, the last thing he wanted was a complicated murder case just a week before Christmas. He soon discovers that Harriet's own husband and grown stepchildren are not overcome with grief and neither are most of her friends.

It is October 1890 in London. Crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain is overjoyed to marry her beloved Detective Sergeant Barrett - but the wedding takes a sinister turn when the body of a stabbing victim is discovered in the crypt of the church. Not every newlywed couple begins their marriage with a murder investigation, but Sarah and Barrett, along with their friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly, take the case.

After a nearly fatal blow to the skull, traumatized private detective Ian Cameron is found dazed and confused on a muddy riverbank in Victorian London. Among his effects: a bloodstained business card bearing the name of a master wizard and a curious pocket watch that doesn’t seem to tell time. To retrieve his lost memories, Ian demands answers from Edwina and Mary Blackwood, sister witches with a murky past. But as their secret is slowly unveiled, a dangerous mystery emerges on the darkened streets of London.

1903. Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson have tickets to the newly arrived Egyptian Circus. Holmes is puzzled by his brother Mycroft's cryptic gift but is intrigued enough to attend the next production. The performers, dressed as wondrous half-animal, half-human gods from Egyptian mythology, display superhuman agility and stunts. But they speak no Arabic, sequester themselves in the stables after each show and take orders from a mysterious ring master who is yet to be seen. And then one of the performers is murdered.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Bath, England, 1890. Mystery author Lady Amy Lovell receives an anonymous letter containing shocking news: her fiancé, Mr. Ronald St. Vincent, has been dabbling in something illegal, which causes her to promptly break their engagement. Two evenings later, as Lady Amy awaits a visit from Lord William Wethington, fellow member of the Bath Mystery Book Club, her former fiancé makes an unexpected and most unwelcome appearance at her house.

Coronation Day, 1902. Charles and Kate Sheridan are pleased to be witness to the crowning of their king. Expatriate author Jack London is also watching the festivities—but with a more skeptical eye. He has come to London to write an exposé of the East End slums—and the coronation has not tempered his disdain for the monarchy. This special day takes a sinister turn when an anarchist accidentally blows himself up with a bomb meant for the king.

While Kate winds her way through the elaborate manor, gaining inspiration for her next Gothic novel, Lord Charles discovers the reason behind their journey. It seems Prince Eddy, heir to the throne until his purported death in 1892, has actually been alive all these years. Deemed unfit to rule, he has been living secretly at Glamis under an assumed name. But now the prince has gone missing—on the very morning the body of one of his servants was found, her throat slashed in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Ripper's.

Sensible Violet Manville and her very ladylike half-sister Sephora are absolutely bored, thank you very much. Though neither of them would ever admit it aloud, they're missing the thrill of playing detective. So when Violet receives a letter from A Heartbroken Mother sent to her alter-ego, the Agony Aunt known to the world only as Miss Hermione, her pulse can't help but quicken. The daughter in question has gotten caught up in a cult: the Hermetic Order of the Children of Aed.

In 1851, private detective Laetitia Rodd is enjoying a well-earned holiday when she gets an urgent request for her services. Mrs. Rodd’s neighbor Jacob Welland is a reclusive rich gentleman dying of consumption, and he wants Mrs. Rodd to find his brother, who has been missing for 15 years. Joshua Welland was a scholar at Oxford, brilliant, eccentric, and desperately poor when he disappeared from the university. Friends claim to have seen him since, in gypsy camps and wandering around the countryside.

In Nicholas Meyer's The Return of the Pharaoh, Sherlock Holmes returns in an adventure that takes him to Egypt in search of a missing nobleman, a previously undiscovered pharaoh's tomb, and a conspiracy that threatens his very life.

It is Spring 1871 when Lizzie Ross accompanies her formidable Aunt Parry on a restorative trip to the south coast. Lizzie's husband, Ben, is kept busy at Scotland Yard and urges his wife to stay out of harm's way. But when Lizzie and her aunt are invited to dine with other guests at the home of wealthy landowner Sir Henry Meager, and he is found shot dead in his bed the next morning, no one feels safe.

Harrow-on-the-Hill, March 1836: In a sense, orphans Ollie, John, and Arthur have always been treasure hunters. The mudlarks have gone from a hardscrabble life scavenging the banks of the Thames for bits and bobs to becoming students at a boarding school outside of London, thanks to the kind and generous intercession of Charles Dickens. But now they're missing—as is, apparently, a treasure map. When Charles arrives at the school, he's hit with another twist—the servant girl who was allegedly in possession of the map has been strangled in the icehouse.

After she captured the interest of detective Sir Charles Sheridan during their first case together, Kathryn Ardleigh and Sir Charles are brought together once more by the demise of a local constable and the disappearance of a child. The sleuthing couple catches a trail of deadly greed and criminal mischief once again and, with the help of a shy woman who calls herself Beatrix Potter, Kate intends to uncover the sinister secrets of Gallows Green.

London, 1893: High up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O'Donnell's Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow but burning with questions: Why does the seamstress choose to jump out of that window? Why is there a cryptic message sewn into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?

Ten years ago, Thomas Paxton was sent by Revolutionary France to infiltrate the British Intelligence Service. Now his sense of honor brings him back to London to confess. But instead of facing the gallows, he is given one last impossible assignment to prove his loyalty. Lovely, lying former French spy Camille Leyland is dragged from obscurity by threats and blackmail.

Justine DeCabrillac, daughter of the nobility whose parents died in the chaos of the Revolution, is rescued from a decadent child brothel by a woman of the French Secret Police. Justine, too, becomes a great spy for France. Attacked on a rainy London street, Justine knows only one man can save her: Hawker, her oldest friend - her oldest enemy. London is crawling with hidden assassins, and someone is out to frame Hawker for murder. The two spies must work together to find who's out to destroy them.

No one in 1840s New York likes fires, copper star Timothy Wilde least of all. After a blaze killed his parents and another left him with a terrible scar, he has avoided flames of all kinds. So when a seamstress turned arsonist threatens Robert Symmes, a corrupt tycoon high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Timothy isn’t thrilled that Symmes consults him. His dismay escalates when his audacious and charismatic older brother, Valentine, himself deeply politically entrenched, decides to run against the incumbent, who they suspect is guilty of assault and far darker crimes.