Victorian Thriller

This fast-paced story from E. W. Hornung has something for every reader: a juicy murder mystery, a tender romance, charming local color, a critique of Victorian social mores, around-the-world adventures, and much more. The plot twists come at a breakneck pace, so don't blink or you might miss a crucial clue!

Cassie Woods's tenacity has helped her achieve a modicum of success in the male-dominated world of journalism in 1880s New York City. Despite her father's recent downfall, her courtship with gruff but handsome Detective O'Neill is going well. Now she has the opportunity to earn a place at the second-biggest newspaper in the city--if she can prove herself with an undercover story exposing the dangers of life in the city's garment factories.

1850: Charles Dickens is in Manchester, performing at the Queen's Theatre with his acting group. But his career on the stage is cut short when a man is shot dead - on set. With Dickens himself caught with the gun in his hands, he is immediately arrested. Along with the help of his good friend Superintendent Sam Jones, Dickens must do all he can to find the real killer, before he is locked up for a crime he didn't commit. Can Dickens convince the authorities of his innocence? Will he unmask the true assassin?

England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly remarried to a war-traumatised husband and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel to Clewer Hall in Sussex where she is to photograph the contents of the house for auction. She learns Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896, and that the lady of the house has asked those who gathered back then to come together once more to re-create the evening.

Isobel Amsel is wasting away in an asylum. Mad with boredom, she recklessly risks her future wandering the countryside. When an excursion nearly turns deadly, Isobel fears one of her enemies is targeting her, but she quickly discovers something far more insidious. The lives of two boys are at stake, and she desperately wishes her partner were by her side.

The Secret Agent was one of the first espionage novels ever written, and it is certainly one of the finest in the oeuvre of Joseph Conrad. The story concerns the attempt by a group of back-alley revolutionaries to destroy one of London's most famous landmarks and thereby set off a revolution.

On a freezing Christmas Eve in 1879, a forensic psychic reader is summoned from her Baker Street lodgings to the scene of a questionable death. Alexandrina Victoria Pendlebury (named after her godmother, the current queen of England) is adamant that the death in question is a magically compromised murder and not a suicide, as the police had assumed. After the shocking revelation contained by the body in question, Alex must put her personal loss aside to uncover the deeper issues at stake, before more bodies turn up.

November 1853. Inspector Field has summoned his friends Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to examine a body found in an attic studio, its throat cut. Around the body lie the lacerated fragments of canvas of a painting titled A Winter of Despair. Wilkie realises he recognises the victim, for he had been due to dine with him that very evening. The dead man is Edwin Milton-Hayes, one of Wilkie's brother Charley's artist friends. With his own brother under suspicion of murder, what secrets lie among the close-knit group of Pre-Raphaelite painters who is the killer in their midst?

Alexandra Wallace es feliz trabajando como investigadora privada. A pesar de ser considerada una belleza, no duda en disfrazarse como la más fea de las pordioseras, para poder realizar sus investigaciones que es lo más importante para ella. Hasta que conoce a Gabriel Damsworth, marqués y espía y saltan chispas entre los dos, pero Alexandra se aparta de su camino sin dudarlo decidida a seguir con su profesión.

London, 1890. Mina Murray once lived an adventurous life, but after a tragedy in the forests of Transylvania, she left it all behind. Now she has settled into a quiet routine as a schoolteacher in London, engaged to the respectable solicitor Jonathan Harker, attempting to fit into the stuffy upper class London society to which he belongs. But when vampires abduct Jonathan, her dark past comes careening into her present.

Sir Maurice Newbury is bereft as his trusty assistant Veronica Hobbes lies dying with a wounded heart. Newbury and Veronica's sister, Amelia, must take a sleeper train across Europe to St. Petersberg to claim a clockwork heart that Newbury has commissioned from Faberge to save Veronica from a life trapped in limbo. No sooner do they take off then sinister goings-on start to plague the train, and it is discovered that an old villain, thought dead, is also on board and seeking revenge.

Miss Calamity Calloway is the epitome of efficiency as long as she’s typing travel reports, but when she’s out in the world, the troubles start. Tripping over laces, bumping into people on the street, and tumbling into awkward situations is the order of her days, and unfortunately, her handsome neighbor is usually a witness. All she longs for is a bit of trouble-free adventure.

Recently widowed, Charlotte Pennyworth is relishing her independence and it rankles to have to rely on a man to help her with a sinister stalker. Former Yardman, Elliot Baker, is reluctant to take on Charlotte''s case but despite himself and his history with another woman, he is drawn to the bright, attractive widow. Sparks smolder between the PI and his client but neither is looking to form an attachment. Elliot thinks Charlotte is hiding something. Charlotte has no desire to marry again, especially to a private investigator, no matter how handsome, brave and kind he is.

Olivia Sheldon has travelled across the world to marry a man she does not love. Reluctant to leave England but coerced into the marriage, Olivia's reward is being reunited with her estranged sister, Clara. Her punishment is falling impossibly and illicitly in love with the enigmatic Captain Edward Bertram. Then one scorching day Clara is abducted from Alexandria's busiest street. Desperate to find her sister - and the truth about her disappearance - Olivia becomes embroiled in Egypt's shadowy underworld, risking both her life and future with Edward.

Clara grew up believing that her mother's family had disowned them. But the grandmother Clara never knew is now entreating her to visit Thurnley Hall, the family seat in Yorkshire. The old lady is on her deathbed and anxious to disclose vital family secrets before it's too late - for Clara's unborn child may be cursed with a horrible fate.

Following a humiliating fourth season in London, Lady Elizabeth Fraser is on her way back to her ancestral country estate when her train careens off the rails and bursts into flames. Though she is injured, she manages to drag herself and her unconscious mother out of the wreckage, and amid the chaos that ensues, a brilliant young railway surgeon saves her mother's life. Elizabeth feels an immediate connection with Paul Wilcox - though society would never deem a medical man eligible for the daughter of an earl.

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.

Life in 1881 San Francisco is difficult if you are a poor widow like Mrs. O’Malley, especially when you have seven children and are forced to live in one of the crowded neighborhoods South of Market. Late one night, as she sat at the window of her crowded flat, sewing and worrying, she noticed something strange going on across the street. Her decision to investigate will have unexpected consequences.

London, 1894. Albertine Honeycombe never wanted a husband and certainly not the one with fifteen children that her cousin, Aubrey, is trying to marry her off to. She reinvents herself as Countess Von Dagga, a private detective aiding the upper echelons of women in society. As the Countess, she is a married woman, with a conveniently absent husband who doesn’t exist, which allows her far more freedom than being single. When Lord Grendel, from whom she has recovered blackmail letters, is murdered, Albertine is suspect number one—having been the last person to see him.

Mr. James Harding was a lot of things - businessman, well-to-do, probable scoundrel - but a drinker he most assuredly was not. So when Harding is believed to have drunkenly fallen to his death into the icy River Avon, Lord William Wethington is immediately suspicious. Finding Lord William's name on a letter in the victim's pocket, the local constabulary summons William to identify the victim. Police detectives learn that William had been one of Harding's business clients - and undoubtedly not the only client the dead man had cheated.