Victorian Thriller

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.

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.

Victorian England, 1891. The escape of reading had saved the pathetic life of the orphaned Naomi Gladwyn. However, when she learns of books that are responsible for taking lives, everything she knows changes. Approaching her 18th birthday with only the grim prospect of living out her days in a workhouse, Naomi makes the boldest decision of her life and runs away. With only the whisper of a plan, she soon finds herself swept up into the dark world of The Book Reapers - a secret society that knows there is more to some books than meets the eye.

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....

England, 1882. Evelyn is bored with society and its expectations. So when her beloved sister, Rose, mysteriously vanishes, she ignores her parents and travels to London to find her, accompanied by the dashing Mr. Kent. But they're not the only ones looking for Rose. The reclusive young gentleman Sebastian Braddock is also searching for her, claiming that both sisters have special healing powers. Evelyn is convinced that Sebastian must be mad, until she discovers that his strange tales of extraordinary people are true.

The widowed Duchess of Sailer has desires that are hard to fill in polite society. To that effect, she visits a brothel to have her bottom reddened. If word got out, her reputation would be ruined. So, when a member of society is murdered, and her name turns up in the books he is using to blackmail people, the metropolitan police show up on her doorstep. Olivia does the only thing she can to keep her name from being dragged through the mud: she agrees to take the investigator into her life so she can help him find a killer. Inspector Rupert McKinley expects to get in and out, and figure out who killed Lord Ethan. He doesn't care about Olivia's desires...until he starts to spend time with her, and realizes she's more interesting than he ever expected her to be. When their business relationship turns into a personal one, Rupert is determined to find the murderer before someone else - like Olivia - is killed.

The death of Callie Scott's fashionable father left her with nothing - except an inquisitive mind not even her grandmother's puritanical upbringing could quash. An adventurous spirit doesn't get her much in New York City, however, except an abysmal position as a ladies maid. Things are looking up when she lands a trial job in a library. Her benefactor's offer of wine before noon should have signaled something amiss.

London, 1907: Die junge Adlige Victoria lebt allein mit dem Butler ihres verstorbenen Vaters. Sie halten sich über Wasser, indem Victoria als Fotografin und Hopkins bei einer Zeitung arbeitet. Als auf einem Ball hässliche Andeutungen über ein dunkles Familiengeheimnis laut werden, kommt es zum Eklat - und Victoria gerät gar unter Mordverdacht.

This gripping historical crime fiction novel, based on fact, is set in Bradford, England, 1888. It explores the horrific murder of Johnny Gill; a murder and mutilation so gruesome, it stuns a nation. Even hardened detectives are affected by its savagery, swiftly comparing it to the work of Jack the Ripper.

Although Ophelia Garrett loved Cade Scott first, it was her sister he married and took home to his plantation. When Ophelia receives word of her sister's murder and Cade's arrest, she travels there on a mission to learn the truth. She soon finds the halls of Almenara are haunted by secrets, peril, and quite possibly her sister's ghost. Despite the cold, angry man Cade has become, Ophelia's heart refuses to believe he is a murderer. Vowing to do everything she can to prove his innocence, Ophelia must open wounds she'd hoped were long healed.

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.

April 1865. Having been an eyewitness to the assassination of President Lincoln, Matthew Grand, a former captain of the 3rd Cavalry of the Potomac, has come to London on an undercover assignment to hunt down the assassin's coconspirators. Ambitious young journalist Jim Batchelor has been charged with writing a feature article on the visiting American. Both men are distracted from their missions by the discovery of a body in London's Soho district.

The year is 1873, and Sybil Ingram has come to a crossroads. Once she was the toast of the London stage, but now that she's 28 years old - very well, nearly 30 - her draw isn't what it used to be, and her theater troupe is foundering. When her trusted mentor asks her to take the blame for his financial misdeeds, Sybil sees no choice but to retire from the life she loves and move to America to marry New York City hotel magnate Alcott Lammle.

When famous bounty hunter Thad McIntyre and lonely widow Jessie Alderman meet, a fiery romance flares between them, but terrible events threaten their happiness. A mysterious stranger also arrives in Echo Canyon. Is he friend or foe?