Amateur Sleuths Historical Crime Fiction

1936 in the Crown Colony of Singapore, and the British abdication crisis and rising Japanese threat seem very far away. When the Irish nanny looking after acting governor Palin's daughter dies suddenly - and in mysterious circumstances - mission school-educated local girl Su Lin - an aspiring journalist trying to escape an arranged marriage - is invited to take her place. But then another murder at the residence occurs and it seems very likely that a killer is stalking the corridors of Government House.

With the threat of war looming over the Continent now that Napoleon has reseized the throne of France, London is abuzz with intrigue as diplomats from the European powers gather to negotiate a military alliance against him. But Lady Arianna and her husband, the Earl of Saybrook, are intent on staying clear of the conflict, deciding it's a battle for nations and armies to fight. Until things turn very personal. When a Prussian diplomat is murdered, two items found in his pocket force Arianna and Saybrook to once again become reluctant allies with the shadowy head of British security.

Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death with a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims?

Father Michael Dominic, prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives in Rome, is entrusted with the mission of transporting the original 17th century trial documents of Galileo to Loyola Law School in Chicago. The stage is set for a modern historical mock trial of Galileo’s original heresy charges, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the legendary event.

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate?

An elderly man has been run down by a logging truck on the street in Vientiane just opposite the post office. His body is delivered to the morgue of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the official and only coroner of Laos. At the age of 73, Siri is too old to be in awe of the new communist bureaucrats for whom he now works. Before he can identify the corpse, he must decipher a letter in the man’s pocket—it is written in invisible ink and in code.

In Vientiane, Laos, a booby-trapped corpse intended for Dr. Siri, the national coroner, has been delivered to the morgue. In his absence, only Nurse Dtui’s intervention saves the lives of the morgue attendants, visiting doctors, and Madame Daeng, Dr. Siri’s fiancée.

Bubble, bubble, toil, and murder... When a woman is found dead near her village in Norfolk, the verdict is suicide. Not everyone agrees. Detective James Simpson is ordered to investigate and he brings Agatha Aston, Betty Simpson and Talleyrand the hound, with him. They stumble across a tale of murder that stretches back two centuries. Part occult story, part murder mystery - this creepy tale is steeped in witchcraft and strange rural festivals where everything is not as it seems. The second Agatha Aston murder mystery is full of laughs, twists and things that go bump in the night. Golden ...

She's used to temper tantrums, swearing, and threats, but finding a dead body is an entirely new low. She isn't interested in getting more involved than she already is in the investigation into the man she found's death. But when a few days later, she stumbles over a second body lying feet away from where she found the first, she can't avoid it. She knows the streets of her route and the people on them, but she is absolutely astonished when New Scotland Yard discovers the art gallery near where she found the bodies is a front for mixing up a new psychedelic drug.

Sarah Gilchrist has fled London and a troubled past to join the University of Edinburgh's medical school in 1892, the first year it admits women. She is determined to become a doctor despite the misgivings of her family and society, but Sarah quickly finds plenty of barriers at school itself: professors who refuse to teach their new pupils, male students determined to force out their female counterparts, and - perhaps worst of all - her female peers who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman.

While watching the opera at La Fenice, Nancy Tremayne is shocked to see a woman fall to her death. But how did this tragedy occur? Newlywed Nancy is accompanying her art professor husband, Leo, on a work trip. As she explores Italy’s beautiful city on the water, she is increasingly compelled to uncover the mysterious circumstances surrounding the woman’s death. Leo is adamant it was an accident but his assistant, Archie, reluctantly helps Nancy. Nancy’s determination to reveal the facts puts her in harm’s way more than once....

In Death in the Floating City, Emily is surprised to receive a plea for help from her childhood nemesis, Emma, whose father-in-law has been murdered and whose husband has vanished. Digging into the mystery, Emily unearths a centuries-old puzzle - and raises the ire of those who will do anything to keep their secrets hidden.

The year is 1759, and London is shrouded in a cloak of fear. With the constables at the mercy of highwaymen, it’s a perilous time to work the already dangerous streets of Soho. Lizzie Hardwicke makes her living as a prostitute, somewhat protected from the fray as one of Mrs Farley’s girls. But then one of her wealthy customers is found brutally murdered...and Lizzie was the last person to see him alive.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, a young French burlesque dancer living in San Francisco is ready to risk anything in order to solve her friend’s murder—but only if the killer doesn’t get her first.

Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, have accompanied her dear friend Ivy Brandon on a trip to Pompeii. When they uncover a corpse and the police dismiss the murder as the work of local gangsters, Emily launches an investigation of her own. She seems to be aided by the archaeologists excavating the ruins, including a moody painter, the enigmatic site director, and a free-thinking American capable of sparring with even the Duke of Bainbridge. But each of them has secrets hiding among the ruins.

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.

A steady friendship that can't be broken, a guy who knows what he wants and won't give up, a cruise along the Mississippi with an open dessert bar, and the story of a heart-wrenching mystery waiting to be found. Tracy has always believed that family is everything…a trip up the Mississippi River to pack up Shay’s belongings is more of a vacation than a chore…until Todd decides to come along. Then anything is possible.Tracy Johnston was making the trip up the Mississippi River to a small town in Iowa to pack up her new sister-in-law’s belongings…her newly pregnant and very ill ...

In the sweltering summer of 1915, Pin, the 14-year-old daughter of a carnival fortune-teller, dresses as a boy and joins a teenage gang that roams the famous Riverview amusement park, looking for trouble. Unbeknownst to the well-heeled city-dwellers and visitors who come to enjoy the midway, the park is also host to a ruthless killer who uses the shadows of the dark carnival attractions to conduct his crimes. When Pin sees a man enter the Hell Gate ride with a young girl, and emerge alone, she knows that something horrific has occurred.

Will the contents of dozens of old trunks filled with century’s old and fragile dresses, antique books and journals, and an even older jeweled sword, provide the answers to any of Mae’s well-guarded secrets?Sisters of the Heart is the fifth book in the ongoing story of the Engstrom family in the Mae’s Second Chance series. In the small ghost town of Mae’s Second Chance, where centuries old secrets remain hidden and the surrounding hills continue to guard another woman’s treasures, Julie Engstrom brings her family in search of a place that can replace what they had to leave behind....

It is the Summer and Autumn of the Year of Our Lord 1143 in which the gentle monk, Brother Cadfael, is forced to leave the tranquility of his herb garden to find the whole truth behind the murder of a young women whose body was unexpectedly discovered in a newly tilled field recently acquired by the Shrewsbury Abbey in a land exchange.