British Mysteries

It is the summer of 1812. Wellington is fighting Napoleon's army in Spain, Lord Byron is dazzling the Beau Monde with the first Canto of his 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' - and Viscount Percy Ainsford Foster Ashe is discovered dead in a shabby boarding house in Brighton. It is assumed that the young man, whose gambling debts were considerable, has committed suicide. But then a suspicious silver locket is discovered by Lady Charlotte Ashe, the dead lord's now penniless widow, and Theo Bryght, a Bow Street Runner from London, is called in to investigate what is now suspected to be murder. Who ...

Penny Küfer's latest assignment feels like a walk in the park: she is supposed to ensure the safety of a world-famous shipowner and his fiancée on the maiden voyage of a stunning new cruise ship. But what sounded like luxury and relaxation on the high seas quickly turns into a survival trip. Instead of breathing fresh sea air and putting her feet up by the pool, Penny finds herself dealing with a deadly mystery surrounding a legendary pearl. The first murders are not long in coming...

Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier Drayton Conneley are guests at a bird hunt styled in the precise manner of an English shooting party. Which means elevenses (sloe gin fizzes), gun loaders, the drawing of pegs, fine-looking bird dogs, and shooting costumes of tweed, herringbone, and suede. But as gunshots explode like a riff of Black Cat firecrackers, another shot sounds too close for comfort to Theodosia and Drayton. Intrigued but worried, Theodosia wanders into the neighbor's lavender field where she discovers their host, Reginald Doyle, bleeding to death.

It's the end of the summer season in the harbour town of Estepona. The holiday makers are heading home, leaving the British expats to reclaim their little corner of paradise. Among them is art restorer Astrid Swift's estranged father. She's sailed into town to reunite with him but has instead been tasked with catching an internet troll who's been threatening his wife online. Soon Astrid is entwined in the lives of these expats, from the boozy local heckler to the socially awkward beachcomber. And then she discovers a body in the bunker of the golf course.

May, 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo.

A cosy mystery perfect for fans of Sally Smith, Steve Higgs, LJ Ross, Robert Thorogood, and Richard Osman. Karen McLaren has organised what she believes will be the perfect Yuletide celebration: a murder mystery evening based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It’s being held at Club Britannia; attendees are attired in period costume, and traditional food is on the menu. Everything has been planned to perfection… …one of the guests dying, however, isn’t something that’s been scheduled. A fictional murder mystery transforming into a real murder investigation throws Castillo ...

Another puzzling, fiendishly complicated mystery for Inspector Cullot and his world-famous Team to solve… Can the Inspector, together with Sergeant Watkins and Cullot’s gorgeous daughter Stephanie, solve the mystery of the corpse that disappeared? Such a mind-boggling mystery is soon followed by a whole series of disappearing corpses being reported all over London… And, worst of all, is the fourth member of Scotland Yard’s top-notch Team, namely the bumbling, bemused PC Blunt, the actual murderer? Is the love of Cullot’s life, the still stunningly attractive ex-movie star Joan ...

After receiving an urgent call from Seamus Wilkes, his Scottish cousin, interim Chief Inspector Edward Wilkes, learns that his brother, Jonathan showed up at his cousin's dairy farm injured from a gunshot wound. Eventually, Edward meets his brother and learns that Jonathan is a seasoned MI6 agent accused of murdering his partner during a courier exchange. Knowing his brother is innocent, Edward offers him a place to hide above a shuttered shop and enlists Smither's help as he starts to investigate what actually happened. The killer, an MI6 mole surfaces playing havoc with Inspector Willkes'...

'I can't deny it, I just love these characters! ' - Goodreads reviewer Investment Trust boss Hugo Morgan has celebrated his fiftieth birthday by dumping his wife of twenty-two years and is now intent on marrying a younger model. Tasked with checking out the back story of the shiny new Mrs Morgan are ex-barrister turned private eye Maggie Bainbridge and her faithful assistant Jimmy Stewart. A SUSPICIOUS SUICIDE Beautiful and clever, twenty-three year old Chardonnay Clarke has died under the wheels of a tube train, leaving behind a heart-breaking message on her social media. But in DI Frank ...

Jaimie can’t breathe. Jaimie can’t speak. Other patients are sick. Other patients can’t help him. On his chest struts a raven who says ‘the devil is coming’. Doctors say he is delusional after weeks spent lying in the Intensive Care Unit of his local hospital, having survived Covid-19. Next night he sees the bird’s prophecy come true: someone dressed in full PPE and crow-mask attacks a young woman called Ivona in the bed opposite… When Detective Sergeant Alison Ellis arrives to search the wards, she finds no violent intruder. Surely Jaimie’s superstitious talk of crime and ...

It's not always a question of "whodunit?" Sometimes there's more mystery in the why or how. And although we usually know the unhealthy fates of both victim and perpetrator, what of those clever few who plan and carry out the perfect crime? The ones who aren't brought down even though they're found out? And what about those who do the finding out who witness a murder or who identify the murderer but keep the information to themselves? These are some of the mysteries that we follow through those six stories.

Death at South Hills is a gripping English murder mystery set in the picturesque coastal town of Lynden Sands during the 1920s. Immerse yourself in a tale of intrigue, deception, and family secrets that will keep you guessing until the very end. When Mark Northbridge and his sister Stephanie arrive at the newly opened hotel in Lynden Sands, they are unaware of the dark mysteries that lie ahead. Their family estate, South Hills, stands at the center of unresolved tensions and a haunting disappearance. Garrett, their nephew, has been missing since the war, leaving a void filled with ...

DC Sophie Jones was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Viciously bludgeoned one night in a dark alley, she is left fighting for her life in hospital, leaving no clues as to why she was there or what might have motivated the attack. For Detective Karen Hart, fiercely protective of her young protégée, this is already deeply personal: an attack on Sophie is an attack on the whole team. When a car workshop near the crime scene is linked to local mobster Quentin Chapman, the man Hart has spent years trying to bring down, it’s hard not to jump to the most obvious conclusion.

1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, twenty-four-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices which will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha.

The body of a missing boy is dredged from the seabed off the Sussex coast, missing vital organs. Soon after, two more bodies are found . . . A teenager in Brighton will die if she does not receive an urgent transplant. When the health system threatens to let her down her mother takes drastic action and goes to an online broker in black-market organs. The broker can provide what she wants, but it will come at a price. As Roy Grace investigates the recovered bodies, he unearths a gang of child traffickers operating from Eastern Europe.

For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnessed a murder. Helplessly, she stared out of her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses...and no corpse. This title was previously published as What Mrs. McGrillicuddy Saw!

1792, England: Lord Francis and Lady Ottilia Fanshawe are on their way home when their coach comes to a sudden stop. A woman is standing in the middle of the road - covered in blood. The woman refuses to speak but on further investigation they find the body of a man hidden in the woods. Ottilia insists on bringing the woman home to find out what occurred. But the more she finds out the more complicated the case becomes....

It is 1941 and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed, and the King imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down. But when a body is found in a Mayfair flat, what at first appears to be a routine murder investigation sends him into a world of espionage, deceit, and betrayal.

A Caribbean sailing vacation takes a frightening turn with a mysterious death… A year has passed since Janeva Jag witnessed a murder. The endless police inquiries seem finally at an end. It’s time for a relaxing sun-drenched vacation in the tropics. Is it fate, bad luck or something more sinister that brings the Jag family face to face with yet another death. Determined to enjoy their planned Caribbean sailing holiday they try, without success, to ignore a sequence of strange events and threats. Maybe there is a reason to be a bit paranoid, but at least life will return to normal when ...

Pretty, young Anne came to London looking for adventure. In fact, adventure comes looking for her - and finds her immediately at Hyde Park Corner tube station. Anne is present on the platform when a thin man, reeking of mothballs, loses his balance and is electrocuted on the rails. The Scotland Yard verdict is accidental death. But Anne is not satisfied. After all, who was the man in the brown suit who examined the body? And why did he race off, leaving a cryptic message behind?