Historical Police Procedural

For the prostitutes of Leather Lane, nurse Hester Monk’s clinic is a lifeline, providing medicine, food, and a modicum of peace—especially welcome since lately their ailments have escalated from bruises and fevers to broken bones and knife wounds. At the moment, however, the mysterious death of railway magnate Nolan Baltimore in a sleazy neighborhood brothel overshadows all else. Whether he fell or was pushed, the shocking question in everyone’s mind is: What was such a pillar of respectability doing in a seedy place of sin?

A Greek tragedy in modern England, A Place of Execution is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know.

As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim’s name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little—only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but—described as quiet and kempt—she doesn’t appear to be a fallen woman. What sinister secrets could have made poor Zenia worth killing? And why does the government keep interfering in Monk’s investigation?

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

In the treacherous woods of Tate's Hell, a missing child sets off a race against time. Join county sheriff Pratt Harlowe on a heart-pounding search for a missing child in the treacherous woods of Tate's Hell. When a little boy disappears one evening along the shore of the Apalachicola Bay, the tight-knit coastal community is thrown into chaos. As the search intensifies, Harlowe must contend with unpredictable weather, the rugged terrain of Tate's Hell, and small-town politics that threaten to derail his investigation. As the investigation deepens, Harlowe uncovers a web of secrets and lies ...

A frozen body is discovered in the icy depths of Langjökull glacier, apparently that of a businessman who disappeared 30 years before. At the time, an extensive search and police investigation yielded no results - one of the missing man’s business associates was briefly held in custody, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.

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?

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

Something is troubling Inspector Henry Cutter. Sergeant Gideon Bliss is accustomed to his ill-tempered outbursts, but lately the inspector has grown silent and withdrawn. Then, the murders begin. The first to die is the elderly Sir Aneurin Considine, a decorated but obscure civil servant who long ago retired to tend his orchids. If the motive for his killing is a mystery, the manner of his death is more bewildering still. The victims that follow suffer similar fates, their deaths gruesome but immaculately orchestrated.

On a patrol boat near Waterloo Bridge, police superintendent William Monk notices a young couple engaged in an intense discussion. Seconds later, the two plunge to their deaths in the icy waters of the Thames. Was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? Ever the investigator, Monk learns that the woman, Mary Havilland, had planned to marry the fair-haired man who shared her fate. He also discovers that Mary's father had recently died in a supposed suicide.

The man who lies bleeding to death in a London brickyard is no ordinary drifter but a secret informant with details of an international plot against the British government. Special Branch officer Thomas Pitt, hastening to rendezvous with him, arrives seconds after the knife-wielding assassin—who, in turn, flees on an erratic course that leads Pitt in wild pursuit to picturesque St. Malo on the French coast. Meanwhile, Pitt’s supervisor, Victor Narraway, stands accused of embezzling government funds.

When midwife Sarah Brandt visits Little Italy to check up on a new mother who delivered her baby just the day before, she finds the young woman dead. The family insists that the death was from complications of childbirth. Sarah disagrees. So does the woman's own mother, an Irishwoman who spreads the story that the girl was murdered by her Italian in-laws, the Ruoccos - an accusation that inflames tensions between the two immigrant groups.

London, summer 1920. An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While the signs point to murder, vital questions remain: Who is the victim? And where, exactly, was he killed? One small clue leads Rutledge to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise, is missing. But is he the dead man? And does either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance - or possible death?

Acclaimed author Anne Perry delivers another installment of the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery series. Two dead bodies have been discovered, both similarly mutilated. As Inspector Thomas Pitt examines one body, he recognizes the man from a previous case. With the help of his perceptive wife Charlotte, Thomas intends to solve this gruesome crime.

"The gritty, first-person narrative drives the reader back into their seats and is compelled to read more about Patrick Moses and his partner, Krause." –A Reader's Heaven After a shocking kidnapping case in New York City, Patrick Moses is summoned back to Chicago to help on an equally disturbing matter. Someone is murdering older women, using their own bed sheets to tie and bind them while suffocating them with their pillow stuffings. Other than similarities in the cases, there are no hard clues. What Patrick does find is that his old nemesis Christian Hanson is back in Chicago, operating...

It’s early spring of 1947 in idyllic King’s Cove, and the Hughes ladies, mère et filles, are gardening and sorting through the jars of food that have been put up for the winter. But while cleaning up after the roof of their root cellar has caved in slightly, they are horrified to discover a small skeletal hand embedded in the mess. Panicked, they call Lane Winslow, the ex-British secret service agent, and, not without some misgivings about the state of their tense relationship, Lane calls Inspector Darling.

The weathered remains of Eleanor Gray are found on a Scottish mountainside, and her mother, the domineering Lady Maude Gray, requires delicate treatment. This is a case that will lead Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard to Scotland, where his harrowing journey to find the truth will drag him back through the fires of his past into secrets that still have the power to kill.

Not since the bloody deeds of Jack the Ripper have Londoners felt such terror as that aroused by the gruesome beheadings in Hyde Park. And if newly promoted Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt does not quickly apprehend the perpetrator, he is likely to lose his own head, professionally speaking. Yet even with the help of Charlotte Pitt’s subtle investigation, the sinister violence continues unchecked. And in a shocking turn of events that nearly convinces the pair of sleuths that they have met their match, the case proves to be Pitt’s toughest ever.

Summer descends over the picturesque King’s Cove as Darling and Lane’s mutual affection blossoms. But their respite from solving crime is cut short when a British government official arrives in Nelson to compel Darling to return to England for questioning about the death of a rear gunner under his command in 1943. In Darling’s absence, Ames oversees the investigation into the suspicious death of a local elderly woman and uncovers a painful betrayal inflicted 40 years earlier.

In this, his third adventure, the lovable detective William Murdoch becomes involved with the apparent suicide of Constable Oliver Wicken, a man who was the sole support of his mother and invalid sister. But further investigation by Detective Murdoch takes him far afield, and he begins to suspect that the Eakin family, whose house adjoins the one where Wicken died, is more involved with the case than they admit. Here, once again, Maureen Jennings brings the period vividly to life.