Historical Romance Thriller

In this book, we are going to explore the specific challenges of writing genre flash fiction and short fiction, where you only have 500 to 1,000 words to tell a story. To do this well, you need to master three specific skills of genre writing. You need to understand the reader's expectations of the genre—the voice, the story arc, and the satisfying outcomes. More often than not, you will need to use familiar locations or settings; after all, you don't have many words to create a whole new world. The real skill lies in the twist—after drawing the reader in with familiar genre storylines ...

Clues, Chaos, and Catastrophe Under the Big Top! London, 1899: The circus is in town, but danger is in the spotlight. When a clown is found dangling lifeless from the high wire at the Olympia Amphitheater, Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James are called in to investigate. With rivalries, roaring egos, and deadly secrets lurking behind the curtain, the Baker Street team must act fast to stop the next act from ending in tragedy. To infiltrate the tight-knit world of acrobats, fire-eaters, and animal tamers, Lucy and Jack go undercover as magicians, with the ever-curious Becky as their pint-sized ...

Meet Elizabeth Carleton, a fascinating woman who is not only a famous concert pianist, but is also married to a wealthy international business tycoon, Timothy Carleton. She is the envy of all until her perfect life falls apart literally in a heartbeat: Timothy Carleton is stabbed in the chest with an ice pick and Elizabeth is accused of his murder. Things rapidly go from bad to worse until a surprise witness appears to give her an airtight alibi. The jury finds her not guilty. The only thing is: She’s never met the man who testified on her behalf.

After a whirlwind romance, London teashop waitress Fleur Richards can’t wait for her new husband, Hugh, to return from the Great War. But when word of his death arrives on Armistice Day, Fleur learns he has left her a sizable family fortune. Refusing to accept the inheritance, she heads to his beloved home country of Australia in search of the relatives who deserve it more.

Sebastian Cynster knows time is running out. If he doesn't choose a wife soon, his female relatives will line up to assist him. Yet the current debutantes do not appeal. Where is he to find the right lady to be his marchioness? Then Drake Varisey, eldest son of the Duke of Wolverstone, asks for Sebastian's aid.

A hidden past. A dangerous truth. A young knight’s fight for survival. Holy Land, 1097 At the tender age of twelve, Giles fitzAlain is forced to leave the only home he has ever known—a monastery in Normandy— to follow a father he has never met. Alain de Folliot, a battle-hardened knight in the service of Robert, Duke of Normandy, drags his son into the heart of the First Crusade, where the horrors of war are only the beginning of Giles’ struggles. As battles rage and loyalties are tested, Giles soon realizes that his father’s past is shrouded in dark secrets —secrets that pull ...

On the day after Halloween, in the year 1327, four children slip away from the cathedral city of Kingsbridge. They are a thief, a bully, a boy genius, and a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the forest they see two men killed. As adults, their lives will be braided together by ambition, love, greed and revenge. They will see prosperity and famine, plague and war.

Slithering Secrets, Scaly Suspects, and a Killer on the Loose! London, 1898: Chaos strikes the London Zoo when a giant cobra escapes its cage, killing a rhesus monkey and throwing the staff into a frenzy. Dr. Watson’s old schoolmate—a trailblazing anti-venom researcher—is thrust into the scandal. With his reputation on the line and suspicions mounting, Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James are called in to untangle the mystery. But the case takes a deadly twist when Lucy discovers the escaped cobra lurking in the researcher’s office—next to the lifeless body of the man who reported the ...

Danger, Deception, and a Deadly Derby! At this year’s Royal Ascot, the stakes couldn’t be higher—because someone’s betting on murder. Amy Thiel, Holmes’s brilliant ally and Gregson’s beloved, has been kidnapped and swept into a sinister scheme. Though unaware of the full plot, Amy smuggles a desperate message to Holmes and Lucy—but when it’s intercepted, the Baker Street team is left scrambling for clues. A chance remark overheard weeks earlier by Becky sparks their first lead. With royalty in attendance, Holmes and Lucy suspect a nefarious plot targeting England’s most ...

From the national best-selling author of The Serpent and the Pearl comes the continuing saga of the ruthless family that holds all of Rome in its grasp, and the three outsiders thrust into their twisted web of blood and deceit.…

As the cherished concubine of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI, Giulia Farnese has Rome at her feet. But after narrowly escaping a sinister captor, she realizes that the danger she faces is far from over - and now, it threatens from within. The Holy City of Rome is still under Alexander's thrall, but enemies of the Borgias are starting to circle.

London, 1885. Amelie Hampton is a hopeless romantic, which makes her the perfect columnist to answer lonely heart letters in The Marriage Gazette. When Amelie plays matchmaker with two anonymous lonely hearts, she also decides to secretly observe the couple’s blind date. To her surprise, the man who appears for the rendezvous is Harold Radcliffe - a grieving widower and a member of Amelie’s book club.

Having solved the two murders that somehow fell in her path, Beatrice Hyde-Clare is on the lookout for a third. Through a absurd quirk of stupid fate, the shy spinster has fallen in love with the thoroughly unattainable Duke of Kesgrave and is desperate for something, anything, to occupy her mind. A dead body would do nicely.

Ian Dunross, the current tai-pan of the illustrious yet financially troubled Struan empire, is racing to undo the damage his predecessor left behind and to once again stand on stable ground. And he’ll do whatever it takes—including striking a hard-fought deal with an American millionaire. But his rival, Quillan Gornt, has other plans. Suddenly caught in a dubious plot involving Soviet spies, Hong Kong’s criminal underground, and the hostile takeover of his company, Dunross holds nothing back in the fight for the Noble House.

After a murder scandal nearly sent her husband to the gallows, Audrey, the Duchess of Fournier, has retreated to the countryside to distance herself from gossip—and from the Bow Street officer who proved as irritating as he was intriguing. But when Audrey's friend Charlotte, the Countess of Bainbury, dies mysteriously on Fournier Downs parkland, she summons the only person she trusts to uncover the truth: Principal Officer Hugh Marsden.

It's not good to live in the past; even worse to die in it Paranormal investigator Wyatt Thomas awakens from a vivid dream in his French Quarter apartment. He finds an antique double-moonstone pendant placed in his hand by the ghost of a voodoo mambo. One of the two moonstones is missing, and both gemstones are needed to make the pendant magical. The rightful owner of the pendant is a supernatural fairy named Maurelle. Someone chopped off Maurelle’s wings and buried her alive in the ruins of a French Quarter Creole townhouse. A mystical beast still haunts the grounds of the estate. Now, ...

Abandoned by his father, Gareth Inglis grew up lonely, prickly, and used to disappointment. Still, he longs for a connection. When he meets a charming stranger, he falls head over heels—until everything goes wrong and he's left alone again. Then Gareth's father dies, turning the shabby London clerk into Sir Gareth, with a grand house on the remote Romney Marsh and a family he doesn't know. The Marsh is another world, a strange, empty place notorious for its ruthless gangs of smugglers. And one of them is dangerously familiar…

The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known...of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect - a man divided in his soul...of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame...and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother.

Since the death of his first wife, Godric St. John has devoted his nights to protecting the innocent of London disguised as the notorious Ghost of St. Giles. When Lord Griffin Reading discovers Godric's secret double life he presents him with an offer he can't refuse, and Godric finds himself married to a young - and pregnant - stranger. Two years ago Lady Margaret "Megs" Reading lost both her lover and her unborn child - but not before being forced into a marriage of convenience with Godric St. John....

No one is who they seem Private Investigator Wyatt Thomas takes a seductive journey through the dark, glittering streets of New Orleans, where passion and danger collide. Wyatt is no stranger to the Crescent City’s secrets, but when a mysterious voodoo mambo draws him into the heart of the French Quarter’s underworld, he finds himself entangled in a web of deceit, lust, and murder. As the nights grow hotter, so do the stakes, and Wyatt must navigate the twisted desires of the city’s most dangerous inhabitants. But in the world of the Night People, no one is who they seem—and Wyatt ...

Born with a perfect memory, Lady Elizabeth Beckett has become one of the world's most notorious spies, despite being the daughter of a duke. She is shielded only by her code name: Shadow. When young ladies of High Society begin disappearing from London, Eliza has no doubt who is orchestrating these crimes; a heinous man she has been investigating for years. Vowing to save them before they are sold to the highest bidder, she must risk everything to stop him.