Historical Suspense Crime

Dorothy Fiske, eighty-three, adores movie stars, jewelry, murder mysteries, and men. At twenty-five, inspired by Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury, she moved to Los Angeles from a religiously strict Midwestern home. Despite the glamour, Dorothy, heartbroken, was childless. She blamed her sweet, unambitious husband, Eugene, claiming his sperm was weak, but Dorothy knows the truth. Ruth, a sixty-six-year-old home health aide, fears eviction from her LA apartment due to her unusual, antisocial behavior. Previously fired from a nursing facility for residents dying under her care, Ruth targets ...

Newly minted PI Emma Holmes and her partner Sam Collins are just settling into their business when they’re chosen for a high-profile case: retired music-hall star Verity Malone hires them to find out who poisoned her husband, a theater impresario. Verity herself has been accused of the crime. The only hitch—the Brighton police are already on the case, putting Emma in direct competition with her husband, police superintendent Edgar Stephens.

FBI special Agent Sean Reilly is tasked with a delicate case. A Russian diplomat seems to have committed suicide by jumping out of a sixth-floor window in Queens, New York. The apartment’s owners are missing, while a faceless killer known only as Koschey - “the Deathless” - is roaming the city and leaving a trail of death in his wake.

When members of a prominent family disappear from a coal-mining village - and a human eyeball is discovered in a bird's nest - the local constable sends for help from Scotland Yard's new Murder Squad. Fresh off the grisly 1889 murders of The Yard, Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith respond, but they have no idea what they're about to get into. The villagers have intense, intertwined histories. Everybody bears a secret. Superstitions abound. And the village itself is slowly sinking into the mines beneath it.

London, 1812. At a fashionable address in leafy Mayfair, a far cry from Detective Stephen Lavender’s usual haunts, a man is found dead in his room. He has been brutally stabbed, but the door is locked from the inside, and the weapon is missing. The deceased is David MacAdam, an Essex businessman with expensive tastes. As Lavender and Constable Ned Woods travel between London and Chelmsford seeking to understand MacAdam’s final hours and unearth the grisly truth, they uncover a tangled web of deceit behind his stylish facade.

War crimes investigator and ex-CIA officer Joe Johnson is more than intrigued when he learns of a link between the financing for the presidential candidate's 2012 campaign, the Nazi train, and a ruthless blackmail plot. But the investigation becomes bigger and more deeply personal than Johnson expects when it turns out the SS Holocaust killer escaped his net years earlier. Soon, there are high-level intelligence agencies and criminal networks combining across three continents against Johnson and his two female colleagues.

London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the only senior inspectors remaining after a corruption scandal the previous autumn left the division in ruins. Reluctantly, Corravan abandons his ongoing case, a search for the missing wife of a shipping magnate, handing it over to his young colleague, Mr. Stiles.

Lord Charles Danvers, still mourning his lost love Charlotte, hopes to escape from his ghosts at the gala coming-of-age celebrations for the son of his oldest friend. All is jubilation and proper respectability until the evening is shattered by a brutal murder. The police are quick to point to a quarrelsome farmer, but Danvers has his doubts. Is the real culprit much closer to home? And does Danvers owe the greater loyalty to an old friend or to the truth? Then, Danver is even more unsettled by the entrance of the alluring Lady Antonia Hoover. The first in the Lord Danvers Investigates ...

London, 1667. In the court of Charles II, it's a dangerous time to be alive. A wrong move could lead to disgrace, exile or death. The discovery of a murder at Clarendon House, the palatial home of one of the highest courtiers in the land, could have catastrophic consequences. James Marwood, a traitor's son, is ordered to cover up the murder. But the dead man is Edward Alderley, the cousin of one of Marwood's acquaintances. Cat Lovett had every reason to want her cousin dead. Since his murder, she has vanished, and all the evidence points to her as the killer.

Ralph Delchard, a soldier who fought at the Battle of Hastings, and Gervase Bret, a talented lawyer, have been commissioned by William the Conqueror to look into irregularities brought to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book. A man’s body is found mutilated in Savernake Forest and the residents of Bedwyn sleep uneasy at night, fearing a monster stalking the town. When Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret arrive, they discover that the locals are harbouring dark secrets and that the real killer may be a little closer to home....

When a Dutch art dealer hides the stock from his gallery - rather than turn it over to his Nazi blackmailer - he pays with his life, leaving a treasure trove of modern masterpieces buried somewhere in Amsterdam, presumably lost forever. That is, until American art history student Zelda Richardson sticks her nose in.

Murder is never pretty In the vibrant chaos of French Quarter Fest in Orleans, P.I. Wyatt Thomas faces a daunting task—recovering a stolen treasure that transcends the boundaries of mere literature. The missing item is no ordinary book; it’s the priceless first edition of Mosquitos, William Faulkner’s legendary tale of New Orleans dynasties. As Wyatt delves into the underbelly of the city’s secrets, he discovers that a powerful patriarch from the Garden District is willing to pay a staggering million dollars for its return. The question looms: What dark revelations lie within the ...

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....

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre "last confessions" of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died, and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

September 1143. Bradecote is a minor landowner and newly appointed under-sheriff. His sergeant, Catchpoll, is a weather-beaten, wily and experienced thief-taker who always looks to be one step ahead of any villain. Bradecote though quite new to the job brings an effectively analytical eye to the investigation. A series of fires around the city seem linked, and Bradecote and Catchpoll have to piece together the vengeful motive that links them in order to uncover the arsonist.

Gretel - yes, that Gretel - is now 35, very large, still living with her brother, Hans, and working as a private investigator. The small, sleepy town of Gesternstadt is shaken to its pretty foundations when the workshop of the local cart maker is burned to the ground, and a body is discovered in the ashes. It is Gretel who notices that the cadaver is missing a finger. At first she does not see this as significant, as her mind is fully focused on a new case.

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in '50s LA. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp - and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet - and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank.

Gage finds himself hurled into the Holy Land in dogged pursuit of an ancient Egyptian scroll imbued with magic, even as Bonaparte launches his 1799 invasion of Israel, which will climax at the epic siege of Acre. Pursuing Napoleon to France, where the general hopes ancient secrets will catapult him to power, the wily and inventive Gage faces old enemies with unlikely new friends.

London, 1890: Four vicious murderers have escaped from prison, part of a plan gone terribly wrong, and now it is up to Walter Day, Nevil Hammersmith, and the rest of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad to hunt down the convicts before the men can resume their bloody spree. But they might already be too late. The killers have retribution in mind, and one of them is heading straight toward a member of the Murder Squad, and his family.

No one escapes Dante’s villa. Not alive. From Kenneth R. Overman, award-winning author of A Lion in Spring, comes another gripping standalone thriller of espionage, vengeance, and survival, in which a college professor is the only thing standing between a brutal trafficker and mass murder. While leading a student trip through Spain, Professor Nathan Radcliff stumbles into a nightmare. A terrified Romanian girl begs for help, and Nathan, without knowing it, disrupts one of the largest human trafficking networks in Europe. Mistaken for an undercover agent, he’s abducted and taken to the ...