Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.

Thomas Kydd has dragged himself up in the navy from press-ganged seaman to captain of his own ship. Now he faces disgrace. After offending a general and suffering a personal tragedy, Kydd is sent to guard the Channel Islands. His career in tatters, he then makes a terrible enemy on his own side. When he is brutally betrayed off the Normandy coast, only his old friend, Renzi, is willing to stick by him.

When the castle of Shrewsbury is taken during the war between Empress Maud and King Stephen, 94 prisoners are taken, 94 are hanged. When Brother Cadfael arrives to perform the burial rites, he finds one corpse too many among the bodies stacked about the fortress.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent. But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered. And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel. Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

Though American by birth, Frances Wynn, the now-widowed Countess of Harleigh, has adapted admirably to the quirks and traditions of the British aristocracy. On August 12th, each year, otherwise known as the Glorious Twelfth, most members of the upper class retire to their country estates for grouse-shooting season. Frances has little interest in hunting - or birds or a second husband - and is expecting to spend a quiet few months in London with her almost-engaged sister, Lily, until the throng returns.

When Aurelie Harcourt's father dies in debtor's prison, he leaves her just two things: his wealthy family, whom she has never met, and his famous pen name, Nathaniel Droll. Her new family greets her with apathy and even resentment. Only the quiet houseguest, Silas Rotherham, welcomes her company. When Aurelie decides to complete her father's unfinished serial novel, she must keep her identity as Nathaniel Droll hidden while searching for the truth about her mother's disappearance - and perhaps even her father's death.

Walker's richly interwoven novel opens with the arrival of a mysterious package for a young American woman working in a London auction house. Brought by a British officer, it contains a 17,000-year-old fragment of a cave painting left to him by his father, a former World War II hero. The fragment, significant and stunning in itself, is also the key to the existence of an unknown cave that may be more important in the history of art and human creation than the world-famous one at Lascaux.

Harry Fox is after the man who ripped his family apart. How can he get his revenge? By tempting the man with a relic he can't refuse. But fate intervenes when an earthquake reveals the tomb of a Thracian king. A tantalizing missive in the tomb pulls Harry away from his quest for revenge and launches him on a perilous chase to uncover the truth behind this Thracian mystery. Except Harry isn't the only person racing through the past. Harry follows a treacherous path across ancient Thrace as a mysterious adversary closes in.

From the authors of the best-selling series "CHERRINGHAM". This compilation contains episodes 4-6: "MURDER WORE A MASK": Lavinia's annual Masked Ball at Mydworth Manor is a highlight of the season - but the lavish party comes to a full stop when one of the guests is found dead down by the lake. Harry and Kat suspect that the dead man was the victim of a clever case of murder. And the killer's work is not yet done... "DEADLY CARGO": Mydworth's Excelsior Radio Company is world-famous for its expensive radio-phonographs.

This first instalment in the Chronicles tells of Rodrigo’s rise to prominence when he became the champion of Prince Sancho of Castile. This is but the beginning of a tale which still stirs the blood a millennium after it began. The legend that was El Cid began more than 1,000 years ago, and time has meant that reality and fiction are intertwined like the threads of a spider’s web.

Major Heathcliff Lennox is called in, along with ex Detective Inspector Swift, to help the police investigate a macabre death. The dead man is Lord De Ruyter, a man inextricably linked to the notorious Birdcage Murders.

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries' polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done.

Two-time Edgar Award-winner Rupert Holmes, author of the critically acclaimed Where the Truth Lies and creator of the Tony Award-winning musical whodunit The Mystery of Edwin Drood, now fuses gripping suspense and evocative music in an innovative novel of intrigue set in 1940, during the very heart of the Big Band era.

The New York Times best-selling author of 'Til Death Do Us Part transports listeners to 1930s California, where glamour and seduction spawn a multitude of sins. At the exclusive Burning Cove Hotel on the coast of California, rookie reporter Irene Glasson finds herself staring down at a beautiful actress at the bottom of a pool. The dead woman had a red-hot secret about an up-and-coming leading man, a scoop that Irene couldn't resist.

A series of grisly murders rocks London. At each location, only a jumble of bones remains of the deceased, along with a bizarre sphere covered in strange symbols. The son of the latest victim seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes and his former partner, Dr. John Watson. They discover the common thread tying together the murders. Bizarre geometries, based on ancient schematics, enable otherworldly creatures to enter our dimension, seeking to wreak havoc and destruction.

It has been 12 years since a dark, murderous figure stalked the alleys and courts of Whitechapel. And yet, in the summer of 1900, East London is still poor, still brutal, still a shadow city to its western twin. Among the reformers is an idealistic young woman named India Selwyn-Jones, recently graduated from medical school. With the help of her influential fiance - Freddie Lytton, an up-and-coming Liberal MP - she works to shut down the area's opium dens that destroy both body and soul.

Edinburgh, 1847. Will Raven is a medical student, apprenticing for the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Sarah Fisher is Simpson’s housemaid and has all of Raven’s intelligence, but none of his privileges. As bodies begin to appear across the Old Town, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld. And if either of them are to make it out alive, they will have to work together to find out who’s responsible for the gruesome deaths.

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.

In 1848, Dooley Monahan, son of struggling Iowa pioneers, went off to to pick up a new milk cow. Young Dooley never came home. Now, nearly three decades later, Dooley Monahan has become an accidental legend, managing to plant a bullet in the chest of a dangerous outlaw. All Dooley really wants is to claim his reward at a bank in Phoenix and make his way north to a gold strike he read about in a newspaper.

One advantage of being caught up in a whirl of dress fittings and decisions about flower arrangements is that Charlotte Sloane has little time for any pre-wedding qualms. Her love for Wrexford isn't in question. But will being a wife - and a countess - make it difficult for her to maintain her independence - not to mention, her secret identity as famed satirical artist A. J. Quill? Despite those concerns, there are soon even more urgent matters to attend to during Charlotte and Wrexford's first public outing as an engaged couple.