Historical Women Detectives

When Indian Princess Alexandrina is left penniless by the sudden death of her father, the Maharaja of Brindor, Queen Victoria grants her a grace-and-favor home in Hampton Court Palace. Though rumored to be haunted, Alexandrina and her lady's maid, Pooki, have no choice but to take the Queen up on her offer. Aside from the ghost sightings, Hampton Court doesn't seem so bad. The princess is soon befriended by three eccentric widows who invite her to a picnic with all the palace's inhabitants, for which Pooki bakes a pigeon pie. But General-Major Bagshot dies after eating said pie....

Mrs Laetitia Rodd is the impoverished widow of an Archdeacon: she is also a private detective of the utmost discretion. In winter 1850, she is asked by Sir James Calderstone to investigate the background of an 'unsuitable' woman his son intends to marry. In the guise of governess, she travels to the family seat, Wishtide, where she discovers that the Calderstones have more to hide than most. As their secrets unfold, the case takes an unpleasant turn when a man is found dead outside a tavern.

1920 - Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales: Tessa Wiggins's "madness" is provoked by the adopted spirit of a 2,000-year-old Druid priestess mentoring her to be the servant of The Earth Mother. When Tessa defies treatment, her lover asks a childhood friend, Sherlock Holmes, to intervene. But despite everyone's best intentions, Tessa finds herself in Hellingford Asylum, where she is driven toward her final breaking point on All-Halloween.

*Introducing DCI Dani Bevan* Can an ordinary man really return from the dead...? On a stormy night in February 1943, the S.S Minerva was sunk by an enemy torpedo. Two men from the Scottish village of Dallanaich were travelling on the liner en-route to New York City. The Reverend Mackenzie Cowan and local schoolteacher Sandy Thomson were heading to a church conference due to be held there the following month. Thomson had left behind his young, pregnant wife. Both men were presumed drowned. Thirty years later, long-term Dallanaich resident Kenneth Garvie takes a trip to Toronto. As he walks ...

The Violet Thread A Button Belles Mystery – Book Two By Tessa Quilby Some secrets don’t unravel—they wait to be stitched back into the light. When a mysterious violet button is discovered in the lining of a friend’s old quilt, the Button Belles—five sharp-minded women in the charming town of Buttonwood, Vermont—are drawn into a puzzle decades in the making. The trail leads to Operation Bloom, a long-forgotten Cold War surveillance project that used clothing, quilts, and even household textiles to manipulate loyalty and track civilians. As the Belles follow cryptic patterns, ...

Autumn Breeze is the winner of the prestigious San Diego Book Awards for best romance novel of the year. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 On the morning of 9/11, a fourteen-year-old genius’s mother disappears. Her beloved father had been murdered years before. She’s now without parents. She resolves to get a new mom and dad and have them adopt her before she is deported to Trinidad. For her new mom, she selects her BFF (best friend forever), a New York City detective. For her new dad, she selects the handsome spy investigating her BFF. The investigation was the girl’s fault. She had predicted the ...

While visiting London, Mary Russell comes across a friend from Oxford. The young woman introduces Mary to Margery Childe, charismatic leader of a religious sect involved in the suffrage movement. When several members of the sect's female volunteers are murdered, Mary starts to investigate - but events spiral out of control, and Mary's search plunges her into the worst danger she has yet faced....

It's the summer of 1894, and an infidelity case has brought PI Mary Handley to a far corner of Brooklyn: Coney Island. In the midst of her investigation, Mary is contacted by a convicted man's brother to reopen a murder case. A prostitute was killed by a Jack the Ripper copycat years ago in her New York hotel room, but her true killer was never found. Once again it's up to Mary to make right the city's wrongs. New York City's untouchable head of detectives, Thomas Byrnes, swears he put the right man behind bars, but as Mary digs deeper, she finds corruption.

It is May 1560. As sinister storm clouds gather overhead, 26-year-old Queen Elizabeth dispatches William Cecil, her most trusted adviser, to Scotland for crucial negotiations. Handsome, ambitious Lord Robert Dudley is at her side. But their leisurely midsummer idyll is cut short when the courts master lutenist plunges to his death from a parapet beneath the queen's window. The loyal retainers of Elizabeth's privy council do not accept the official verdict of accidental death. Their fears are borne out when another tragedy rocks the realm, and points the way to a conspiracy to bring down Elizabeth and seize the throne.

London, 1894. Albertine Honeycombe never wanted a husband and certainly not the one with fifteen children that her cousin, Aubrey, is trying to marry her off to. She reinvents herself as Countess Von Dagga, a private detective aiding the upper echelons of women in society. As the Countess, she is a married woman, with a conveniently absent husband who doesn’t exist, which allows her far more freedom than being single. When Lord Grendel, from whom she has recovered blackmail letters, is murdered, Albertine is suspect number one—having been the last person to see him.

Smitten with spring fever, Elizabeth Tudor escapes London for fantastical Nonsuch Palace in the sweet Surrey countryside. There she hopes to relax and pose for the official royal portrait for which she is holding a competition. But one of her artists is burned to death, and portraits of the queen are going up in flames. When she hears that her rival, the dangerous Mary, Queen of Scots, has been peering in mirrors and announcing, "I see the next queen of England!" Elizabeth summons her Privy Plot Council.

Young Harriet and her brother Austin have always been scared of the quarry where their stonemason father works. So when they find him dead on the cold ground, they scarper quick smart and look for help. When help arrives, the quarry is deserted and there is no sign of the body. Were the children mistaken? Is their father not dead? Did he simply get up and run away? It seems like another unusual case requiring the expertise of Kate Shackleton. But for Kate this is one case where surprising family ties makes it her most dangerous and delicate yet.

Sherlock Holmes has been missing and is presumed dead for some time, and his grief-stricken landlady, Mrs. Hudson, is anxious for a distraction. However, she is in for a culture shock when she travels to Ireland with her friend, Kitty Melrose, to try and stop a forced marriage. What she finds is a countryside steeped in superstition and beliefs in the old ways, a place of fairy forts and holy wells, and of changelings and banshees. A place, moreover, where an impoverished peasantry remains under the heel of oppressive English landlords, but not for much longer.

Flavia is enjoying the summer, spending her days punting along the river with her reluctant family. Languishing in boredom, she drags a slack hand in the water - and catches her fingers in the open mouth of a drowned corpse. Flavia needs to put her super-sleuthing skills to the test to investigate the murder of three gossips in the local church and to keep her sisters out of danger.

The absence of Flavia DeLuce’s mother, Harriet, has always cast a shadow, since her presumed death in a mountaineering accident in Tibet. Now, astonishingly, a specially commissioned train is bringing Harriet back to Buckshaw. But rather than putting the past finally to rest, Harriet's return is set to trigger a further series of bizarre and deadly events, as a most curious group of individuals converge on Buckshaw to pay their respects…

When Flavia de Luce is banished to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, she’s soon on familiar ground when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve. Girls have been disappearing with alarming regularity, leading Flavia to wonder not only how and why but what exactly is the academy's true purpose? Flavia must enter a shadowy world where truth and lies seem interchangeable and no one can be trusted.

The next book in the gripping Flavia Albia series, by acclaimed author Lindsey Davis. A tragic accident...or was it? Emperor Domitian has been awarded (or rather, has demanded) yet another Triumph to celebrate two so-called victories. Preparations are going smoothly until one of the men overseeing arrangements for the celebration accidentally falls to his death from a cliff on the symbolic Capitoline Hill. But an old woman comes forward, insisting that the man was in fact pushed - and she refuses to leave it alone.

Heartwrenching. Everyone agreed on that but no one could ever quite make out the words…but the melody was haunting to the few who heard it…and never forgot it…Haunted houses weren’t on the schedule but while waiting out a snow storm that has them stranded after performing in Colorado, Maddie and her friends are staying at one of the city’s historic homes thanks to her father’s quick talking. Before long, they find themselves intrigued by the stories of the mysterious and haunting melody that many have heard but no one has been able to figure out where it comes from…or what it ...

When a mysterious puppet show arrives in Bishop's Lacey, death is not far behind... a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall reaches back to an earlier crime that has cast a shadow over the village for years. Flavia's investigations test her powers of deduction to the limit - and provide a shocking insight into the darker corners of the adult world.

April 1933. Eddie Pettit is a gentle soul with a near-magical gift for working with horses. When he is killed in a violent accident, there is skepticism about the cause of death. Who would want to kill Eddie, and why? Maisie Dobbs is determined to offer her help. As she uncovers lies and manipulation on a national scale, Maisie must decide whether to risk it all to see justice done.