Victorian Crime Mystery

London's social season is in full swing, and Victorian aristocracy can't stop whispering about a certain gentleman who claims to be the direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. But he's not the only topic of wagging tongues. Drawing rooms, boudoirs, and ballrooms are abuzz with the latest news of an audacious cat burglar who has been systematically stealing valuable items that once belonged to the ill-fated queen. Light gossip turns serious when the owner of one of the pilfered treasures is found murdered, and the mysterious thief develops a twisted obsession with Lady Emily Ashton.

A fourteen-year-old girl with a taste for the legendary and fanciful vanishes without a trace, seemingly into thin air, from her home in a Medieval manor in the Kentish countryside, leaving her parents overcome with concern, amid a household which claims to know nothing of the matter. After two days of frantic searching, including the dragging of nearby waters, and the setting of a famed bloodhound to find the girl’s trail have produced no results whatsoever, the estate’s owner sends an urgent telegram to London, calling on the aid of the most famous detective of his or any era, ...

This "rediscovered" Sherlock Holmes adventure recounts the unique collaboration of Holmes and Sigmund Freud in the solution of a mystery on which the lives of millions may depend.

Who can resist the appeal of a beautiful woman pleading for assistance after an object she held as among her most precious possessions is mysteriously stolen? And what if that woman happens to be the most celebrated actress in Victorian London? Still recovering from a heartbreaking loss that nearly destroyed him, Dr. Watson is called to return to Baker Street as he ventures beside Holmes into a vast West End theater filled with odd characters and strange clues, all in pursuit of a truth that might be less welcomed by the esteemed client than she may care to face. Looming over all are hints ...

Enter the fog-cloaked past, as Sherlock Holmes undertakes his first case since recovering from an attempt on his life that left him wounded in body and spirit, traveling to the westernmost reaches of Suffolk, where a client from a previous mystery, a retired military man named Colonel Morley, has pleaded for aid in finding his young grandson, who went missing from his bed sometime in the night. Thus do Holmes and Watson venture to a secluded country estate with a long history of hauntings, which members of the staff claim are manifesting once more, centering around the infamous spirit of an...

In June of 1893, the future Nicholas II travels to London for a royal wedding, bringing with him his private security force and his ballerina mistress, Mathilde Kchessinska. Rumored to be the target of a professional assassin known only as La Sylphide, and the subject of conspiracies against his life by his own family who covet his future throne, Nicholas is protected by not only private security, but the professional forces of both England and Russia.

Early in the morning of Monday, July 8, 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbors, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate.

It’s Christmastime in London, and Sherlock Holmes takes on two cases. The angelic three-year-old child of a wealthy couple is the target of a vicious kidnapper, and a country aristocrat worries that his handsome, favourite son has mysteriously vanished from his London pied à terre. Holmes and Watson, aided by the colourful Heffie O’Malley, slip slide in the ice to ensure a merry Christmas is had by nearly everybody.

A seamstress with a dark past – who better to solve a murder? Wiltshire, Summer 1845. Alice Beaumont has achieved what other seamstresses can only dream of: dressing the finest ladies of English society. She always keeps her distance, as meddling in others' lives brings nothing but trouble. Now, the Darnwells have invited her to their country estate to dress the future wife of their son. Upon meeting Violet, Alice is tempted to ignore her principles: the bride-to-be appears both too wealthy and too young to be the wife of the arrogant Raymond. Then a murder occurs... Fatal Wedding Night ...

A forceful young typist arrives at 221B Baker Street on the first of April, 1886, with the alarming news that her employer, an eccentric old professor for whom she’d worked for just over two months, had suddenly vanished without a trace from his home, and to make matters worse, she has discovered the house occupied by three others whom she has never before met, who claim to have resided in the home for over a year, and to know of no professor ever being in residence there. What is the truth of the matter? Whatever has transpired in the seemingly quite ordinary suburban London home? Find ...

Two bodies have been found in a park in the fashionable London neighborhood of Callander Square. While Inspector Thomas Pitt is fighting to get the square’s aristocratic residents to speak with him, his pretty, well-born wife, Charlotte, decides to do some detective work of her own. Soon she is unearthing secrets in every house on the square, while Thomas tries to discover what would drive a person to murder.

An abrupt summons to a secret meeting in the highest chambers of White Hall, the seat of the innermost workings of British government, soon informs Sherlock Holmes that a diabolically bold assassin stalks the visiting German Kaiser, grandson of Queen Victoria, and all signs are that this fearless hunter of men plans to launch his strike that very night at a reception following an opera. Thus brought into the matter with only hours to prepare and less time to act, Holmes must make use of his every talent to foil someone who promises to be among the more cunning foes he has faced in his ...

Welcome fans of Sherlockiana, to The Continuing Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes: Omnibus Four! We hope you’ll enjoy this collection of three short stories, a novella, and a bonus vignette, which is found nowhere else but in this volume, as we return to a time where gas-lights dimly illuminate foggy cobblestone streets….where gangs of child criminals stalk the unwary from the Thames dock yards to the gates of Buckingham Palace….where ruthless blackmailers reside in the shadows, and bribe servants for the secrets of their genteel employers’ lives, all dwelling in a Victorian world, ...

Why do the fallen women in The Magdalen House refuge continue to die mysteriously? A devastating fire at Danvers’s ancestral home induces Charles to accept his brother Frederick’s plea for help with his work among fallen women and impoverished orphans in York. Charles soon finds himself struggling to identify a ruthless murderer while Antonia helps feed the women and children living in the asylum Frederick runs. The trial of notorious poisoner William Dove leads to surprising discoveries and sets legal precedent still followed today.

It was a most peculiar murder. A man's body was found in the canal - but the evidence showed that he had drowned in a bathtub. A theater critic known for his savage reviews, the victim had had a full cast of enemies. While Inspector Witherspoon scoured the theater, his housekeeper and unofficial sleuthing partner Mrs. Jeffries uncovered the critic's secret past: a real-life drama more compelling than any stage play.

On a fittingly cold night in the last year of the 19th century, Holmes’ evening is shattered by the intrusion of a Russian diplomat and his entourage, who come bursting into 221B Baker Street, and he soon finds himself pursuing a case of a young lady’s abduction, a crime which must be kept quiet lest its ramifications threaten to take two of the major powers of Europe to the brink of a potentially volatile international crisis. Told not through the pen of Doctor Watson, but from within Holmes’ own mind as the time-sensitive investigation unfolds, The Case of the Russian Ambassador’s...

London, November 1890. Crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett faces a perfect storm of events. She and her husband Detective Sergeant Barrett are riding on a train that crashes. While rescuing other passengers, they find a woman who's been strangled to death.

Penrose & Pyke venture to the edge of madness when they reunite to investigate two tragic deaths and an old mystery. The last words of a frightened woman may be a vital clue to the disappearance of an old friend, if they aren’t the ravings of delusional lunatic. Detective Constable Charlie Pyke is desperate to find out. But is he desperate enough to risk the life of his sleuthing partner, medical student Grace Penrose? More to the point, can he stop her? The answers lie behind the locked doors of an asylum for wealthy young women of delicate sensibilities, where high walls and dark ...

Imagine the reaction at 221B Baker Street to a grieving widow’s claim that her late husband has fallen victim to murder, not merely once, but a second time, all within the same week! Thus begins this far-reaching novella, the forty-second title within The Continuing Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes. Venture back to 1880s England, as the world’s foremost detective and his faithful chronicler, seek answers to one of the more confusing cases ever brought to their door. What is the truth in the seeming impossibility of a man who can, not once, but twice be struck down by the cruel arm of death...

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 ...