Victorian Suspense

The flat-cart rattled and bumped along the dirt road, the donkey moving at a sedate walk, in as little hurry as myself, apparently, to come to Innismore. I sat huddled on the boards, hands clasped and eyes roving the marshlands and bogs on either side of me, wondering what had possessed me to leave Dublin and come west into Connemara, this wild and rocky country that seemed as inhospitable as an Englishman’s musket. Seamus McCarty, he of the black scowl and the curious gray eyes, who drove the flat-cart and glanced at me from time to time with a quirking of his bushy eyebrows, was almost ...

After the mysterious death of her father, Miss Gillian Young takes a new job as the principal costume designer at the renowned Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. But while she remembers her father as a kind, well-respected man of the Police Force, clues she uncovers indicate he'd been living a double life: a haunting photograph of a young woman, train stubs for secret trips just before his death, and a receipt for a large sum of money. Are these items evidence of her father's guilty secrets? His longtime police partner thinks so.

As a young medical student at Edinburgh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took classes with the remarkable Dr. Joseph Bell in forensic medicine. Dr. Bell exhibited many of the characteristics that Doyle would later synthesize into the personage of Sherlock Holmes: complete faith in human reason, meticulous powers of observation, and encyclopedic knowledge of the activities and methods of the criminal classes.

In April 1831, her grace Corinne Monroe wants her widowed son, Lord Julian, to marry her best friend’s daughter, Miss Sophie Wilkie. Julian last saw Sophie when she was twelve years old, silent, skinny, and always staring at him. However, his mother is nothing if not persuasive, and Julian reluctantly accompanies her to London to meet the young lady.And he knows that whatever happens isn’t going to be good.Lord Devlin Monroe, Julian’s nephew, is very fond of his intriguing reputation in society: he delights, he frightens, he brings on delicious shudders.

April 1865. Having been an eyewitness to the assassination of President Lincoln, Matthew Grand, a former captain of the 3rd Cavalry of the Potomac, has come to London on an undercover assignment to hunt down the assassin's coconspirators. Ambitious young journalist Jim Batchelor has been charged with writing a feature article on the visiting American. Both men are distracted from their missions by the discovery of a body in London's Soho district.

Miss Lane is puzzled by Jasper Jesperson's interest in what seems a very minor theft - possibly even a prank - from the storerooms at the British Museum. But London in the 1890s is rife with secret organisations, cults and individuals eager to acquire some of the legendary magic of ancient Egypt. The deeper the two detectives dig, the more hidden crimes they uncover, and the higher the death toll mounts. And at the centre of it all is the 'Mystery Mummy' recently acquired by the museum. Are the deaths and madness truly caused by a mummy's curse? Or is there a living villain to be apprehended?

Clean Regency romance with a surprising time travel twist! They say time waits for now one except for the one person who can control it! Her Time for Love is an exciting historical romance classic unraveling in a beautiful European setting filled with mystery, madness and mayhem. Desperately looking for love and willing to do whatever it takes to find the man of her dreams Abigail Leeds sets out on a not so typical adventure in Paris. The city of Amour is the perfect setting for this clean and wholesome love story. Julien Lachance a young entrepreneur with a particular eye for beautiful ...

London, 1833. Doctress Hester Reeves has been offered a life-changing commission. But it comes at a price. She must leave behind her husband and their canal-side home in Kings Cross and move to Tall Trees—a dark and foreboding house in Fitzrovia. If Hester can cure the ailing health of its owner, Gervaise Cherville, she will receive payment that will bring her everything she could dream of. But on arriving at Tall Trees, Hester quickly discovers that an even bigger task awaits her.

A gripping new recording of Philip Pullman's nerve-shattering thriller, set in the murky streets and opium dens of Old London. When 16-year-old Sally's father drowns in suspicious circumstances, she is left to fend for herself in Victorian London. Although she doesn't know it, she is already in terrible danger.

Wimbledon, England, 1889. When Theodore Crozier is found dead the neighbourhood hopes the cause may be suicide, if only to spare further pain for both his dutiful wife, Laura, and beloved brother, Titus. However, there is more to the matter - a whisper of murder.... Inspector John Joseph Lintott of Scotland Yard is sent in to investigate, and the further he delves into the mystery the more tangled it becomes. Is Laura the pious, meek wife she appears to be? Could the rumours be true about her unnatural relationship with Titus? Was Theodore Crozier murdered by someone in his household?

Stranded on a decaying 19th century lighthouse out at sea, a beautiful and wealthy socialite wants nothing more than to return to the comforts she knows. Yet when a mysterious, intimidating stranger living within the lighthouse makes himself known, her desire to return to an unfulfilling life on the mainland is put on indefinite hold. Unable to resist his multiple arms and fiery passion, Margaret finds she is desperate to get close to the tormented man/creature who has opened her up to discover and explore her own dark desires before the outside world threatens to intervene. This is the ...

Violet Veil wants nothing more than to prove her worth and become her father’s apprentice at Veil & Sons Undertakers. And one rain-soaked night she gets her chance when she meets a boy, Oliver, who is wandering around the graveyard. Only, the last time Violet saw Oliver, he was indoors and very much dead, waiting to be buried. Violet has just found her first case and it doesn’t get bigger than this: can she, with the help of her dog, Bones, help Oliver solve his own ‘murder’.

‘The Signalman’ (1866) is a short story by the English writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870). In the story, a practical-minded narrator meets a railway worker who has been seeing supernatural visions. The narrator doubts the man at first, but at the story’s conclusion a strange event makes him a believer.

When one man's scheme to create the Greatest Freak Show on Earth leads to an insane obsession that can only end in devastating tragedy. The ghoulish proprietor of a Victorian arcade specifically designed to showcase the myriad of freaks, outcasts, and oddities that abound in old London town is a man driven by his own dark desires. Rodney Thompson is an emotionless, sadistic person who craves glory above all else - at least until the beautiful Violet wafts into his world. From the very day when Violet first takes a dainty step inside the arcade, Rodney is determined to make her his own. A ...

Can two people cast aside fifteen years of feuding to reach for the love that has been lurking on the sidelines all those years? That’s what Ben Slade and Ariel Dillon try to discover when a chance event puts them in each other’s arms--and in the path of a murderer. Nominated for The Romance Studio's 2003 CAPA Award

When not performing two sold-out shows every night, Music Hall Steampunk illusionists and consultants to Scotland Yard, slick-talking Michael Magister and the feisty Phoebe Le Breton, must solve the crime of the century, while saving the nation from a conclave of fiendish psychopaths led by the crazed renegade Jesuit known only as "The Black Bishop".

It's 1852 and Margaret Lennox, a young widow, is offered a position as governess at Hartwood Hall. She quickly accepts, hoping this isolated country house will allow her to leave her past behind. Cut off from the village, Margaret soon starts to feel there's something odd about her new home, despite her growing fondness for her bright, affectionate pupil, Louis. There are strange figures in the dark, tensions between servants and an abandoned east wing. Even stranger is the local gossip surrounding Mrs Eversham, Louis's widowed mother, who is deeply distrusted in the village.

November 1853. Inspector Field has summoned his friends Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to examine a body found in an attic studio, its throat cut. Around the body lie the lacerated fragments of canvas of a painting titled A Winter of Despair. Wilkie realises he recognises the victim, for he had been due to dine with him that very evening. The dead man is Edwin Milton-Hayes, one of Wilkie's brother Charley's artist friends. With his own brother under suspicion of murder, what secrets lie among the close-knit group of Pre-Raphaelite painters who is the killer in their midst?

Detective Inspector Arthur Gredge of Scotland Yard is a changed man, and not for the better, it seems. The prime suspect in a terrible crime he did not commit, Gredge launches an impassioned defense. The problem is that he does not know if he is guilty or innocent. Midnight Gunn must uncover the cause of Gredge’s unsettling behavior before the inspector loses his mind, his job, or very possibly his life. It is a task that must be conducted with the utmost caution, as Midnight’s own conduct comes under close scrutiny from all directions, putting him and those he loves at risk.

On the eve of her marriage to George Hazelton, Frances has a great deal more on her mind than flowers and seating arrangements. The Connors and the Doyles, two families of American robber barons, have taken up residence in London, and their bitter rivalry is spilling over. At the request of her brother, Alonzo, who is quite taken with Miss Madeline Connor, Frances has invited the Connor family to her wedding. On the day itself, Frances is relieved to note that Madeline's father is not among the guests. The reason for his absence, however, turns out to be most unfortunate.