Victorian Suspense

Princess Luisa has devoted her life to duty, quietly preparing to succeed her father as ruler. Nothing, however, primed her to live on the run, disguised as a personal secretary to a notorious English scoundrel. The earl is just the man to help her reclaim her throne, but Luisa is drawn to her powerful employer in ways she could never imagine.

A must-read for fans of Anna Jacobs, Dilly Court and Jennifer Donnelly Plans are nothing more than dust and life has a way of dangling happiness in front of you, only to snatch it away. Victoria Caldwell discovers it’s much easier to protect her children when decisions are made for them. Would her son, Sean, really have ended his life? Is her daughter, Bella, old enough to choose the right man? Will her stepdaughter, Kate, allow her insecurities to ruin her life? For Victoria, their pain is her torture. Sean’s life in America was a heady mix of work and pleasure until faced with ...

It's the summer of 1880, and once again the lovely and inquisitive businesswoman Annie Fuller is helping San Francisco lawyer and beau Nate Dawson with a troublesome case. Nate's client, a female typesetter accused of murdering her boss, refuses to help in her own defense. Complicating matters, Nate's sister, Laura, insists on getting involved in the potentially dangerous investigation, while Laura's friend, Seth Timmons, troubled Civil War veteran, finds himself a witness for the prosecution. Will Nate be able to win his first big case?

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 ...

It is the winter of 1893, and in London the snow is falling. It is falling as Gideon Bliss seeks shelter in a Soho church, where he finds Angie Tatton lying before the altar. His onetime love is at death's door, murmuring about brightness and black air and about those she calls the Spiriters. In the morning she is gone. The snow is falling as a seamstress climbs onto a ledge above Mayfair, a mysterious message stitched into her own skin.

On a freezing Christmas Eve in 1879, a forensic psychic reader is summoned from her Baker Street lodgings to the scene of a questionable death. Alexandrina Victoria Pendlebury (named after her godmother, the current queen of England) is adamant that the death in question is a magically compromised murder and not a suicide, as the police had assumed. After the shocking revelation contained by the body in question, Alex must put her personal loss aside to uncover the deeper issues at stake, before more bodies turn up.

Gideon Waverley, heir to the Duke of Townsend, had everything a young man could need, a promising future, a title, charming good looks, great friends, and a family who adored him. Until his body turned him into a monster. He had no choice but to separate himself from the world, to hide his monstrous self from society, to cast away his future. But the brilliant and beautiful Eve Cornwell refused to believe he could not be saved, even as she refused to guard her heart.

In this novella, Annie and Nate Dawson, the amateur sleuths from M. Louisa Locke's cozy Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, are visiting Nate's family at their ranch near San Jose, California. What was supposed to be a pleasant romantic interlude for the two of them, plus a chance for Annie to get to know Nate's family better, turns serious when a crime is uncovered. And, as in Locke's short stories from this series, Annie gets help in resolving the crisis from a very unexpected quarter.

Celeste struggles with finding her way from a dark past, until she gets a summer volunteer gig at the local historical fair. Enter: outrageous actors, dominating psychics, and ghosts stirred by a medium’s presence. With the help of the psychic’s son - who isn’t at all what her dream date would look like but rather endearing all the same - Celeste uncovers secrets about the village left hidden among the dilapidated buildings.

1865. A passenger train stands in York station. Jack Follis, the guard, patrols the platform to make sure that everyone is safely aboard. Returning to the brake van to load a box into it, he is alarmed by a smell of burning. Before he can find the cause, there is an explosion and the van is engulfed in flames. Responding to summons from the North-Eastern Railway, Robert Colbeck and Victor Leeming are sent to investigate. The two are split on whether a murder has taken place. Although the information they received was scant, Colbeck is convinced this is a murder case.

When her soulmate, Jonathan August-Trelawney jilts her at the altar, Lily Pond is determined to live life on her own terms. Her friends aren’t afraid of giving their opinions, encouraging her to find someone else to marry, and swiftly. Lily has other ideas.

Annie has a problem: She has a beautiful child, a loving husband, a well-run boardinghouse with a supportive circle of friends and family, but she’s feeling restless and unhappy. Dr. Charlotte Brown, the doctor who delivered Annie’s baby, has a different problem. The Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children, the clinic and hospital she co-founded, is being threatened by financial and legal difficulties caused by the mysterious illness of a former patient.

Iris Tavners met the man of her dreams. Then she found out that he was in love with someone else. Not one used to rejection, the outgoing high-spirited daughter of an innkeeper is no longer content with harmless flirtations, but nor is she sure if she can ever give her heart to another. August Williams, the Earl of the Westwood, returned to London from his days hiding from the French eager to wed his fiancée, only to find that she gave her heart to another in his absence. Now the once charming rogue has lost all joviality. When he is told his identity has been compromised and he must ...

The Dead Witness gathers the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the 19th century and into the early 20th - including a wide range of overlooked gems creating the finest ever anthology of Victorian detective stories. "The Dead Witness", the 1866 title story by Australian writer Mary Fortune, is the first known detective story by a woman, a suspenseful clue-strewn manhunt in the Outback. This forgotten treasure sets the tone for the whole anthology....

As a prostitute living in London’s East End, Marie is no stranger to doing what she must to survive. Offered more money than she could ever imagine by a handsome stranger, she agrees to his unusual request to be her one and only client. But it’s a dangerous time to be a lady of the night. The Ripper murders are splashed on every paper and whispered about behind the backs of hands.

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....

England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly remarried to a war-traumatised husband and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel to Clewer Hall in Sussex where she is to photograph the contents of the house for auction. She learns Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896, and that the lady of the house has asked those who gathered back then to come together once more to re-create the evening.

Ninety-nine days remain in Isobel Amsel's sentence, and the world keeps spinning - just not for Isobel. Her twin brother disappears for unknown reasons, and she's left pacing in her cage like a tiger. While Isobel's rebellious adopted daughter, Sao Jin, keeps her on her toes, Riot is left to sort out his crumbling finances. And find a ring, which proves far more difficult than he imagined. With Isobel's release date closing in, Riot tries to sort out his life, his motivations, and his impending wedding, while Bel faces the question of what marriage and motherhood really mean.

As a bogler's apprentice, 10-year-old Birdie has faced down plenty of monsters lurking in the chimneys, wells, and other dark places of Victorian London. She serves as bait, singing sweetly to lure the bogles out so her master, the well-seasoned Go-Devil Man Alfred Bunce, can kill them with his trusty spear. Enter the wealthy folklorist Miss Eames, who is determined to find more scientific ways of drawing out the monsters, and Birdie fears that her livelihood may be threatened by the well-meaning lady.

Legend tells of a family that abandoned their mansion and vanished. Thrust back in time, can a young schoolteacher prevent a tragedy and find her way back to her century? Present Day: Christina Forsythe is devastated. After her best friend loses a three-year battle with cancer, the grieving schoolteacher seeks solace at the old plantation house they played in as kids. But her nostalgia quickly turns to panic when she’s plunged into the past, and the raven-haired owner from the parlor’s portrait stands before her alive. Trapped in 1875, Christina pretends to be the governess to the ...