Victorian Suspense

A collection of Regency books filled with romance, mystery, and strong heroines to make you fall in love! An Earl’s Agreement An arranged marriage turns dangerous when he will stop at nothing to make her his bride! Will her hero prevail? Heart of a Marquess A plan born of deception… Can Charlotte overcome her stepsister’s cruel actions and find the love she deserves? A Duke’s Promise A governess and a duke could never be a good match, but the Duke of Harrogate will stop at nothing to save Miss Sophia Weston from a desperate situation. Diamonds of the Marquess Lady Emily Dove ...

Paris, 1899. Abigail Wilson has received an invitation from Professor Alphonse Flamand, a prominent French Professor of Archaeology, to join him on an archaeological dig in Egypt. Overjoyed to be presented with such an opportunity, Abigail and her husband, Daniel, travel to Paris to meet the professor at his office in the Louvre to discuss plans. However, when Abigail goes to the appointment, she finds Flamand dead with a knife in his chest. In a whirl of confusion and despite her pleas of innocence, Abigail is arrested.

Sassy socialite Grace Stotesbury has plans for her future. None include marriage, murder or blackmail. Nor do they include the dashing, ex-naval commander, Lord Lexington—now a charismatic Private Investigator who sets her heart pumping and skin tingling. The nerve of him. She is the last person to see the murder victim alive—in an argument in a ballroom full of witnesses. Her situation worsens when she becomes the latest victim of an audacious blackmailer, someone who is privy to her most damning secrets. Can she work with Lexington to clear her name and catch the blackmailer? Will ...

Harrow-on-the-Hill, March 1836: In a sense, orphans Ollie, John, and Arthur have always been treasure hunters. The mudlarks have gone from a hardscrabble life scavenging the banks of the Thames for bits and bobs to becoming students at a boarding school outside of London, thanks to the kind and generous intercession of Charles Dickens. But now they're missing—as is, apparently, a treasure map. When Charles arrives at the school, he's hit with another twist—the servant girl who was allegedly in possession of the map has been strangled in the icehouse.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Elizabeth Masters has put her scandalous and painful past behind her. She's taken a position as companion to the tragic Lady Vale and her primary duty is to dissuade the woman from believing that everyone from the butcher's delivery boy to the ostler at an inn is her missing son. But a late-night visit to an alleged mystic in the city of Bath results in near-tragedy as Elizabeth is nearly abducted by ruffians waiting for them outside. They are rescued by a handsome and mysterious stranger who calls himself Benedict, the very name of Lady Vale's lost son.

Orlando Edison is a stockbroker using London's infatuation with foreign mining ventures to make a fortune. He has curried favor with the nation's most respected aristocrats, even inviting three influential investors - known as the Merry Gentlemen - to be part of his latest enterprise. Edison is welcomed in the highest circles and moves with ease among the rich and powerful. But a few days before Christmas, he is found murdered.

1850: Charles Dickens is in Manchester, performing at the Queen's Theatre with his acting group. But his career on the stage is cut short when a man is shot dead - on set. With Dickens himself caught with the gun in his hands, he is immediately arrested. Along with the help of his good friend Superintendent Sam Jones, Dickens must do all he can to find the real killer, before he is locked up for a crime he didn't commit. Can Dickens convince the authorities of his innocence? Will he unmask the true assassin?

Crime-scene photographers Sarah, Hugh, and Mick are summoned to the goriest crime scene they've ever encountered. A pub owner named Harry Warbrick has been found hanged. His murder becomes a sensation because he was England's top hangman. Sir Gerald, owner of the Daily World, announces that they‚ meaning Sarah and her friends‚ will investigate and solve Warbrick's murder before the police do. She and her friends discover a connection between Warbrick's murder and the most notorious criminal he ever executed: Amelia Carlisle.

SOMETIMES, THE PROMISE BREAKS YOU. Book 5 in the prize poly Sleeping Lotus series! Raena Barren might be the second-to-highest rank in the Soma spy network, but she is still powerless to save Garen Cards. His coma hasn’t ended, and he still sleeps in the lion’s den, where Apex could kill him whenever they please. But when Raena gets help from an unexpected source, she finds herself caught in another whirlwind romance. At the same time, she learns more about the Portent twins’ troubled past--and she is presented with three impossible tasks. First, to cure Jaen Portent of the darkness ...

The award-winning Sherlock Holmes narrator David Timson leads us through Conan Doyle's most famous tale. This extended story brings the archetypal detective to the moors with his friend and biographer Dr. Watson to investigate the mystery of a beast terrorizing the neighborhood.

Disowned by the cruel father who has always despised her, she has nowhere to turn until she is taken under the wing of a glamorous relative she never knew: the former Duchess of Ellsworth, who has scandalized society by remarrying soon after her first husband's death. At the opulent seaside estate of Ellsmere, Oriel thinks she has found a safe haven - but the darkly handsome young duke, Herron, believes otherwise. Haunted by the death of his father, he suspects that Ellsmere is sheltering a murderer.

London, 1849 When a boy is found drowned in the River Thames at Hungerford Stairs, novelist Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones of Bow Street are mystified to discover that the child is not the missing youngster for whom they have been searching. As Dickens and Jones delve deeper into London's poverty-stricken backstreets, they stumble across two more bodies. A serial killer is on the loose. And Charles is terrified that someone close to him may be one of the victims.

A princess by any other name… When a chance meeting at a summer house party brings Caden Thurgood, grandson of an earl, face to face with Mrs. Anna Jones, a widow, adamant the two have never met, he knows she’s lying. He applies his legendary charm into coaxing an admission out of her and succeeds only in falling under her spell—exactly as he did eleven years before when, as a lad, she occupied his every waking thought. Her very own Prince Charming… In fact, Anna remembers Caden well. He’s the boy who stole her heart, who she badgered into playacting Prince Charming to her ...

Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit her Aunt Cassandra, who waits on the platform at Oxford station where the train terminates, to greet them. Only they never arrive. All the passengers alight but the two women are nowhere to be seen. The train is searched and the coachman swears he saw them board onto first class, but they seem to have vanished into thin air. The Railway Detective must unravel the mystifying web of their disappearance before Imogen and Rhoda vanish into oblivion for good.

It is San Francisco in the summer of 1882, and Annie and Nate Dawson have finally found a good balance between the demands of family and work. Nate has an interesting legal case defending a young woman who has been left out of her mother’s will. Annie is looking into whether the financial difficulties facing the Potrero Woolen Mills are caused by bad management or bad luck.

Aristocratic sleuth Charles Lenox makes a triumphant return to London from his travels to America to investigate a mystery hidden in the architecture of the city itself, in The Hidden City by critically acclaimed author Charles Finch...

As a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, Benedict Frost had the respect of every man onboard and the adoration of the women in every port. When injury ends his naval career, the silver-tongued libertine can hardly stomach the boredom. Not after everything - and everyone - he's experienced. Good thing a new adventure has just fallen into his lap....

A former smuggler and thief, Ariq--better known as the Kraken King--doesn't know what to make of the clever, mysterious woman he rescues from an airship besieged by marauders. Unsure if she's a spy or a pawn in someone else's game, Ariq isn't about to let her out of his sight until he finds out.

5 - Star Review on Amazon and Goodreads! "This is one of best stories I have read in a long time. There were many twists and turns and I had a hard time putting down this book. I highly recommend this book." "Stephanie Patterson is a terrific writer, I've read every one of her books and all are excellent! " Scandalous behavior has made Caelan Hennesy's family an object of derision in polite society. Caelan, Cal to his friends, needs a bride with impeccable breeding, a modest demeanor and one who is completely scandal-free. At twenty-four, he meets the young woman of his dreams in a Paris ...