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Books > Fiction > Genre fiction > Crime & mystery > Historical mysteries
'Exquisite' - Will Dean, author of Dark Pines 'This is a book that will stay with you' - Ann Cleeves, bestselling author of the Vera series 'Compelling, twisty and wonderfully suspenseful' - Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground In a lonely cottage on a deserted stretch of shore, a moment of tragedy between lovers becomes a horrific murder. And two women who should never have met are connected for ever . . . Six years after the end of the Great War, a nation is still in mourning. Thousands of husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts were lost in Europe; millions more came back wounded and permanently damaged. Beatrice Cade is an orphan, unmarried and childless - and given the dearth of men, likely to remain that way. London is full of women like her: not wives, not widows, not mothers. There is no name for these invisible women, and no place for their grief. Determined to carve out a richer and more fulfilling way to live as a single woman, Bea takes a room in a Bloomsbury ladies' club and a job in the City. Then a fleeting encounter changes everything. Bea's emerging independence is destroyed when she falls in love for the first time. Kate Ryan is an ordinary wife and mother who has managed to build an enviable life with her handsome husband and her daughter. To anyone looking in from the outside, they seem like a normal, happy family - until two policemen knock on her door one morning and threaten to destroy the facade Kate has created. From the author of Little Deaths, longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, comes the sensational Other Women. Mesmerising, haunting and utterly remarkable, this is a devastating story of fantasy, obsession inspired by a murder that took place almost a hundred years ago.
'A riotous delve into the dark medical world of Restoration London' - S.G. MACLEAN 'An infectious read, packed with atmosphere and colourful characters' - OSCAR DE MURIEL 'A gripping whodunnit with a sinister twist' - JENNIFER RYAN ________________________________________ WHO WOULD MURDER THE DYING... London, 1665. Hidden within the growing pile of corpses in his churchyard, Rector Symon Patrick discovers a victim of the pestilence unlike any he has seen before: a young woman with a shorn head, covered in burns, and with pieces of twine delicately tied around each wrist and ankle. Desperate to discover the culprit, Symon joins a society of eccentric medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague. Someone is performing terrible experiments upon the dying, hiding their bodies amongst the hundreds that fill the death carts. Only Penelope - a new and mysterious addition to Symon's household - may have the skill to find the killer. Far more than what she appears, she is already on the hunt. But the dark presence that enters the houses of the sick will not stop, and has no mercy... This hugely atmospheric and entertaining historical thriller will transport readers to the palaces and alleyways of seventeenth-century London. Perfect for fans of Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Andrew Taylor and C.J. Sansom. ________________________________________ 'A sickening, desperate London, wonderfully evoked. A terrific read!' - ALIX NATHAN 'A rollicking, roistering tale with humour horror and human decency at its dark heart' - KATE GRIFFIN 'Brilliantly convincing and thrillingly infectious' - S.W. PERRY 'A gorgeous, darkly witty novel that transports readers to the London of Charles II' - MARIAH FREDERICKS 'Dark, haunting and unexpectedly witty' - SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL
The spellbinding SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and RICHARD AND JUDY BOOKCLUB PICK about old family secrets 'A captivating mystery: beautifully written, with a rich sense of place, a cast of memorable characters, and lots of deep, dark secrets' Kate Morton, bestselling author of The Clockmaker's Daughter 'Absolutely her best yet' Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of The Family Upstairs 'A wonderful, romantic, compelling mystery. Eve Chase has something of the poet in her: her descriptions of a remote manor house nestling in an ancient forest are worth reading for themselves, but the plotline of The Glass House is utterly absorbing in its own right. We loved it' Richard and Judy Book Club 'The Glass House is not really about a murder, or a creepy house, but about families - the ones we're born into, the ones we make and especially the ones we flee' New York Times _______ The truth can shatter everything . . . When the Harrington family discovers an abandoned baby deep in the shady woods, they decide to keep her a secret and raise her as their own. But within days a body is found in the grounds of their house and their perfect new family implodes. Years later, Sylvie, seeking answers to nagging questions about her life, is drawn into the wild beautiful woods where nothing is quite what it seems. Will she unearth the truth? And dare she reveal it? _______ 'I adored this beautifully-written, riveting mystery' Rosie Walsh, bestselling author of The Man Who Didn't Call 'So beautifully and insightfully written, with characters I grew to love. A compelling, moving story that kept me turning the pages right to the very last' Katherine Webb, author of The Legacy Praise for Eve Chase 'Enthralling' Kate Morton 'Simply stunning' Dinah Jefferies 'The most beautiful book you will read this year' Lisa Jewell 'Filled with intrigue' Clare Mackintosh 'Exquisite and evocative' Sarah Vaughan
'Deep-diving and elegant' Margaret Atwood 'Takes the gothic genre by the scruff of the neck' Bernadine Evaristo ----- 'They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don't believe I've done?' 1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning - slave, whore, seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth. For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed. But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved? A haunting tale about one woman's fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through laudanum-laced dressing rooms and dark-as-night alleys, into the heart of Georgian London. WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS FIRST NOVEL PRIZE 2019 SHORLISTED FOR HWA DEBUT CROWN 2020 WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE MONTH ----- 'A dazzling page-turner' Emma Donoghue 'A star in the making' Sunday Times 'Gothic fiction made brand new' Stef Penney 'Dazzlingly original' The Times 'A heroine for our times' Elizabeth Day
The Toerten Project: Murder and Crime Mysteries from a Bauhaus Estate takes readers beyond the chaste white facades of the world-renowned Bauhaus Settlement by Walter Gropius. 10 quirky narratives about mysterious entanglements, morbid secrets, and grisly intrigues.
On the 9th of June 1865, Charles Dickens was travelling aboard the Folkestone to London Boat Train with his mistress and her mother, when it derailed while crossing a viaduct near Staplehurst in Kent. The train plunged down a bank into a dry river bed, killing ten passengers, and badly wounding forty. Dickens was profoundly affected by the disaster, and a year later, he published The Signalman, a supremely atmospheric ghost story in which the narrator, while investigating a dank and lonely railway cutting, meets the signalman who works there. His new acquaintance appears to live under the shadow of an unbearable secret, haunted by an apparition whose appearance prefigures terrible rail accidents. Drawing on Dickens own experiences, and introduced by Simon Bradley, author of The Railways, The Signalman is both an important piece of rail history, and a sinister tale which will make you think twice next time you enter the quiet carriage.
It is the summer of 1950-and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw,
young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for
poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead
bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to
its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the
cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.
Private investigator Jennie Redhead finds her loyalties divided when she investigates the decades-old murder of a college student. Oxford, 1974. In the cellars beneath St Luke's College, a sealed medieval ventilation shaft is opened up to reveal human bones. Two bodies, buried thirty years apart, but is there a connection ... Desperate to protect the College's reputation - and finances - the bursar, Charlie Swift, hires his old friend, private investigator Jennie Redhead, to find out the identities of the two victims. But as Jennie pieces the clues together, it becomes increasingly clear that Charlie knows rather more about the murders than he's admitted. As she uncovers a series of scandals stretching back more than sixty years, Jennie is forced to question how well she really knows her old friend Charlie Swift - and whether she can trust him...
Grieving the loss of wife and mother, Aidan and Melangell visit the renowned spiritual retreat center on the British island of Lindisfarne so Aidan can share with bright eight-year-old Melangell one of the places that inspired Jenny to write her books. There they meet up with Jenny's friend Lucy, a Methodist minister, who is teaching a course on the local Northumbrian saints. Lucy has brought Rachel, a troubled teenager, to the Holy Island in hopes that the remoteness and peace of the location will help her. But when Rachel is found dead on the beach, everyone on the island is under suspicion. As investigators and Rachel's "friends" come to the island, Aidan and Lucy learn more about Rachel, and Lucy's past as a policewoman is revealed. And so Aidan is drawn into his second mystery. Masterfully told by award-winning author Fay Sampson, Death on Lindisfarne explores the complicated motivations of fallen people against the backdrop of ancient holiness.
"Holmes and Watson accompany a woman on a quest which leads them through the dark heart of London to a one-legged man, a mysterious and terrifying creature, and an incredible tale of greed and revenge."-School Library Journal "The immense talent, passion and literary brilliance that Conan Doyle brought to his work gives him a unique place in English letters."-Stephen Fry "Holmes has a timeless talent, passion and literary brilliance that puts him heads, shoulders and deerstalker above all other detectives."- Alexander McCall Smith Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four is the second novel in the Sherlock Holmes series, following the enormously successful novel A Study In Scarlet. With the mysterious disappearance of a British Indian army officer, a one-legged hooligan, a stolen treasure, and a nefarious pact between four con-men, this novel of revenge and love is an exquisite classic of crime fiction. In the infamous opening of the novel, Dr. Watson finds Sherlock Holmes in his Baker Street home, bored and in the process of taking cocaine. Dr. Watson finally confronts his friend, and Holmes retorts that he does not do well in moments of tedium; luckily the doldrums are evaporated with the arrival of a beautiful woman at the door of Baker Street; she is Mary Morstan, a character that Sherlock Holmes fans are very acquainted with as she eventually becomes the wife of Dr. Watson. Mary asked for the help in a very strange case; years ago her father disappeared from his post in India as an army officer, a few years later she began receiving an exquisite pearl in the mail on an annual basis for the past six years. Mary revealed a letter to Holmes from the sender of the pearls, asking to meet in person for clues to her father's disappearance and the motive behind the pearls. When they meet Thaddeus Sholto, Holmes and Watson are snarled into a web of a dangerous hunt and a morass of intrigue including a secret Indian treasure, four ex-cons, a one-legged gangster. The Sign of the Four, one of the most popular of the Sherlock Holmes crime novels, has been adapted into numerous film and TV productions. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Sign of the Four is both modern and readable.
Fresh, funny crime series for fans of Jasper Fforde and M.C. Beaton. 'Delightful and original ... A series that could well become a cult' DAILY MAIL. 125 Gower Street, 1882. Queen Victoria may sit on the throne and Robert Peel's bobbies walk the street, but London is still haunted by the spectre of Spring-heeled Jack. The demons of vice and poverty rule the capital: ruffian gangs, pickpockets, prostitutes and vagrants clog the streets with their iniquity. But in one particular Gower Street residence - home to the famous personal investigator Sidney Grice - order presides. Until, that is, the arrival of his ward March Middleton and the vicious Whitechapel murder that follows hard on her heels... Set between the refined buildings of Victorian Bloomsbury and the stinking streets of London's East End, The Mangle Street Murders is for those who like their crime original, atmospheric, and very, very funny. Praise for THE MANGLE STREET MURDERS: 'Funny, fresh and sharply plotted ... Starring a detective duo to rival Holmes and Watson' GOODREADS. 'Kasasian's sparkling debut introduces a memorable new detective duo' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. 'Grice and Middleton promise to become a positive treat' DAILY MAIL. Read the whole series: THE MANGLE STREET MURDERS THE CURSE OF THE HOUSE OF FOSKETT. DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA. THE SECRETS OF GASLIGHT LANE. DARK DAWN OVER STEEP HOUSE.
ENGLAND, 1930. Grieving widows are a familiar sight on London's Necropolis Railway. So when an elegant young woman in a black veil boards the funeral train, nobody guesses her true purpose. But Rachel Savernake is not one of the mourners. She hopes to save a life - the life of a man who is supposed to be cold in the grave. But then a suspicious death on the railway track spurs her on to investigate a sequence of baffling mysteries: a death in a blazing car; a killing in a seaside bungalow; a tragic drowning in a frozen lake. Rachel believes that the cases are connected - but what possible link can there be? Rich, ruthless and obsessed with her own dark notions of justice, she will not rest until she has discovered the truth. To find the answers to her questions she joins a house party on the eerie and remote North Yorkshire coast at Mortmain Hall, an estate. Her inquiries are helped - and sometimes hindered - by the impetuous young journalist Jacob Flint and an eccentric female criminologist with a dangerous fascination with perfect crimes... Mortmain Hall is at once a gripping thriller and a classic whodunit puzzle: a Golden Age Gothic mystery, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.
'Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!' The mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville brings Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson to Dartmoor in the most famous of all of Arthur Conan Doyle's books. Is Sir Charles the latest victim of the ancestral Curse of the Baskervilles, which summons a demonic hound to stalk the moor and exact vengeance for a past misdeed, or is there a more modern, more prosaic explanation for the sudden death? In The Hound of the Baskervilles, the modern, rational world, and the ancient, supernatural world collide in the novel which brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead. This new edition of Conan Doyle's classic mystery is part of a series of new editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories published in Oxford World's Classics. Darryl Jones's Introduction explores the competing worlds of the supernatural and the scientific in the novel and in Arthur Conan Doyle's life, the novel's colonial background and origins, and the role of landscape, folklore, and folk horror in the novel.
From New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd comes a haunting tale that explores the impact of World War I on all who witnessed it--officers, soldiers, doctors, and battlefield nurses like Bess Crawford. Though the Great War is nearing its end, the fighting rages on. While waiting for transport back to her post, Bess Crawford meets Captain Alan Travis from the island of Barbados. Later, when he's brought into her forward aid station disoriented from a head wound, Bess is alarmed that he believes his distant English cousin, Lieutenant James Travis, shot him. Then the Captain is brought back to the aid station with a more severe wound, once more angrily denouncing the Lieutenant as a killer. But when it appears that James Travis couldn't have shot him, the Captain's sanity is questioned. Still, Bess wonders how such an experienced officer could be so wrong. On leave in England, Bess finds the Captain strapped to his bed in a clinic for brain injuries. Horrified by his condition, Bess and Sergeant Major Simon Brandon travel to James Travis's home in Suffolk, to learn more about the baffling relationship between these two cousins. Her search will lead this smart, capable, and compassionate young woman into unexpected danger, and bring her face to face with the visible and invisible wounds of war that not even the much-longed for peace can heal.
Scotland, 1850. The penalty for murder is death by hanging. Why then employ a young defence lawyer with no trial experience who is surely destined to fail? And why does his client refuse to tell him what happened on the night the crime took place? "Edward Kane and the Parlour Maid Murderer" follows the young Advocate, Edward Kane, and his manservant, Mr Horse from the great houses of Edinburgh to the taverns and alleyways of the Old Town in search of answers - and defence. Written by Ross Macfarlane QC ("Noted legal expert" - Legal 500), the novel evokes the sights and sounds of Victorian Scotland, introducing a rich cast of characters.
A circus arrives in Durham in the 1790s and the whole town is excited. until the body of a Shaker girl is found beaten. 1790s. The circus has arrived in Durham, Maine. Before weaver Will Rees is able to take in its spectacle, he spots Magistrate Hanson - the man he blames for his family's having to flee Dugard two years earlier. On his journey home he encounters Shaker brothers searching for a girl from their Zion community. Despite women not being allowed inside the circus, Leah had snuck out to visit it. They quickly come across her lifeless body beaten and thrown into a farmer's field on the road leading to the circus. Bored of his household chores, Rees begins investigating at the expense of his home life. He becomes entranced by the lives of the circus performers, including the charismatic horse rider and tightrope walker. Is his longing for his old journeyman's life causing him to take his eye off the case, and can he stay out of Hanson's way and keep his family safe?
London, 1899. Queen Victoria lays the foundation stone on the site of a new museum being built, which she names as The Victoria and Albert Museum. Shortly after, Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton are called to the site because the dead body of a man, curator Andrew Page, has been found in one of the trenches. The Queen is determined that nothing will sully the new museum, and by association her beloved Albert's legacy. But the more Wilson and Fenton dig, the more they discover other potential motives for Page's murder, some with potentially explosive implications for the Royals and the Government. They will have to tread carefully as someone is determined that they will not uncover any more .
The peaceful atmosphere of the Reverend Mother's annual retreat is shattered by sudden, violent death in this gripping historical mystery. 1920s. Cork, Ireland. The Reverend Mother regrets the bishop's decision to invite the five candidates for the position of Alderman of the City Council to join them for their annual retreat. Constantly accosted by ambitious, would-be politicians hoping to secure the bishop's backing, she's finding the week-long sojourn at the convent of the Sisters of Charity anything but peaceful. What she doesn't expect to encounter however is sudden, violent death. When a body is discovered in the convent's apple orchard cemetery, blown to pieces by a makeshift bomb, it is assumed the IRA are responsible. But does the killer lie closer to home? Was one of the candidates so desperate to win the election they turned to murder? Does someone have a hidden agenda? Once again, the Reverend Mother must call on her renowned investigative skills to unearth the shocking truth.
Every gift has a price . . . every piece of lace has a secret. Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations. Now the disappearance of two women is bringing Towner back home to Salem--and is bringing to light the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister.
From the winner of the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition comes another tantalising Golden Age wartime mystery. **DON'T MISS THE LASTEST JOSEPHINE FOX MYSTERY, A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS. OUT NOW!** PRAISE FOR THE JOSEPHINE FOX SERIES: 'Terrific ... captures brilliantly the atmosphere of wartime Britain' ANN CLEEVES 'Feisty, determined and brave - I loved Josephine Fox' JUDY FINNIGAN 'A complete delight ... sings with authenticity' CAZ FREAR DECEMBER 1942. As the war rages on, the accidental death of a young man is almost unremarkable. Except this young man was patrolling the grounds of Hursley Park House, where teams are designing crucial modifications to the Spitfire - and he was found clutching part of a blueprint. JANUARY 1943. Josephine Fox is given a code name and a mission as she is seconded to Hursley: uncover the network responsible for information leaks to the enemy. And when the dead man's father visits Bram Nash convinced that his son was innocent of espionage and the victim of murder, her friend is also drawn into the investigation. But as Jo and Bram circle closer to the truth, danger is closing in around them... *INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT THE NEXT JOSEPHINE FOX MYSTERY, A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS*
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