Maggie Slone, fast-talking newspaper reporter, covered a special assignment in Gaston Villiere's renowned cafe Le Coq d'Or on Mardi Gras night. Along with a good meal, she got an earful of a melodramatic conversation at a nearby table. At the table were two couples. One pair, a blond young man and a green-eyed glamour girl, have a row and break-up the party. The next day, Maggie is assigned to cover a suicide-the blond young man of the night before. Odd circumstances shroud his death and, even as the reporter tries to fit the puzzle together, the green-eyed Nita is found garroted in a patio in the French Quarter, just behind the home of the Pacellis, a poor Italian family. Maggie's attempts to solve the murder carry her into strange situations, including a powwow with a group of people which includes one man who seems determined to imprison her. When little Tina Pacelli is kidnapped, Maggie gets down to brass tacks and walks smack into trouble, and more murder. The riotous color of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the fast-paced excitement of the newspaper office, and Maggie's talent for trouble are all come together in this thrilling novel. Events move with lightning speed, striking into the heart of a man where hate born of hurt has smoldered for years-finally breaking out in a flame of murder.

Jack Blackjack's search for an executioner's son ensnares him in a fiendish mesh of schemes in this lively Tudor mystery. London. May, 1556. Hal Westmecott, one of the city's most feared executioners, reckons Jack Blackjack owes him a favour - and now he's come to collect his dues. Hal has ordered Jack to track down his long-lost son and, although Jack believes he's been set an impossible task, he's in no position to refuse. But when Jack's search draws him to the attention of a ruthless nobleman, a dead priest's vengeful brother and finally to a bloodstained body in a filthy lodging house, he comes to realize he is an unwitting pawn in a mesh of schemes dreamed up by the most powerful people in England. Just who is a friend, who is a foe - and will Jack escape with his life intact?

Even as war rages, there are deep secrets lurking in the heart of Buckingham Palace... Windsor, 1942. War rages through Great Britain. Anna Duckworth, former lover of Prince George, Duke of Kent, is found dead after an enemy bomb blast at her country home. When courtier Guy Harford is called to dispose of incriminating love letters between Anna and the Duke, it becomes clear that there's more to the story than anyone is prepared to reveal. As the court begins to whisper of a lone gunshot heard in the house that day, another gruesome death befalls the royal circle. With the bodies stacking up, Guy rejoins his old accomplices, East End burglar Rodie Carr and undercover agent Rupert Hardacre, to unmask the dangerous secrets lurking beneath the glittering Crown. But with tensions rippling from London to Tangier as the Allied Forces prepare to invade North Africa, and Guy's reputation in the Palace hanging in the balance, can he solve the mystery before more heads roll?

The latest adventure for the intrepid Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes takes readers into the frenetic world of silent films, where the pirates are real and the shooting isn't all done with cameras. In England's young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate the criminal activities that surround Fflytte's popular movie studio. So Russell is traveling undercover to Portugal, along with the film crew that is gearing up to shoot a cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King. But as movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fadeout.

The No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling series The fifth book in S. J. Parris's bestselling, critically acclaimed series following Giordano Bruno, set at the time of Queen Elizabeth I Perfect for fans of C. J. Sansom and Hilary Mantel PARIS, 1585 A KING WITHOUT AN HEIR Heretic-turned-spy Giordano Bruno arrives in Paris to find a city on the edge of catastrophe. King Henri III lives in fear of a coup by the Duke of Guise and his fanatical Catholic League, and another massacre on the streets. A COURT AT WAR WITH GOD When Bruno's old rival, Father Paul Lefevre is found murdered, Bruno is drawn into a dangerous web of religious politics and court intrigue. And watching over his shoulder is the King's mother, Catherine de Medici, with her harem of beautiful spies. A DEADLY CONSPIRACY IN PLAY When murder strikes at the heart of the Palace, Bruno finds himself on the trail of a killer who is protecting a terrible secret. With the royal houses of France and England under threat, Bruno must expose the truth - or be silenced for good... Praise for S. J. Parris 'A delicious blend of history and thriller' The Times 'An omnipresent sense of danger' Daily Mail 'Colourful characters, fast-moving plots and a world where one false step in religion or politics can mean a grisly death' Sunday Times 'Pacy, intricate, and thrilling' Observer 'Vivid, sprawling ... Well-crafted, exuberant' Financial Times 'Impossible to resist' Daily Telegraph 'Twists and turns like a corkscrew of venomous snakes' Stuart MacBride 'It has everything - intrigue, mystery and excellent history' Kate Mosse 'The period is incredibly vivid and the story utterly gripping' Conn Iggulden 'A brilliantly unusual glimpse at the intrigues surrounding Queen Elizabeth I' Andrew Taylor

Londoner Jack Blackjack finds himself a stranger in a strange land when he's accused of murder in rural Devon in this eventful Tudor mystery. July, 1556. En route to France and escape from Queen Mary's men, Jack Blackjack decides to spend the night at a Devon tavern, agrees to a game of dice - and ends up accused of murder. To make matters worse, the dead man turns out to have been the leader of the all-powerful miners who rule the surrounding moors - and they have no intention of waiting for the official court verdict to determine Jack's guilt. But who would frame Jack for murder . . . and why? Alone and friendless in a lawless land of cut-throats, outlaws and thieves, Jack realizes that the only way to clear his name - and save his skin - is to unmask the real killer. But knowing nothing of the local ways and customs, how is he to even begin? As Jack's attempts to find answers stirs up a hornet's nest of warring factions within the town, events soon start to spiral out of control . . .

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 A TELEGRAPH BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 AN EVENING STADARD MUST-READ NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 OPEN BOOK 'Accomplished, immersive and profoundly satisfying' Cathy Rentzenbrink 'Effortlessly resonant ... breathes rich imaginative colour in her characters' Daily Telegraph From the million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family. SIX BROTHERS AND SISTERS. ONE INJUSTICE THAT WILL SHATTER THEIR BOND FOREVER. Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise - but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history - the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family. 'In its stretch and imaginative depth, Booth has an utterly seductive authority' Guardian 'Karen Joy Fowler's novels are wildly inventive and deservedly popular' Daily Mail 'Booth is a triumph!' Ruth Ozeki 'Captures with enthralling vividness a country caught in the grip of fanatical populism, ripped apart by irreconcilable political differences and boiling with fury and rage ... An unalloyed triumph' Literary Review 'Brilliantly recounts the story of the American theatrical dynasty that produced Lincoln's assassin' Sunday Times Book of the Month 'Her finest, most beautiful novel to date' Neel Mukherjee

1914. When war in Europe is declared, a young American cartographer, Michael Clifton, is compelled to fight for his father's native country, and sets sail for England to serve in the British Army. Three years later, he is listed as missing in action. 1932. After Michael's remains are unearthed in a French field, his devastated parents engage London investigator Maisie Dobbs, hoping she can find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were among their son's belongings. It is a quest that leads Maisie back to her own bittersweet wartime love - and to the discovery that Michael Clifton may not have died in combat. As a web of intrigue and violence threatens to ensnare the dead soldier's family and even Maisie herself, she must cope with the impending loss of her mentor and the unsettling awareness that she is once again falling in love.

Cast a Cold Eye by Robbie Morrison is a dark historical crime novel and the sequel to Edge of the Grave which won the Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut award and was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger. Glasgow, 1933 Murder is nothing new in the Depression-era city, especially to war veterans Inspector Jimmy Dreghorn and his partner 'Bonnie' Archie McDaid. But the dead man found in a narrowboat on the Forth and Clyde Canal, executed with a single shot to the back of the head, is no ordinary killing. Violence usually erupts in the heat of the moment - the razor-gangs that stalk the streets settle scores with knives and fists. Firearms suggest something more sinister, especially when the killer strikes again. Meanwhile, other forces are stirring within the city. A suspected IRA cell is at large, embedded within the criminal gangs and attracting the ruthless attention of Special Branch agents from London. With political and sectarian tensions rising, and the body count mounting, Dreghorn and McDaid pursue an investigation into the dark heart of humanity - where one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and noble ideals are swept away by bloody vengeance.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Bess Crawford mystery series, a short story that unravels dark secrets from her close friend Simon Brandon’s past.

Years before the Great War summoned Bess Crawford to serve as a battlefield nurse, the indomitable heroine spent her childhood in India under the watchful eye of her friend and confidant, the young soldier Simon Brandon. The two formed an inseparable bond on the dangerous Northwest Frontier where her father’s Regiment held the Khyber Pass against all intruders. It was Simon who taught Bess to ride and shoot, escorted her to the bazaars and the Maharani’s Palace, and did his best to keep her out of trouble, after the Crawford family took an interest in the tall, angry boy with a mysterious past.

But the Crawfords have long guarded secrets for Simon and he owes them a debt that runs deeper than Bess could ever know. Told through the eyes of Melinda, Richard, Clarissa, and Bess, A Hanging at Dawn pieces together a mystery at the center of Bess’s family that will irrevocably change the course of her future.

Second in the thrilling new Kit Marlowe historical mystery series November, 1583. Desperate not to let the Netherlands fall into the hands of Catholic Spain, the Queen's spymaster orders Cambridge scholar and novice spy Christopher Marlowe to go there to assist its beleaguered leader, William the Silent. However, travelling in disguise as part of a troupe of Egyptian players, Marlowe encounters trouble even before he leaves England. When the players make a detour to perform at the home of Dr John Dee, one of their tricks ends in tragedy - and an arrest for murder . . .

Introducing Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins as an unusual detective duo in the first of a brand-new Victorian mystery series. When Inspector Field shows his friend Charles Dickens the body of a young woman dragged from the River Thames, he cannot have foreseen that the famous author would immediately recognize the victim as Isabella Gordon, a housemaid he had tried to help through his charity. Nor that Dickens and his fellow writer Wilkie Collins would determine to find out who killed her. Who was Isabella blackmailing, and why? Led on by fragments of a journal discovered by Isabella's friend Sesina, the two men track the murdered girl's journeys from Greenwich to Snow Hill, from Smithfield Market to St Bartholomews, and put their wits to work on uncovering her past. But what does Sesina know that she's choosing not to tell them? And is she doomed to follow in the footsteps of the unfortunate Isabella .?

A grisly death near her new homestead draws Brigid Reardon into a complicated mystery soon after her arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881 After the harrowing events that entangled her in Deadwood, Brigid Reardon just wants to move west and get on with her new life in America. But shortly after traveling to Cheyenne to join her brother Seamus, she finds herself caught up in another deadly mystery-beginning with her discovery of a neighbor's body on the plains near their homes. Was Ella murdered? Are either of the two men in Ella's life responsible? With Seamus away on a cattle drive, her friend Padraic possibly succumbing to a local's charms, and the sheriff seemingly satisfied with Ella's fate, it falls to Brigid to investigate what really happened, which puts her in the crosshairs of one of Cheyenne's cattle barons, called "big sugars" in these parts. All she really wants is something better than a crumbling, soddy homestead on the desolate plains of Wyoming-and maybe, just maybe, she wants Padraic-but life, it seems, has other plans: this young immigrant from Ireland is going to be a detective on the western frontier of 1880s America, even if it kills her. Loosely based on the true story of Ellen Watson in Cheyenne in 1889, The Big Sugar continues the adventure begun in Mary Logue's celebrated mystery The Streel, which introduced a "gritty, charming, clever protagonist" (Kirkus Reviews). With a faultless sense of history, a keen eye for suspense, and a poet's way with prose, Mary Logue all but guarantees that readers, like Brigid, will find the mystery at the heart of The Big Sugar downright irresistible.

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady's maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colourful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch's Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night's screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another...One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film. With the police left scratching their heads, Lady Hardcastle calls upon her amateur sleuthing skills to launch an investigation, with Flo's able assistance. Surrounded by suspects both human and supernatural, Lady Hardcastle must use a little trickery of her own to unmask the murderer.

Paris, September 1940.

After three months under Nazi Occupation, not much can shock Detective Eddie Giral. That is, until he finds a murder victim who was supposed to be in prison. Eddie knows, because he put him there. The dead man is not the first or the last criminal being let loose onto the streets. But who is pulling the strings, and why?

This question will take Eddie from jazz clubs to opera halls, from old flames to new friends, from the lights of Paris to the darkest countryside – pursued by a most troubling truth: sometimes to do the right thing, you have to join the wrong side…

The murder of a loyal king's man threatens the self-crowned King Henry's new regime in this second gripping medieval mystery featuring friar, sleuth and reluctant spy Brother Chandler. January, 1400. The bowman strikes at night, slaying one of King Henry's loyal garrison men before melting back into the darkness. Was the murder the result of a personal quarrel? Or is it, as Henry's stepbrother, Swynford, fears, the start of an uprising against England's self-crowned king? Swynford orders Brother Chandler to investigate, before the spark of rebellion can set the whole country alight. Friar, reluctant sleuth, and even more reluctant spy, Brother Chandler is a man with dark secrets and divided loyalties. To the murdered King Richard. To his paymaster, the usurper King Henry. And to beautiful, naive Mattie, a maid in the household of heretical poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who holds dangerous secrets of her own. Trusted by no one, Chandler must walk a tightrope of secrets and lies if he is to uncover the truth about the murder, while ensuring he - and the few people he cares about - stay alive. Combining rich historical detail with deep characterisations and enthralling mystery, this medieval puzzler is a perfect choice for fans of sleuthing monks and nuns like Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael and Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma.

The unputdownable new novel from master storyteller Jeffrey Archer.

London, 1988. Royal fever sweeps the nation as Britain falls in love with the ‘people’s princess’. Which means for Scotland Yard, the focus is on the elite Royalty Protection Command, and its commanding officer. Entrusted with protecting the most famous family on earth, they quite simply have to be the best. A weak link could spell disaster.

Detective Chief Inspector William Warwick and his Scotland Yard squad are sent in to investigate the team. Maverick ex-undercover operative Ross Hogan is charged with a very sensitive—and unique—responsibility. But it soon becomes clear the problems in Royalty Protection are just the beginning. A renegade organization has the security of the country—and the Crown—in its sights. The only question is which target is next in line…

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?

**THE THRILLING SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 'If only all history mysteries could be as good as The Midnight Hour' The Times An old man lies dead and it looks like poison, but his wife isn't the only one who had reason to kill him. Brighton, 1965 When theatrical impresario Bert Billington is found dead in his retirement home, no one suspects foul play. But when the postmortem reveals that he was poisoned, suspicion falls on his wife, eccentric ex-Music Hall star Verity Malone. Frustrated by the police response to Bert's death and determined to prove her innocence, Verity calls in private detective duo Emma Holmes and Sam Collins. This is their first real case, but as luck would have it they have a friend on the inside: Max Mephisto is filming a remake of Dracula, starring Seth Billington, Bert's son. But when they question Max, they feel he isn't telling them the whole story. Emma and Sam must vie with the police to untangle the case and bring the killer to justice. They're sure the answers must lie in Bert's dark past and in the glamorous, occasionally deadly, days of Music Hall. But the closer they get to the truth, the more danger they find themselves in... *********** PRAISE FOR THE MIDNIGHT HOUR 'An intricately plotted whodunnit' Daily Mail 'Griffiths writes with verve and wit' Irish Times 'An entertaining period murder mystery' Irish Independent 'Layered with a gripping plot' Belfast Telegraph A Sunday Times bestseller w/c 24/04/2022

The Reverend Mother receives a decidedly gruesome gift in this compelling Irish historical mystery. Ireland. 1925. Like all who seek charitable contributions, Reverend Mother Aquinas is used to being gifted some fairly dubious items. But nothing like this. On opening the evil-smelling trunk, labelled 'old books', the Reverend Mother is horrified to discover it contains the dead body of one of Cork's richest merchants, wrapped in decomposing animal hides. Many had reason to loathe the hides and skins merchant: his rebellious, republican son; his frustrated, clever daughter; his neighbours; his business rivals; and those whose unbaptised babies were buried on the site of his new tanning yard. But when suspicion falls on a former lay sister from her convent, the Reverend Mother decides she must help find the real killer.