British Historical Mysteries

Though American by birth, Frances Wynn, the now-widowed Countess of Harleigh, has adapted admirably to the quirks and traditions of the British aristocracy. On August 12th, each year, otherwise known as the Glorious Twelfth, most members of the upper class retire to their country estates for grouse-shooting season. Frances has little interest in hunting - or birds or a second husband - and is expecting to spend a quiet few months in London with her almost-engaged sister, Lily, until the throng returns. 

A village mystery… A Victorian Christmas Inspector Josiah Abbs is off to Norfolk, reunited for Christmas with his sister, Hetty. He’s anticipating a quiet week, while he weighs up his future. But beneath the surface, life in sleepy Aylmer is not all it seems. Someone is playing malicious tricks on the villagers. A tragic accident has shocked friends and neighbours. With little time to act, and determined to protect Hetty, Abbs feels compelled to uncover the truth… An Inspector Abbs mystery novella – linking the first and third novels in the series. .

London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the only senior inspectors remaining after a corruption scandal the previous autumn left the division in ruins. Reluctantly, Corravan abandons his ongoing case, a search for the missing wife of a shipping magnate, handing it over to his young colleague, Mr. Stiles.

Newly appointed as land agent to the youthful Lord Croft, Matthew Rowsley finds plenty to keep him busy as he attends to his lordship's neglected country estate. But he's distracted from his tasks by the disappearance of a young housemaid. Has Maggie really eloped with a young man, as her mother attests - or is the truth rather more sinister? What's been going on behind the scenes at the grand country estate...and where has his lordship disappeared to?

The shocking murder of Sir Henry Claybourne leaves Regency London shaken and horror-struck. But for genteel spinster Miss Emmeline St. Germaine, the crime slices far too close to home. Just hours before the knight's death she held a dagger to him, threatening him to stay silent as she rescued a scullery maid he had procured for his pleasure. Did the man - or woman - who murdered the knight know of her visit? Her secret identity at risk, her reputation and life in jeopardy, Emmeline must solve the crime or face scandalous exposure and ruination for a crime she did not commit.

The House on Thornhallow Moor (Book One of the Between Heartbeats Series) On the wind-swept cliffs overlooking Blackwater Hollow stands Thornhallow Moor—a house bound by secrets older than the sea. When Clara Wren returns to the neglected Victorian estate of her childhood, she expects memories, perhaps even closure. But the house has waited patiently for her arrival, harboring more than just dust and echoes of the past. Whispers drift through empty rooms, footprints glisten with seawater, and in the shadows stands Silas Vale—a ship’s captain lost to a storm over a century ago. Bound ...

Three names on a death list – one of them is William Quest. The darkness is finally closing in. Quest’s enemies are gaining ground, determined to destroy everything he and his allies believe in. From out of the shadows steps a man with no face… A new adventure in the menacing underworld of Victorian London.

Publisher’s Weekly said of G.G. Vandagriff, the Amazon #1 Bestselling Author of 1930s vintage mysteries, “...By blending romance and thrills with a spunky, brilliant protagonist, the author serves up a golden age-style treat for any book-loving armchair sleuth.” Oxford, 1935 When the Earl of Severn is murdered, the police focus on Anne Bascombe, his most vocal critic on the editorial pages of the Times. Anne’s brother-in-law and childhood sweetheart, Harry Bascombe, enlists the help of his fiancé, Catherine Tregowyn to find the real killer. After Oxford police arrest Harry’s ...

Bubble, bubble, toil, and murder... When a woman is found dead near her village in Norfolk, the verdict is suicide. Not everyone agrees. Detective James Simpson is ordered to investigate and he brings Agatha Aston, a young woman high of intellect and low in patience, Betty Stevens and a lovelorn hound called Talleyrand, with him. They stumble across a tale of murder that stretches back two centuries. Part occult story, part murder mystery - this creepy tale is steeped in witchcraft and strange rural festivals where everything is not as it seems. The second Agatha Aston murder mystery is ...

London, 1925. Travel writer Evelyn Cartwright is having a ball exploring London’s marvelous monuments, churches, and cultural exhibitions. But her time in the capital takes a dark turn when a curator at the British Museum is found bludgeoned to death with an ancient Egyptian statue. When an elderly gentleman—whom Evelyn is certain couldn’t have committed the crime—is arrested, she refuses to sit idly by. What she uncovers is a tangled web of museum rivalries, long-buried secrets, and dangerous ambitions. With the city’s underground world pulling her deeper into a labyrinth of ...

Here's Book 6 in the Catherine Tregowyn Mysteries series - Murder in the Family! "...readers will fall in love with the charming cast of characters, each of whom seems above suspicion. By blending romance and thrills with a spunky, brilliant protagonist, the author serves up a golden age-style treat for any book-loving armchair sleuth".--Publisher's Weekly (Booklife) for Murder at Tregowyn Manor (Book 3 in the series) “. . . the well-educated, literary characters . . . are enjoyable, and the plot is nicely balanced between tense action and the love triangle. . . an entertaining historical...

One dreadful night, in the shrouded mists of a London peasouper, an unknown assailant knifes Ross Davis of the Foreign Office. His mentor, Neil Griffith, not only discovers the body but is arrested for the murder. Though they haven’t known Neil long, Oxford Tutors/Sleuths, Catherine and Harry Bascombe, investigate at her mother’s request. Catherine is convinced that her mother’s beau would never murder his Foreign Office protégé and future son-in-law. As he is banned from returning to work until his name is cleared, Griffith convinces Catherine to take a temporary job liaising ...

Oxford, 1920. One body. Three impossible clues. And a woman mathematician who will not accept “accident” as an answer. Women can study at Oxford, but they still cannot earn degrees. With a historic vote on women’s degrees approaching and the city caught up in the spectacle of Eights Week, Oxford’s annual rowing races, the last thing the university needs is a scandal. Then the Duke of Calverley—a powerful patron of the university and outspoken opponent of women’s education—is found dead in a locked boathouse. Oxford is quick to call it a tragic accident. Celia Wren, a brilliant...

Eleven new investigations. Eleven moments where certainty fails. A Deptford film crew records something they were never meant to see. A well-dressed widow insists her late husband's visitor was not the man he claimed to be. A circus aerialist vanishes mid-performance, leaving only a rope and a mystery. A Kent hop farmer asks Holmes to investigate his estate manager — and Holmes finds himself, for once, outplayed. From a railway concourse in the rain to the backstreets of Pimlico, from the docks at Harwich to a river foreshore at Rotherhithe, Dr. Watson chronicles cases in which Holmes is ...

London, 1926. After a short leave of absence, Private Detective Posie Parker is back—and with a bang! Her first assignment? Interview the dazzling Eglantine DuBarry and Jack Smeaton of ‘The Banana Splits’, the most talked-about jazz band in town, who seem to have troubles aplenty. But before the ink is dry, Posie lands an even more notorious client: Lady Hilda Kilcoyne, a scandalous sportswoman convinced her war-hero husband wants her dead.

Eleven new investigations. Eleven moral reckonings. A cartographer dies at his desk, pen in hand, drawing a map of no recognisable place. A celebrated tenor contrives to die on stage at the Royal Opera House. Mysterious photographs appear overnight in a locked darkroom. Chalk marks on Whitechapel walls conceal a message no one was meant to read. A mathematician vanishes from his rooms at Cambridge, leaving his shoes, his coat, and an unfinished proof. From the gaslit streets of London to the flat silence of the Fens, from a cathedral tower at midnight to the tunnels beneath Kennington, Dr. ...

He was forced to hang up his badge. Now, a kidnapping has raced into his retirement England, 1960’s. Former inspector Tom Ramsay is taking advantage of having to step down. Invalided after getting shot in the line of duty, the plain-speaking man adopts a border collie and gets down to the serious business of hiking the scenic countryside of his ancestry. But after hearing over the radio about a missing local, the fifty-five-year-old ex-cop is shocked when a pleasant walk brings him face-to-face with the victim fleeing her captors. With the young woman reported as a runaway and no ransom ...

From New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Winspear, now available in paperback the tenth novel in the New York Times bestselling Maisie Dobbs series a series that seems to get better with each entry (Wall Street Journal) in which the death of an Indian immigrant leads Maisie in an...

She was trained to find patterns in history. She never expected to find a deadly one hiding in plain sight. London, 1940. The Blitz has turned the city into a nightly nightmare of fire and destruction. Dr. Evelyn Landon, a historian recruited by the Ministry of Information, spends her days reading civilian diaries, cataloging the fears, hopes, and small rebellions of ordinary Londoners under siege. It's quiet work. Safe work. Until she notices something impossible. "Such a shame the roses are wilting early this year." Roses don't wilt in November. They freeze. And that single wrong detail ...

I am the narrator of this book; I dragged every quarrel, corpse, kitchen mishap, and regrettable glance across the page without so much as a thank you, and now they have decided I must sell it to you as well. Very well; if I could endure the Earl of Harrowden’s dinner table, I can certainly endure your browser window. What you are walking into is a cozy Regency manor house mystery with one extremely opinionated ghost. Harrowden House is a grand Northumberland pile kept upright on watered wine and creative accounting, and I had the privilege of watching its famously miserly earl drop dead ...