English Historical Mystery Christmas

Mordecai Tremaine, former tobacconist and perennial lover of romance novels, has been invited to spend Christmas in the sleepy village of Sherbroome at the country retreat of one Benedict Grame. Arriving on Christmas Eve, he finds that the revelries are in full flow - but so too are tensions amongst the assortment of guests. Midnight strikes and the party-goers discover that it's not just presents nestling under the tree...there's a dead body, too. A dead body that bears a striking resemblance to Father Christmas.

England, 1927. When Lord Edgington hears of a failed attack on an eccentric viscount, it’s the perfect excuse to get out of seeing horrible relatives over Christmas. With his loyal grandson and their golden retriever along for the ride, he sets off to investigate, but on arriving at the snowbound manor house on the English coast, they find that the wrong man has been killed. It is not the rich tyrant who lies dead on the floor of the grand salon, but one of his many bickering heirs.

Thomas Pitt's sister-in-law, Emily Radley, is suddenly called from London to be with her dying aunt. Leaving her husband and two children behind, she makes the long journey to her aunt's home in Connemara, an all-but-forgotten town on the coast of Western Ireland. Emily soon discovers that a tragic legacy is haunting the once close-knit community. Violent storms ravage the coast and keep alive painful memories of an unsolved murder-and unsettling fears that a culprit may still be among them.

Dominic and Clarice Corde, who met and fell in love in Brunswick Gardens, journey to a quaint hamlet to replace the local vicar who is away on holiday. The holiday takes a nasty turn when the vicar is discovered not to be away at all, but brutally murdered and stashed in the cellar. So instead of fulfilling the vicar's duties, the Cordes are charged with solving his murder. All the while, the picturesque village is becoming increasingly and dangerously snowbound, its residents trapped as a killer remains at large.

Christmas Eve, and the Lee family's reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. When Hercule Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man....

Jane discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide gathering dies in a tragic accident whose circumstances Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snowbound guests. With clues scattered amid cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?

A ski holiday with friends at a mountain resort. What could possibly go wrong? It’s supposed to be the engaged couple’s vacation from sleuthing, instead they are confronted with a murder at the isolated hotel. Aside from their party, the guests are strangers to each other. And the victim was new to the area so who shot him and why? Rumors of a kidnap plot from an eccentric author, a Russian ex-pat pining for the old days of the Empire and a feuding staff add to the confusion of motives. With the help of the local sheriff, they discover a cache of money but then a young woman goes ...

Melissa North had assumed that after eight years of not setting eyes on each other, her youthful attraction to - or an infatuation with - Julian Delamere, once Viscount Dagenham and now earl of Carsely, would have faded to nothing and gasped its last. Unfortunately, during the intervening years, she has failed to find any suitable suitor who measures up to her mark, and she is resigned to ending her days an old maid. Then she sees Julian across a crowded ballroom, and he sees her, and the intensity of their connection shocks her.

Follow these lovely Daughters of Devonshire on their journey to discovering true love Books in this collection: Lady of His Dreams The Heart of a Lady A Lady's Melody Worthy of a Lady Author's Note: These are all clean short stories with a HEA.

It's Christmas 1909, and for once Lady Hardcastle - respectable gentlewoman, amateur spy - and her lady's maid, Florence Armstrong, are setting sleuthing aside. They are invited to the festivities up at The Grange, as guests of Sir Hector and Lady Farley-Stroud. But barely have corks been popped and parlour games played when a mysterious crime comes to light.

It is 1890, and in the days before Christmas, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are visited at Baker Street by a new client. Eve Allerthorpe, eldest daughter of a grand but somewhat eccentric Yorkshire-based dynasty, is greatly distressed, as she believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her late mother told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen the creature from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive mysterious parcels of birch twigs, the Black Thurrick’s calling card.

The Christmas trees in Knightsbridge sparkle with festive joy, and there’s nothing more fun than Christmas cocktail parties to ring in the new year of 1922. Camille Divine, known as Lady Camille Divine, has decorated her little house in Birdcage Mews with glistening decorations and a beautiful Christmas tree, but she has more on her mind than the festive season.

Born the youngest of four daughters and one son in a modest vicar's family, Miss Catherine Edwina Lyndon faces a life of hand-me-downs and broken dreams. Her parents spend every shilling on finding husbands for her older sisters, leaving her overlooked and resigned to a future without marriage or family. Despite a passion for education reform, she is denied entry to a leading university and escapes to Northampton as a companion to an aristocratic family. As various catalysts and antagonists spring onto the scene, including a mystery unfolding as items begin to disappear during a country ...

Phoebe Farrell has one distinguishing talent: listening. When a wealthy, if vinegary, widow employs her as a companion, Phoebe becomes acquainted with a variety of people upstairs and downstairs, in and outside of the household. Some are caustic and greedy; some are generous and kind. A few are tender. One is planning a murder. While Phoebe unearths their secrets and desires, can she uncover the truth before it is too late?

Regency widow Lily Adler is looking forward to a quiet Christmastide away from the schemes and secrets she witnessed daily in London. Not only will she be visiting the family of her late husband; she will be reunited with Captain Jack Hartley, her friend and confidante, finally returned after a long voyage at sea. But secrets aren’t only found in London. Jack’s younger sister, Amelia, is the center of neighborhood scandal and gossip. She refuses to tell anyone what really happened, even when an unexpected snowstorm strands the neighborhood families together after a Christmas ball.

An isolated mansion, an eccentric host, squabbling siblings, and a snowstorm. What could possibly go wrong? Young nurse Aggie Burnside and her doctor boyfriend are asked for a holiday weekend in a remote mansion in Vermont to calm the nerves of the threatened owner. But their hostess, a wealthy widow and renowned romance writer, has other plans for her guests. With a series of games, she hopes to reveal who is out to kill her, but to everyone’s shock, someone else dies first. Revel in the atmosphere of a 1931 New England winter, the extravagant house, tales of a Scottish curse, sumptuous ...

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me—well, actually, my true love, Darcy O’Mara, is spending a feliz navidad tramping around South America. Meanwhile, Mummy is holed up in a tiny village called Tiddleton-under-Lovey with that droll Noel Coward! And I’m snowed in at Castle Rannoch with my bumbling brother, Binky, and sourpuss sister-in-law, Fig.

December 1860. Headed for the morning shift at the Swindon Locomotive Works is an army of men pouring out of terraced houses built by the GWR, a miniature town and planned community that aims to provide for its employees from cradle to grave. Unfortunately, boilersmith Frank Rodman is headed for the grave sooner than he'd expected, or he will be once his missing head is found. Colbeck, the Railway Detective, finds his investigation into Rodman's murder mired in contradictions.

Semi-retired private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is suffering from depression after a miscarriage following her adventure in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906. She and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, and they gratefully accept, expecting a peaceful and relaxing holiday season. Not long after they arrive, however, they start to feel the tension in the house's atmosphere.

Aggie is hired to be a private nurse to an ailing millionaire’s wife. But she's not the one who dies. The couple is ensconced in a mansion in the small town to evade their enemies in the city. The marriage is anything but happy and she grows attached to the wife while repelled by the husband and baffled by the numerous silent servants who don’t seem to do anything but scuttle away. As Christmas approaches, everyone’s peace is shattered by a death at the big house. It isn’t who anyone expected would die, and it certainly wasn’t from natural causes. There are plenty of suspects ...