Modern Historical Mystery Fiction

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: This is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: A sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in all the city. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: The scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill...

Ian Dunross, the current tai-pan of the illustrious yet financially troubled Struan empire, is racing to undo the damage his predecessor left behind and to once again stand on stable ground. And he’ll do whatever it takes—including striking a hard-fought deal with an American millionaire. But his rival, Quillan Gornt, has other plans. Suddenly caught in a dubious plot involving Soviet spies, Hong Kong’s criminal underground, and the hostile takeover of his company, Dunross holds nothing back in the fight for the Noble House.

It is the Whitsun weekend of 1931 in the once-fashionable resort of Frencham-on-Sea. A housewarming party at Seaview One, the thoroughly modern home of Sir James and Lady Theodora Phillips, goes horribly wrong when Lady Theodora is found drowned in the swimming pool. Suspicion falls immediately on one of the servants, but the police are unable to make the charge stick. Two of the house guests, Clarice Thompson and Cliff Thorley, begin to notice the undercurrents of tension and rivalry among the guests, and that one person in particular is acting very suspiciously.

Ian Dunross, the current tai-pan of the illustrious yet financially troubled Struan empire, is racing to undo the damage his predecessor left behind and to once again stand on stable ground. And he’ll do whatever it takes—including striking a hard-fought deal with an American millionaire. But his rival, Quillan Gornt, has other plans. Suddenly caught in a dubious plot involving Soviet spies, Hong Kong’s criminal underground, and the hostile takeover of his company, Dunross holds nothing back in the fight for the Noble House.

1945. Struggling for survival in a doomed Corsair fighter plane in the skies over the Pacific Ocean, World War II Marine pilot David Hamilton’s life suddenly and mysteriously takes a strange and ominous turn, leaving him searching for answers as he finds himself lost and alone in a different time, place, and perhaps, identity. With no choice but to enlist the help of two young strangers, David embarks on a desperate journey in a 1941 Ford Coupe that possesses its own secret past and purpose, to find his way back home and keep a promise made to the most important person in his life. As ...

Phryne Fisher has gone missing in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Only her pearl-handled gun and a note arrive back home. She's left instruction that say that should she not turn up in six months' time, a letter must be sent to next of kin.

When his closest friend, Benjamin Sachs, accidentally blows himself up on a Wisconsin road, Peter Aaron attempts to piece together the life that led to Sachs' tragic demise and determine the reason for his death.

In many ways Niles should be as American as apple pie: raised by missionary parents, taught to respect his elders and be an honorable and upright Christian citizen dreaming of the good life on the sun-blessed shores of California. But Niles is also Japanese: reared in the aesthetics of Shinto and educated in the dance halls and backroom poker gatherings of Tokyo's shady underworld to steal, trick, and run for his life. As a gaijin, a foreigner - especially one with a gift for the artful scam - he draws suspicion and disfavor from Japanese police.

We live within the ruins of an ancient civilization whose size has rendered it invisible. Remembered in myth as Atlantis, Lemuria, or other lost world archetypes, the remains of this advanced civilization have lain buried for millennia beneath the deserts and oceans of the world. Investigating the perennial myth of a forgotten fountainhead of civilization, J. Douglas Kenyon presents extensive physical and spiritual evidence of a lost great culture, the collective amnesia that wiped it from planetary memory, and the countless ways ancient catastrophes still haunt modern civilization.

Two threats, two thousand years apart. A Bible-era shipwreck lead to perils for a modern-day Indiana Jones. Thirty years after Jesus' death the apostle Paul, victim of a Jewish plot, is arrested and led in chains aboard an old Egyptian grain carrier bound for Rome. Encountering the 'storm of the century,' the ship never arrives. 2000 years later, amateur archaeologist David Connor is on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta looking for evidence of Paul's lost ship. With the help of smart - and beautiful - professor of ancient history, Caroline, he begins to build a credible case. But just ...

Legs inaugurated William Kennedy's cycle of novels set in Albany, New York. True to both life and myth Legs evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond, who was finally murdered in Albany. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond's attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s.

A SINGLE LIE COULD WIN THE WAR WITHOUT SHEDDING A DROP OF BLOOD. The chaotic ’eighties... political assassinations, drug wars, the computer revolution... Jared Sanders, the criminal oilman, is inches away from controlling the White House. His old nemesis, Senator Temple, stands in the way. This time, the senator is not alone. The heirs of the three oldest clans in the oil business join Temple. An aspiring lawyer with her eye on a supreme court seat, a Navy SEAL with a target on his back, and a dashing blueblood from New York City. Together, they could defeat the enemy without firing a ...

President William Darcy has it all: wealth, intelligence, and the most powerful job in the country. Despite what his friends say, he is not lonely in the White House. He’s not. And he has vowed not to date while he’s in office. Nor is he interested in Elizabeth Bennet. She might be pretty and funny and smart, but her family is nouveau riche and unbearable. Unfortunately, he encounters her everywhere in Washington, DC - making her harder and harder to ignore.

The Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller ‘Mosse is a master storyteller’ – Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe Bringing sixteenth-century France vividly to life, Kate Mosse’s historical epic The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love, betrayal, war and conspiracy. It is the first...

From Martin Cruz Smith, "a master of the international thriller," comes an audacious novel of exotic locales, intimate intrigues, and the mysteries of the human heart. "A superb thriller and a remarkable evocation of a place," raves Booklist in a starred review. "A moving, believable love story in which individual lives are invested with great dignity, even in the face of national ideals."

GREAT LEADERS CANNOT AFFORD TO BE GOOD MEN. 1986: Old scores settled, U.S. President Temple must consolidate control over a volatile nation and a changing world. A nuclear explosion in far-off Russia, political shifts in Western Europe, the AIDS virus... amid the disarray, three former allies refuse to cede command over the oil sector. The Kingsleys, the Sheppards, and the Barronses have united under the woman Temple once thought of as his daughter. Neither she nor the decorated Navy SEAL who used to be her childhood sweetheart will concede. Then there’s the American aristocrat she’s ...

GREED MAKES MEN ADMIT TO CRIMES THEY DON’T HAVE THE BRAINS TO COMMIT. The ’nineties loom. The Cold War is ending, and an information revolution is on its way. Freedom remains under attack... in death threats to writers, in the brutal crushing of political protests. Just as Temple concludes his time in the White House, the oil empire he built falls into the hands of a criminal. His allies—the Kingsleys, the Sheppards, and the Barronses—are once again at war. Temple’s chosen heir, the woman he thinks of as his daughter, is on the run. A pretender—Steven Kingsley—now sits on her ...

A romance novel set in Haverly, a suburban town in the United States, during the mid-20th century. Step into the world of "Song of Two Worlds," where love dances on the edges of societal expectations and personal desires. In the quaint town of Haverly, Elizabeth Nola, a vibrant young soprano, finds herself at a crossroads, her heart pulled between two compelling suitors amid the whispers of a community steeped in tradition. Join her journey as she navigates the trials of love, loss, and the search for identity in a time when the heart often battles against the weight of societal pressures. ...

It is 1941, and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed and the king imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down. But when a body is found in a Mayfair flat, what at first appears to be a routine murder investigation sends him into a world of espionage, deceit and betrayal.

When new bride Kaveri Murthy reluctantly agrees to investigate a minor crime during the blood moon eclipse to please her domineering mother-in-law, she doesn't expect to stumble upon a murder - again. With anti-British sentiments on the rise, a charismatic religious leader growing in influence, and the fight for women's suffrage gaining steam, Bangalore is turning out to be a far more dangerous place than Kaveri ever imagined, and everyone's motives are suspect.