Historical Detective

Frances Wynn, the American-born Countess of Harleigh, enjoys more freedom as a widow than she did as a wife. After an obligatory year spent mourning her philandering husband, Reggie, she puts aside her drab black gowns, leaving the countryside and her money-grubbing in-laws behind. With her young daughter in tow, Frances rents a home in Belgravia and prepares to welcome her sister, Lily, arriving from New York - for her first London season.

To save his favorite newspaper, Nero Wolfe steps into the crossfire of a tabloid war.

Belfast, 1985. Amid the Troubles, Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggles with burnout as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point-blank range and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances.

After two London men end their business partnership, one of them is savagely murdered in a medieval tithe barn on his estate in Somerset. Investigating the killing, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge discovers that the victim was universally despised in Cambury - even the victim's wife and the town's police inspector are suspect. And yet in London circles, the man was highly regarded. What triggered his death?

Ellison Russell wanted a decorator, not a corpse. Too bad she finds Mrs. White in the study killed with a revolver. Things go from bad to worse when she finds Mr. White in the dining room killed with a candlestick. With so many bodies, is it any wonder Detective Anarchy Jones' new partner considers Ellison a suspect? With the country club gossips talking a minute, an unexpected cocktail party, a visit from Aunt Sis, and a romantic decision, Ellison hardly has time to think about murder. Unfortunately, the killer has plenty of time to think about her.

It's the early 1980s in Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Dermot's whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from the inside.

Grit, determination, and a will of steel have propelled Hudson Stone through life. No case he faced as Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard went unsolved. But nothing could have prepared the implacable investigator for inheriting a dukedom. Even more maddening than his ducal obligations is Lady Elysande Collingwood, the previous Duke of Wycombe’s betrothed. Worst of all, the debts Hudson has been bequeathed along with the title mean he needs to marry an heiress to save his estates from ruin, and the cheerful, dazzling Lady Elysande is the only one he knows.

Ten people gather together for an elegant London dinner party. By the end of the party, only nine are alive. Sometime after dinner, General Thaddeus Carlyon is brutally murdered in the hallway. Who had the strength - and motive - to murder the distinguished military hero? Nurse Latterly and Inspector Monk find the answers in a nightmarish legacy of evil.

It's the time of year when the immortal army of the ancient king rides Watling Street and the dead become uneasy in their graves. Indeed, in the far north of Warwickshire, the villagers insist that one dead man returned to kill his only son. Now it's up to Sir Faucon de Ramis, the shire's new Crowner, to run the walking corpse to ground and put him back where he belongs.

London 1884. Electricity pioneer Simon Borthwick lights up Victorian London with a stunning illuminations display - then shoots himself in a hansom cab. Plucky Fleet Street reporter Penny Green witnesses the inventor's death and suspects the clue to his suicide lies in a mysterious letter he left behind. But can she persuade Inspector James Blakely of Scotland Yard that a crime has been committed? Borthwick isn't the only person who died that day, and Penny soon encounters a shadowy world which the police can't get close to.

As Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark on their 11th adventure together, they find themselves immersed in the world of silent filmmaking. Here, the pirates are real—and unlike the shooting done with a camera, this sort can be deadly.

Does the truth really set you free? A missing serving girl. A swindled nobleman. An Irish mobster. London 1811. When her stepcousin Alexander Dovefield, the future Baron of Newark, asks for her help to find a missing serving girl from his favorite gambling hell, Lady Zoe Demas once again enlists inquiry agent Quinton Huxley to piece together the puzzle of who is cheating whom. What at first seems like a simple swindle takes a sinister and murky turn when bodies start to pile up. As they attempt to solve the mystery, Quinton also struggles with revelations about his own past . . . and what ...

A young American actress arrives in London hoping to learn her identity, just as Sherlock Holmes is closing in on a master criminal. Their worlds collide, and not even Holmes could have foreseen the impact!

In the early days of 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, are given an urgent task by his brother, Mycroft: find a British spy gone missing along India's northwest frontier, where men are dying and trouble is brewing. The spy's name? It is one Holmes knows from his sojourn in India long ago, and one Russell knows from a book. It is Kimball O'Hara, known to the world by the name Rudyard Kipling called him - Kim....

The plaintiffs in a sensational breach of promise suit are wealthy social climbers Barton and Delphine Lambert, suing on behalf of their beautiful daughter, Zillah. The defendant is Zillah's alleged fiancé, brilliant young architect Killian Melville, who adamantly declares that he will not, cannot, marry her. Not even to his counsel, distinguished barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone, will Killian explain his rejection of rich and charming Zillah.

It's June 1814, and the royal families of Austria, Russia, and the German states have gathered in London at the Prince Regent's invitation to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of monarchical control throughout Europe. But the festive atmosphere is marred one warm summer evening by the brutal murder of a disgraced British nobleman long thought dead.

Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James have become a formidable family crime-fighting team. But one murderous woman has evaded their grasp. And when they’re called to London’s Olympia Theatre to investigate the strange death of a circus clown, they quickly discover their cunning foe has struck again. Tracking the enigmatic killer through London Zoo, a fancy-dress ball, and a sinister occult organization, the erudite duo stays hot on her heels. Each time they close in, a powerful criminal mastermind intervenes, and she slips through their fingers.

March 1889. Midnight. Six strangers meet for the first time outside the great door of Tewkesbury Abbey. They are searching for the tomb of the medieval crusader knight, Sir Roger de la Pole. What they find inside is unexpected and deeply shocking. They were seeking holy relics. But the body they uncover is barely cold. And Sir Roger’s ancient bones are missing. Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb are called on to solve the crime. They must decipher the strange coded letters on the outside of the Templar's tomb.

In the year of our Lord 1141, August comes in golden as a lion, and two monks ride into the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul bringing with them disturbing news of war...and a mystery.

For years now, readers of the Russell Memoirs have wondered about the tantalizing mentions of Japan. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes had spent three weeks there, between India ( The Game) and San Francisco ( Locked Rooms). The time has finally come to tell that story. It is 1925, and Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes arrive home to find...a stone. A stone with a name, which they last saw in the Tokyo garden of the future emperor of Japan.