Historical Thriller

Elizabeth II's coronation is looming, but DI Edgar Stephens is busy investigating the death of a local fortune-teller. Meanwhile, his old pal, the magician Max Mephisto, is rehearsing for his television debut, a Coronation Day variety show. But upon hearing that their wartime commander, Colonel Cartwright, has been found dead in his flat, the two men join forces to find out what happened. While Max is stuck in rehearsals, Edgar finds himself heading to New York, hot on the trail of a mesmerist he's sure has valuable information for them.

RITA Award finalist and Christy Award winner Julie Klassen delivers historical romances brimming with the eloquence and intensity of Jane Austen. In an abandoned gatehouse on an old estate, Mariah Aubrey lives in seclusion. She supports herself by writing novels in secret—at a time when such writing is considered improper and unladylike. Soon the wealthy and ambitious Captain Bryant leases the estate and is intrigued by the beautiful girl in the gatehouse.

This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

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....

Dorset is the latest setting for the talents of Inspector Ian Rutledge, a veteran of the First World War still haunted, literally, by his actions. Indeed, his personal ghost only serves to complicate things as his inner doubts blend into the trauma of the case.

Rosalind is pleased when she's invited to Cassel House to help her friend Louisa prepare for her upcoming wedding. But that's not the only event on her agenda. The trip will also afford Rosalind the chance to see Devon Winterbourne, the newly minted duke of Casselmaine. Devon and Rosalind were on the verge of betrothal before the infamous Thorne family scandal derailed their courtship. Now Rosalind wonders if there's a chance their love might reignite.

Former trapeze artist Amalie Vaughn moved to Burning Cove to reinvent herself, but things are not going well. After spending her entire inheritance on a mansion with the intention of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast, she learns too late that the villa is said to be cursed. When the first guest, Dr. Norman Pickwell, is murdered by his robot invention during a sold-out demonstration, rumors circulate that the curse is real.

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.

When the body of a night watchman is found sprawled in the shadow of a rare 19th-Dynasty mummy case, panic ensues. For no one doubts that the guard's untimely demise is the work of an ancient Egyptian curse. No one, that is, except that tart-tongued Victorian Egyptologist, Amelia Peabody, whose remarkable talent for criminal investigation has frustrated villains from London to Cairo.

Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense fan base for his Cork O’Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable - and to take on a maturity beyond his years.

The library holds not only hidden knowledge but also the most unsettling secret the world has ever known, a secret the Templars hope to use to control humankind's destiny. Five keys are needed to access the library-to find them, Ezio must travel to the troubled city of Constantinople, where a growing army of Templars threatens to destabilize the Ottoman Empire.Walking in the footsteps of his predecessor, Altaïr, Ezio must defeat the Templars for the final time. The stakes have never been higher, and what started as a pilgrimage has become a race against time.

Rick Yancey’s first gothic suspense tale, The Monstrumologist, earned him a prestigious Michael L. Printz Award. The second installment of this acclaimed series, Curse of the Wendigo, finds young Will Henry on the hunt for a supernatural beast plaguing New England in the late 1800s. Will and his mentor, the domineering Dr. Warthrop, are enlisted to help the doctor’s former fiancée. It seems her husband has been lost in the Canadian wilderness.

Cambridgeshire, September 1813: Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods are lured to an isolated estate in the deadly marshland surrounding Ely, to investigate a murder.

Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a suitable husband. It's certainly not her niece's devilishly handsome partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian's eye for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico's, she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De Vries are fake.

A leper's daughter is found in the well of a dying hamlet, and the only suspect has fled into Feckenham Forest. But the sun is setting, and Warwickshire's sheriff is hunting his new crowner. That sends Sir Faucon de Ramis and Brother Edmund, his prickly clerk, racing for a nearby abbey only to meet the man he least wishes to see at the abbey gates. Before long, Faucon finds himself riding into the dark at Sir Alain's side as they hunt for yet another lost innocent.

Powerful, prosperous, and expanding ever farther into the untamed world, the Roman Empire has reached its zenith under the rule of the beloved Emperor Trajan. But neither Trajan nor his reign can last forever...

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.

At a summons from Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy, midwife Sarah Brandt arrives at the elegant home of famed magnetic healer Edmund Blackwell to find his wife in labor - and the good doctor dead from an apparent suicide. Only Malloy sees what no one else wants to: that Blackwell was murdered in his own home. After a successful delivery, the Blackwell baby falls mysteriously ill.

Nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at Evenwood to become a lady's maid to the 26th Baroness Tansor. But she is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l'Orme, to uncover the secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal and to set right a past injustice in which her own life is bound up. At Evenwood, she meets Lady Tansor's two dashing sons, Perseus and Randolph.

Jerusalem and the Sinai desert, AD 55. In the turbulent aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus, agents of the Roman Empire receive information about a pilgrim bearing an incendiary letter from a religious fanatic calling himself Paul the Apostle to insurrectionists in Corinth. What's in the letter could bring down an empire. The Romans hire a former legionary, a solitary man-at-arms named Telamon to intercept the letter and destroy the courier. But once he meets the courier, Telamon experiences an extraordinary conversion.