Historical Thrillers Mystery Fiction

As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything - beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses - but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets.

World-renowned adventuress Beryl Helliwell cited for "reckless" motoring? Why, the very idea! Constable Gibbs just has it in for her. The solution? Charm the magistrate, of course. But days after Beryl's appearance before the bench, she and Edwina pay a visit to the magistrate only to find his home ransacked and the man himself lying dead at the bottom of a grand staircase. Given the state of the house, his death appears to be connected to a rash of robberies in the village.

Cadfael's return to his Welsh homeland for a visit proves a rather discomfiting homecoming when an honorable nobleman turns up in a patch of forest with an arrow embedded in his chest. There are questions about the arrow, the man's daughter needs Cadfael's help, and a very odd burial takes place.

After her foray into murder investigation, Lady Kiera Darby must journey to Edinburgh with her family so that her pregnant sister can be close to proper medical care. But the city is full of many things Kiera isn't quite ready to face: the society ladies keen on judging her, her fellow investigator (and romantic entanglement) Sebastian Gage, and ultimately, another deadly mystery.

From the authors of the best-selling series "Cherringham". This compilation contains episodes 1-3. "A shot in the dark": Sussex, England, 1929. Mydworth is a sleepy English market town just 50 miles from London. But things are about to liven up there considerably, when young Sir Harry Mortimer returns home from his government posting in Cairo, with his unconventional American wife - Kat Reilly. "A little Night murder": A young poacher is found shot dead in the woods of a grand estate near Mydworth. A sad accident it would seem.

Autumn 1942. Hitler's legions have swept across Europe; France has fallen; Churchill and the English stand isolated on their island. In North Africa, Rommel and his Panzers have routed the British Eighth Army and stand poised to overrun Egypt, Suez, and the oil fields of the Middle East.

London, 1888. As colorful and unfettered as the butterflies she collects, Victorian adventuress Veronica Speedwell can't resist the allure of an exotic mystery - particularly one involving her enigmatic colleague, Stoker. His former expedition partner has vanished from an archaeological dig with a priceless diadem unearthed from the newly discovered tomb of an Egyptian princess. This disappearance is just the latest in a string of unfortunate events that have plagued the controversial expedition, and rumors abound that the curse of the vengeful princess has been unleashed as the shadowy figure of Anubis himself stalks the streets of London.

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.

Once a privileged heiress, Annabelle Ross is now struggling to hold her home and her life together through the devastation of the War Between the States. But with a forced marriage and a desolate future on the horizon, her hopes are beginning to dwindle. When she discovers an encrypted note on a dying soldier, she seizes the opportunity to use it to deliver a message of her own. Instead, she’s mistaken for a spy and captured. Can she unravel a conspiracy before her secrets cost a man his life? The complete trilogy of exciting Accidental Spy novels.

Newly returned from finishing school, Lady Juliette Thorndike is ready to debut in London society. Due to her years away, she hasn't spent much time with her parents, and sees them only as the flighty, dilettante couple the other nobles love. But when they disappear, she discovers she never really knew them at all. They've been living double lives as government spies-and they're only the latest in a long history of espionage that is the family's legacy.

The weekend was supposed to be an enjoyable time with her family at the neo-Gothic manor of Lord and Lady Kershaw, but when the gamekeeper is murdered, Cleo can’t rest until the killer is caught. As a witness herself, she’s frustrated with the incompetence of the local police who lay the blame on a man who conveniently disappeared. When she realizes their ineptitude is a result of Lord Kershaw’s influence, she focuses her investigation on the earl and his family, against the wishes of her uncle.

When Brendan Doyle is flown from America to London to give a lecture on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, little does he expect that he will soon be traveling through time and meeting the poet himself. But Brendan could do without being stranded penniless in the teeming, thieving London of 1810.

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.

In this Edgar Award-nominated mystery, John Maddox Roberts takes listeners back to a Rome filled with violence and evil. Vicious gangs ruled the streets of Crassus and Pompey, routinely preying on plebeian and patrician alike. So the garroting of a lowly ex-slave and the disembowelment of a foreign merchant in the dangerous Subura district seemed of little consequence to the Roman hierarchy.

It's late summer on Guadalcanal, and the Japanese are getting deadlier and more aggressive by the day. Hemmed in and short on supplies, the US Marine Corps fights ferociously to maintain their tenuous hold on Henderson Field. Major Al Decker, part of an elite unit known as the Marine Raiders, has put together a small crack team of battle-hardened men. Tasked with surveillance, hit and run attacks, and any other dirty job that’s required, it’s Decker’s Raiders that must venture out into the deadly tropical jungles and face down marauding Japanese soldiers around every corner.

A former television producer and journalist who has covered assignments from Washington to the Middle East, Silva fills The Marching Season with the political suspense that churns through present-day Northern Ireland. In 1998, as the Good Friday peace accords go into effect, world leaders hope for an end to the bloody Irish troubles, but terrorists are moving to shatter that fragile peace through a series of brutal assassinations. CIA Officer Michael Osbourne’s job is to stop October, their deadliest hit man.

A killer is on the loose in the Arizona Territory. One by one, Tonto Basin ranchers are being murdered for their livestock - and the Cattle Raisers' Association has hired two range detectives to catch the culprit. From the looks of them, Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman are just another pair of high-plains drifters. But with their razor-sharp detective skills and rare talent for trouble, they're the last remaining hope for one young cowboy who's been arrested for the murders. Stovepipe and Wilbur believe the boy is innocent.

In 1920s England, private detective Henry Fleming is invited to spend the weekend at Watermead Manor to celebrate the marriage of Gerald and Ida Langley. The handsome millionaire had been instantly smitten with the glamorous Ida and, after a whirlwind romance, they had married in secret. Upon returning to England, however, it soon becomes apparent that not everyone is pleased or excited about the marriage and very soon accusations begin to fly about Ida's motives: Does she really love him, or is she just an opportunistic gold-digger?

One of the best-loved of mystery writers weaves another tale of intrigue featuring Amelia Peabody and her archaeologist husband Radcliffe. This time the willful and witty duo must catch a murderer at an excavation of an ancient Egyptian tomb in Luxor.

When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her black sheep Uncle Jake. But she hasn’t heard from him in many years, and she assumed that his ne’er-do-well ways had brought him to a bad end somewhere—until he presents himself at her Sussex door. Yes, Jake is back, and with a load of problems for his clever niece. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first place: He was involved—somehow—in the infamous disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from an impregnable safe in Dublin Castle.