Historical Women Detectives

Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her play Richard of Bordeaux, the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that resonate in a world still haunted by war. But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride - and Tey is plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any in her own works.

When Carson Chance first laid eyes on run-a-way Amy Warren five years ago, he had no idea that she would open his eyes to life and love again. Carson’s history of PTSD and a gunshot wound broke them apart, but now she is back in his life and attending law school. Carson, desperate to hang on to what they had, struggles with Amy’s new life. When Carson and a rival male law student clash at a local bar, Amy has doubts that Carson didn’t start the fight, and tension between them escalates. Unable to put their dysfunctional past behind them, Amy pushes Carson away.Picking up the pieces of...

On his death bed, Lord Pembroke took great care to try to ensure the future of his beautiful, unconventional niece, Lady Jane. Her debutante ball featured the most eligible bachelors of London society. But when the night of the dance arrives, things do not go as planned.

Penrose and Pyke are under siege. A mischievous gossip, a series of robberies, and now a callous murder and a looming epidemic. How much worse can it get? When a shopkeeper is killed during a robbery, Detective Charlie Pyke is desperate to track down the killer for reasons close to his heart. If only it was that simple. A tell-all article in the local ladies’ journal threatens both his investigation and his private life. Charlie needs Grace Penrose to stand by him, but she has her hands full preventing a deadly outbreak of measles. The rash of clues only starts to make sense when they ...

It is the crowning day of twenty-five-year-old Bess Tudor's life as she returns from exile to become England's queen. But even as her magnificent procession wends its way to Westminster Palace, a shot rings out, muffled by the jostling crowd. Within moments of becoming England's ruler, Elizabeth learns of the brutal murder of a highborn lady of the court, the sister of one of her dearest friends.

Penrose and Pyke’s honeymoon takes a dangerous turn when they investigate the most notorious robbery in Central Otago history. Grace and Charlie had been looking forward to a blissful break away from their hectic lives. Instead, watchful eyes follow their every move from the moment they step off the stagecoach in Clyde. Rumour has it that the Pyke family knows more about the robbery than they are telling. With a fortune in gold still missing, and destitute miners on the prowl, the tranquillity of their honeymoon is about to be shattered. But greed is not the only sin in town. Behind the ...

Claudine Burroughs, a volunteer in Hester Monk's clinic for sick and injured prostitutes, no longer expects closeness with her coldly ambitious husband and dreads the holidays. Then, at a glittering Yuletide gala, she meets the attractive poet Dai Tregarron, and suddenly her spirits lift. But an hour later, this fascinating man is enmeshed in a nightmare - accused of killing a young streetwalker who had been smuggled into the party.

Broke, unemployed barista Halley Greer is shocked when she inherits an Art Deco movie palace from the great uncle she remembers meeting once as a child. She moves to the charming tourist town of Utopia Springs, Arkansas to claim her legacy. In addition to the timeworn theater, she discovers she’s also inherited a trash-heaped apartment, family secrets, her uncle’s friends, a stealthy calico kitty—and an adversary. With a whole latte help from her new friends, the feisty barista fixes up and re-opens the theater as a coffee and wine bar, showing classic films. She generates some steam ...

Never underestimate the power of a good hat... or a sharp hatpin. 9-Book Series! Paris 1917. Sent by the War Office to follow the notorious Fredrick Fredricks, file clerk turned secret agent Fiona Figg is under strict orders not to get too close and not to wear any of her usual "get-ups." But what self-respecting British spy can resist a good disguise? Within hours of her arrival in Paris, Fiona is up to her fake eyebrows in missing maids, jewel thieves, double agents, and high treason. When Fiona is found dressed as a bellboy holding a bloody paperknife over the body of a dead countess, ...

Charlotte Pitt’s mother, Caroline, travels with her young husband, Joshua Fielding, and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, where Dracula first touched English soil. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of Dracula by the daughter of Whitby millionaire Charles Netheridge, but the amateurish script produces a disastrous first read-through. As tempers flare and wind and snow swirl around Netheridge’s lonely hilltop mansion, a black-cloaked stranger emerges from the storm - an eerily opportune arrival, for this enigmatic figure, one Anton Ballin, turns out to be a theatrical genius.

Nothing ever happens in August, so Kate goes off on a long-overdue holiday to Whitby to visit her friend Alma who works there as a fortune teller. She's been looking forward to a relaxing seaside sojourn, but, upon arrival, she discovers that Alma's daughter, Felicity, has disappeared, leaving her mother a note and the pawn ticket for their only asset: a watch-guard. What makes this more intriguing is that the jeweler who advanced Felicity the 30 shillings is Jack Phillips, Alma's current gentleman friend.

The year is 1901, and the death of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch has sent the entire British Empire into mourning. But for Lady Emily and her dashing husband, Colin, the grieving is cut short as another death takes center stage. A body has been found in the Tower of London, posed to look like the murdered medieval king Henry VI. When a second dead man turns up in London's exclusive Berkeley Square, his mutilated remains staged to evoke the violent demise of Edward II, it becomes evident that the mastermind behind the crimes plans to strike again.

Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice - if he doesn't track her down first.

CHAPPELL AND LILY WHITE LIE ARE RECIPIENTS OF COMMENDATION FROM OHIO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR LITERARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS "Simply brilliant. Descriptiveness around every turn." --The Baltimore Sun In Lily White Lie, engravings on a pocketwatch, cryptic messages, Easter lilies, and sidelined spy Bret Kilmore combine to thrust historian Wrenn Grayson into the mysterious world of symbolism. A worried Wrenn connects the messages to her longtime love Gideon and his father. Contact is impossible. Gideon deer hunts deep in the West Virginia wilderness. His father, a prominent banker, vanished ...

Welcome to the Palace movie theater! Now Showing: Philandering husbands, ghostly sidekicks, and a murder or two. When Nora Paige’s movie-star husband leaves her for his latest co-star, she flees Hollywood to take refuge in San Francisco at the Palace, a historic movie theater that shows the classic films she loves. There she finds a band of misfit film buffs who care about movies (almost) as much as she does. She also finds some shady financial dealings and the body of a murdered stranger. Oh, and then there’s Trixie, the lively ghost of a 1930’s usherette who appears only to Nora and...

Penrose and Pyke must put aside their own problems in a race against the clock to rescue a kidnapped infant. When private detective Charlie Penrose Pyke is asked to investigate the kidnapping of a child, his instinct is to refuse. As their first wedding anniversary approaches, Charlie fears for the fragile state of his wife, Grace, for whom this heart-breaking case could be the final straw. But how can he let the desperate parents down, when they have struggled for years to conceive only to have their baby snatched away? Besides, Charlie is their only hope, because the ransom note threatens...

Rumor has linked Queen Elizabeth I to her master of the horse, Robin Dudley. As gossip would have it, only his ailing wife, Amy, prevents marriage between Dudley and the Queen. To quell the idle tongues at court, the Queen dispatches Ursula Blanchard to tend to the sick woman's needs. But not even Ursula can prevent the "accident" that takes Amy's life. Did she fall or was she pushed? Was Ursula a pawn of Dudley and the Queen?

Charming, sleepy, Wallingford Heights. Shattered by a chilling triple homicide. Eastern Massachusetts, 1893 Everyday life, disrupted. A town's secrets exposed. Wallingford Heights shattered by a chilling triple homicide. One of America's first salons - The Vine, a hub of activity, with falling hair and flowing information. Estelle, Chasity, Marilou and Clara—known for their impeccable hairstyling and listening skills. Four spirited women, unravel the town's dark mysteries. From gossip at the salon to pillow-talk whispers in the night. Amateur sleuths who uncover chicken thieves, window ...

1937. War with Germany is dawning, and a civil war already raging in Spain. Split across political lines, the six Mitford sisters are more divided than ever. Meanwhile their former maid Louisa Cannon is now a private detective, working with her policeman husband Guy Sullivan.

When Sidney Grice journeys to Yorkshire to solve a mysterious death, March Middleton, his ward, is left to her own devices in a London swarming with danger and vice. Curiosity, as we know, has a dark edge. So when an intriguing letter leads March to the gates of the palatial Saturn Villa and into the nightmarish world of her long-lost uncle, it could be the beginning of an end for all.