International Detectives

In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners eagerly opened their Strand magazines-- anticipating the detective's next adventure-- only to find the unthinkable: his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning -- crowds sported black armbands in grief -- and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin.

At the Central Criminal Court, an eager crowd awaits the trial of Victoria Lamartine, an active participant in the Resistance during the war. She is now employed at the Family Hotel in Soho, where Major Eric Thoseby has been found murdered. Thoseby is believed to have fathered Lamartine's child, and the prosecution insist that his death is revenge for his abandonment of Lamartine and her arrest by the Gestapo. A last-minute change in Lamartine's defence counsel grants solicitor Nap Rumbold just eight days to prove her innocence.

Tommy and Tuppence, two people flat broke and out of work, are restless for excitement. They embark on a daring business scheme - Young Adventurers Ltd. - "willing to do anything, go anywhere." But their first assignment, for the sinister Mr. Whittington, draws them into a diabolical, political conspiracy. Under the eye of the elusive, ruthless Mr. Brown, they find themselves plunged into more danger than they ever imagined.

About the best that can be said of wealthy Maggie Baird is that inside her middle-aged body, there still beats the heart of a beautiful tart. So when her car catches fire with Maggie in it, there are five likely suspects right on the premises of her luxurious Highlands cottage. Lochdubh police constable Hamish Macbeth has to question Maggie's timid niece and four former lovers, one of whom Maggie had intended to pick for her husband. All five are equally poor - with ample motive and opportunity to monkey with Maggie's car.

It is 1890, and in the days before Christmas, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are visited at Baker Street by a new client. Eve Allerthorpe, eldest daughter of a grand but somewhat eccentric Yorkshire-based dynasty, is greatly distressed, as she believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her late mother told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen the creature from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive mysterious parcels of birch twigs, the Black Thurrick’s calling card.

No one escapes Dante’s villa. Not alive. From Kenneth R. Overman, award-winning author of A Lion in Spring, comes another gripping standalone thriller of espionage, vengeance, and survival, in which a college professor is the only thing standing between a brutal trafficker and mass murder. While leading a student trip through Spain, Professor Nathan Radcliff stumbles into a nightmare. A terrified Romanian girl begs for help, and Nathan, without knowing it, disrupts one of the largest human trafficking networks in Europe. Mistaken for an undercover agent, he’s abducted and taken to the ...

Maurice Questing was left to die in a pool of boiling mud. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted - if he wasn't a spy himself.

Inspector John Rebus has messed up badly this time, so badly that he's been sent to a kind of reform school for damaged cops. While there among the last-chancers known as "resurrection men," he joins a covert mission to gain evidence of a drug heist orchestrated by three of his classmates. But the group has been assigned an unsolved murder that may have resulted from Rebus's own mistake.

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians, Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating.

It was winter. Cold and clear, a different sort of day for this coast where the westerly winds usually blew rain and cloud. Detective Inspector Matthew Venn is standing by his kitchen window when he first spots them. Two young girls, facing away from him, seemingly staring towards something in the distance. They are holding hands, and they are alone.

A winter weekend ends in snowbound disaster in a novel which remains a favourite among Marsh readers. It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. They would be the characters in a drama that he would devise. It ended in snowbound disaster. Everyone had an alibi - and most had motives as well. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, when he finally arrived, knew it all hung on Thomas, the dancing footman....

A brilliant amateur sleuth – much like Miss Marple – falls to her death on the staircase of her old grand hotel. The police believe it was an accident. But her granddaughter is convinced: it was murder. After all, her grandmother was working on a dangerous case. Penny Küfer, still in training to become a licensed detective, is sent to uncover the truth – in the family's remote, crumbling grand hotel that hides more than just dust and cobwebs. A break-in at the dead woman’s archive, strange long-term guests, whispers of hidden diamonds … the case quickly spirals out of control. ...

For years the boglands of Northern Europe have given up bodies of the long-deceased. Bodies that are thousands of years old, uncannily preserved. Bodies with strange injuries that suggest ritual torture and human sacrifice. When a corpse is found in a bog in Galway, Cormac Reilly assumes the find is historical. But closer examination reveals a more recent story. The dead man is Thaddeus Grey, a local secondary school principal who disappeared two years prior.

On a beautiful morning in mid-May, the body of a young woman is found in one of Notting Hill's private gardens. To passersby, the pretty girl in the white dress looks as if she's sleeping. But Reagan Keating has been murdered, and the lead detective, DI Kerry Boatman, turns to Gemma James for help. She and Gemma worked together on a previous investigation, and Gemma has a personal connection to the case: Reagan was the nanny of a child who attends the same dance studio as Toby, Gemma, and Kincaid's son.

Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news—the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger—with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophesy, and to protect the three women if he can.

A new assignment for Penny Küfer! Has Niní Delight, the head of a luxury lingerie chain, really taken her own life with arsenic? The young woman had everything one could wish for: the villa of her dreams, professional success, a famous burlesque diva for a sister and, on top of that, a mysterious new lover. Who’d want to end such a life in this way? The police have ruled out foul play. But—as Penny will soon discover—nothing is what it seems in the world of silk, French lace, and glamour...

Along the picturesque Belon River, home of the world famous oyster beds, between steep cliffs, ominous forests, and the Atlantic Ocean, a stubborn elderly film actress discovers a corpse. By the time Commissaire Dupin arrives at the scene, the body has disappeared. A little while later, he receives a phone call from the mystical hills of Monts d'Arree, where legends of fairies and the devil abound: Another unidentified body has turned up. Dupin quickly realizes this may be his most difficult and confounding case yet.

In the 17th installment in Peter Lovesey's timeless British detective series, Peter Diamond digs deep into Bath history to ferret out the secrets of one of its most famous (and scandalous) icons: Richard "Beau" Nash, who might have been the victim of a centuries-old murder.

It's nearly Christmas in Oxford, and Detective Inspector Bridget Hart is enjoying a rare day off at Oxford's Christmas Market. A ghost tour seems like a fun way to round off the day. Until, that is, a brutal murder brings the evening to a tragic close. Torn between work and family commitments over the festive season, Bridget soon discovers that the ghost of Christmas past is reaching out to the present with fatal consequences.

For the Engstrom family, the adventure of living in a ghost town with a huge mansion, saloon, jail cell, and its very own mystery is bittersweet as they struggle with inspiring determination to carry on after a tragic loss. This includes: Home to the Valley Treasures Found Valley Secrets Home to the Valley Julie Engstrom knows that her family needs something different…a different place, different people, different everything as they all struggle to deal with the loss that has changed their lives forever. The last thing she expected was a huge and unexpected windfall to make it possible. ...