Mystery England

With high season behind them, ballerina on-the-mend Allie Larkin and Aunt Gully are finally lying low. But then an unexpected guest arrives at the lobster shack: a crustacean so huge he's dubbed Lobzilla around Mystic Bay and on social media. Soon, with everyone showing up for a peek in their tank, Allie and Aunt Gully have more on their plate than they can handle.

A rival is bidding to buy Myles Devereux's business. A price is agreed. Then the attacks on his person and property begin. Can Myles Devereux find out who is trying to destroy his business? Is it his rival, Garrison Bennett? Has their rocky, unwritten truce come to an end? Devereux, a London gangster with a string of ale houses, brothels, and a lucrative protection racket, is both successful and feared. He plays on his distant ties with Edward Courtney, a one-time Plantagenet contender for the throne, and styles himself as royalty amongst the filth of London. Business is good and running ...

Charlotte Pitt's sister, Emily, has been accused of murdering her wayward but wealthy husband. Now Charlotte and police inspector Thomas Pitt must breach a formidable uppercrust barrier to prove Emily's innocence. Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries are rich and suspenseful journeys into a world filled with impeccable manners and intrigue.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

An American president who will do anything to win reelection...An Iranian leader who will stop at nothing to bring about apocalypse...An ancient evil, only waiting to be reborn....High in the Alborz Mountains of northwestern Iran, an archaeological team disappears. American citizens are among the missing...With the presidential election only months away, President Roger Hancock authorizes a covert CIA mission into the mountains of Iran. Their objective: rescue the archaeologists and uncover the truth.

Marian Stamford moves to her dream home: a snug little cottage in a Dorset village where nothing ever happens. She only wants a quiet life, a home for her unlikely family of two nieces and one troublesome kitten. Before long, things take a darker turn. A man breaks out of prison, leaving the villagers rattled. What are they afraid of? Marian isn’t one for idle gossip. But she can’t ignore the telltale signs that someone has been sneaking into her garden at night.

Theft, extortion, homicide — there’s no end to the talents of the new men in photographer Sonny Littlefield’s life. Ever since she moved to the strawberry and sheep farm that she inherited from her biological father, her problems have been piling up: her cousins keep robbing her house, she’s rapidly going broke, and she hasn’t had a date in months. Her top priority is figuring out who left a skeleton hand and threatening note in her ramshackle barn. Somebody in Gracious, Maine, is turning human remains into playthings, and it’s all Sonny can do to keep from ending up a pile of ...

On a warm summer's day by the English seaside, 23-year-old Freya spies a pale, pillared house: Byrne Hall. Before she can think twice, she's stepped inside to an ornate foyer featuring a striking portrait that evokes her late sister, Stella, whose untimely fall from a cliff years before still haunts Freya and her father. When an inexplicable longing leads her back to Byrne Hall several weeks later, she meets Cory, a handsome and enigmatic young artist who remains in the house to care for his ailing mother.

Fourth in the series of Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mysteries, Anne Perry's Resurrection Row explores the dark undercurrents that run through the lives of the idle rich in Victorian England. After a wonderful night at the theatre, Thomas and Charlotte find themselves confronted with a corpse in the driver's seat of a cab. Even more shocking, it is the body of a peer who had been decently buried the week before.

Adopted as a child into a privileged family, Philippa Palfrey fantasizes that she is the daughter of an aristocrat and a parlor maid. The terrifying truth about her parents and a long-ago murder is only the first in a series of shocking betrayals. Philippa quickly learns that those who delve into the secrets of the past must be on guard when long-buried horrors begin to stir.

Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost - she's the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.

In London 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is just beginning to take off, and the proprietors, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, are in need of a bigger office and a secretary to handle the growing demand. Unfortunately, they don’t yet have the necessary means. So when a woman arrives - a cousin of Gwen’s - with an interesting and quite remunerative proposition, they two of them are all ears. The cousin, one Lady Matheson, works for the queen in “some capacity” and is in need of some discreet investigation.

On a spring morning in 1951, 11-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother, Harriet. Yet upon the train’s arrival in the English village of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later, he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd. Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia? Back home at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ crumbling estate, Flavia puts her sleuthing skills to the test.

A Cotswold industrialist vanishing off the face of the earth, a heat-affected widow on her first vacation, a female archaeologist encountering a secret Brotherhood. Cairo, June 1896 Lady Catherine Lowther is simply irresistible. But when Catherine announces her cousin Imogene must vacation with her at the famous Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, Imogene fights the ludicrous proposal with tooth and nail. Finally, back in her own house in Landdulton and still mourning Thaddeus, her constable husband, all Imogene wants is to be left alone. But does she really? Cairo is hot, hoity-toity, and ...

Stiles Island is a wealthy and exclusive enclave separated by a bridge from the Massachusetts coast town of Paradise. James Macklin sees Stiles Island as the ultimate investment opportunity: all he needs to do is invade the island, blow the bridge, and loot the island. To realize his investment, Macklin, along with his devoted girlfriend, Faye, assembles a crew of fellow ex-cons - all experts in their fields - including Wilson Cromartie, a fearsome Apache. James Macklin is a bad man - a very bad man. And Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow, is even worse. As Macklin plans his crime, Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone has his hands full. He faces romantic entanglements in triplicate: his ex-wife Jenn, is in the Paradise jail for assault, he's begun a new relationship with a Stiles Island realtor named Marcy Campbell, and he's still sorting out his feelings for attorney Abby Taylor. When Macklin's attack on Stiles Island is set in motion, both Marcy and Abby are put in jeopardy. As the casualties mount, it's up to Jesse to keep both women from harm.

Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death.

Chase has two compelling reasons for returning to England—a group walk along the famed Coast to Coast trail in the picturesque Lake District, and a chance to further his relationship with Mike, the handsome Devonshire coroner he met on his last trip. The walkers, including Chase’s dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau, assemble at a Cumbrian hotel and begin their adventure with the traditional “baptism of the boots” in St. Bee’s Bay. But they’ve barely begun traveling eastward with their genial guide than the group dynamic turns unexpectedly rocky.

The setting itself is elemental P. D. James: the bleak coast of East Anglia, where atop a sweep of low cliffs stands the small theological college of St. Anselm’s. On the shore not far away, smothered beneath a fall of sand, lies the body of one of the school’s young ordinands. He is the son of Sir Alred Treves, a hugely successful and flamboyant businessman who is accustomed to getting what he wants—and in this case what he wants is Commander Adam Dalgliesh to investigate his son’s death.

The year is 1862 and murderous desires are simmering in England. Nineteen-year-old Sarah Bonetta Forbes (Sally), once a princess of the Egbado Clan, desires one thing above all else: revenge against the British Crown and its system of colonial "humanitarianism," which stole her dignity and transformed her into royal property. From military men to political leaders, she’s vowed to ruin all who’ve had a hand in her afflictions. The top of her list? Her godmother, Britain’s mighty monarch, Queen Victoria herself.

There’s something nasty at the Institute… When Constance Wright took a job as secretary, she expected typing and filing. But with unconventional researchers working on everything from photographing ghosts to building the Giant Walking War Machine, the Institute isn't your usual workplace. Then she discovers a trail of clues – clues that may lead her to a fortune, if she can find it. And a killer is already on the hunt...