Victorian Crime Mystery

In a London hospital, Prudence Barrymore, a talented nurse who had once been one of Florence Nightingale’s angels of mercy in the Crimean War, meets sudden death by strangulation. Private inquiry agent William Monk is engaged to investigate this horrific crime—which intuition tells him was no random stroke of violence by a madman.

Harrow-on-the-Hill, March 1836: In a sense, orphans Ollie, John, and Arthur have always been treasure hunters. The mudlarks have gone from a hardscrabble life scavenging the banks of the Thames for bits and bobs to becoming students at a boarding school outside of London, thanks to the kind and generous intercession of Charles Dickens. But now they're missing—as is, apparently, a treasure map. When Charles arrives at the school, he's hit with another twist—the servant girl who was allegedly in possession of the map has been strangled in the icehouse.

Two bodies have been found in a park in the fashionable London neighborhood of Callander Square. While Inspector Thomas Pitt is fighting to get the square’s aristocratic residents to speak with him, his pretty, well-born wife, Charlotte, decides to do some detective work of her own. Soon she is unearthing secrets in every house on the square, while Thomas tries to discover what would drive a person to murder.

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...

Penrose and Pyke go together like fire and kerosene in this first-in-series Victorian era mystery. Trouble’s brewing in the Devil’s Half Acre. A death in an alleyway, a tragic accident in a factory, rumours of a murderer loose on the streets. It’s enough to give a genteel lady a fit of the vapours. Fortunately, Grace Penrose isn’t one to swoon at the sight of blood. All she wants is the chance to become the first female doctor in the colony. Instead, she must confront the harsh realities of the city’s most notorious sweatshop. When the police prove reluctant to investigate the ...

An abrupt summons to a secret meeting in the highest chambers of White Hall, the seat of the innermost workings of British government, soon informs Sherlock Holmes that a diabolically bold assassin stalks the visiting German Kaiser, grandson of Queen Victoria, and all signs are that this fearless hunter of men plans to launch his strike that very night at a reception following an opera. Thus brought into the matter with only hours to prepare and less time to act, Holmes must make use of his every talent to foil someone who promises to be among the more cunning foes he has faced in his ...

Thomas Pitt, mainstay of Her Majesty’s Special Branch, is summoned to Connaught Square mansion, where the body of a junior diplomat lies huddled in a wheelbarrow. Nearby stands the tenant of the house, the beautiful, notorious Egyptian woman Ayesha Zakhari, who falls under the shadow of suspicion. Pitt’s orders are to protect—at all costs—the good name of the third person in the garden: senior cabinet minister Saville Ryerson. The distinguished public servant, whispered to be Ayesha’s lover, insists that she is as innocent as Pitt himself.

Enter the fog-cloaked past, as Sherlock Holmes undertakes his first case since recovering from an attempt on his life that left him wounded in body and spirit, traveling to the westernmost reaches of Suffolk, where a client from a previous mystery, a retired military man named Colonel Morley, has pleaded for aid in finding his young grandson, who went missing from his bed sometime in the night. Thus do Holmes and Watson venture to a secluded country estate with a long history of hauntings, which members of the staff claim are manifesting once more, centering around the infamous spirit of an...

On a fittingly cold night in the last year of the 19th century, Holmes’ evening is shattered by the intrusion of a Russian diplomat and his entourage, who come bursting into 221B Baker Street, and he soon finds himself pursuing a case of a young lady’s abduction, a crime which must be kept quiet lest its ramifications threaten to take two of the major powers of Europe to the brink of a potentially volatile international crisis. Told not through the pen of Doctor Watson, but from within Holmes’ own mind as the time-sensitive investigation unfolds, The Case of the Russian Ambassador’s...

Step away from the modern world with The Continuing Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes: Omnibus Five, by C. Thorne, a collection of four short stories, a novella, and a bonus vignette, which is found nowhere else but in this volume! Come with us in The Mystery of Wyvern Hall, as a fourteen-year-old girl with a taste for the legendary and fanciful vanishes without a trace from her home in a Medieval manor in the Kentish countryside…. Follow along in The Case of the Kaiser’s Assassin, as Holmes seeks to prevent war, when a diabolically bold assassin stalks the German Emperor on a trip to ...

Come along into a world, where fog obscures London streets, and danger lurks down every alleyway, a time when Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street, and his faithful friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson, set off on some of the most remarkable adventures in the annals of literature! Included in this seventh omnibus in The Continuing Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes are: The Eaters of Men, in which the discovery along the banks of the Thames, near a quaintly bucolic village, of the victim of foul play, leads Sherlock Holmes to question whether it is, in fact, a matter of human cannibalism…...

London, June 1860: When an assassination attempt is made on Queen Victoria, and a petty thief is gruesomely murdered moments later - and only a block away - Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field quickly surmises that these crimes are connected to an even more sinister plot. Was Victoria really the assassin's target? Are those closest to the Crown hiding something? Soon, Field's investigation exposes a shocking conspiracy in which the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species sets off a string of murders, arson, kidnapping, and the pursuit of a diabolical madman.

In 1870s London, Scotland Yard’s famous Detective Department is still in its infancy. Surrounded on all sides by critics and detractors, it has yet to earn its reputation. Lord Riley Rochester, younger son of a marquess, works as one of its first detective inspectors—but his uniformed colleagues view him with suspicion and his immediate superior resents all he stands for. With his career choice frowned upon by his own social class, Riley has his work cut out proving himself. Attacked on all sides, Riley’s only respite comes in the form of attractive widow, Amelia Cosgrove, and his ...

A seamstress with a dark past – who better to solve a murder? Wiltshire, Summer 1845. Alice Beaumont has achieved what other seamstresses can only dream of: dressing the finest ladies of English society. She always keeps her distance, as meddling in others' lives brings nothing but trouble. Now, the Darnwells have invited her to their country estate to dress the future wife of their son. Upon meeting Violet, Alice is tempted to ignore her principles: the bride-to-be appears both too wealthy and too young to be the wife of the arrogant Raymond. Then a murder occurs... Fatal Wedding Night ...

It was a most peculiar murder. A man's body was found in the canal - but the evidence showed that he had drowned in a bathtub. A theater critic known for his savage reviews, the victim had had a full cast of enemies. While Inspector Witherspoon scoured the theater, his housekeeper and unofficial sleuthing partner Mrs. Jeffries uncovered the critic's secret past: a real-life drama more compelling than any stage play.

A forceful young typist arrives at 221B Baker Street on the first of April, 1886, with the alarming news that her employer, an eccentric old professor for whom she’d worked for just over two months, had suddenly vanished without a trace from his home, and to make matters worse, she has discovered the house occupied by three others whom she has never before met, who claim to have resided in the home for over a year, and to know of no professor ever being in residence there. What is the truth of the matter? Whatever has transpired in the seemingly quite ordinary suburban London home? Find ...

Early in the morning of Monday, July 8, 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbors, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate.

Come along as two legends of the Victorian era meet, in The Adventure of the Artful Dodger! As newlywed-to-be Dr. John Watson counts down the remaining fortnight until his wedding to Miss Mary Morstan, Baker Street plays host to a man Holmes admiringly dubs “criminal royalty,” the one-time Artful Dodger, himself. Now well-beyond his long-ago past as a master pickpocket, and known simply as Jack Dawkins, the Dodger comes bearing a warning that a new danger has arisen to the youth of the East End, as the most insidious leader of a gang of child thieves since Fagin himself has taken to ...

No one in 1840s New York likes fires, copper star Timothy Wilde least of all. After a blaze killed his parents and another left him with a terrible scar, he has avoided flames of all kinds. So when a seamstress turned arsonist threatens Robert Symmes, a corrupt tycoon high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Timothy isn’t thrilled that Symmes consults him. His dismay escalates when his audacious and charismatic older brother, Valentine, himself deeply politically entrenched, decides to run against the incumbent, who they suspect is guilty of assault and far darker crimes.

Penrose and Pyke’s wedding dream turns to ashes when the local women’s refuge goes up in flames. Grace Penrose is used to protesters at Lavender House, but she never expected them to set the refuge on fire, especially not on her wedding day. And her mother’s carefully orchestrated wedding plan definitely did not include Charlie Pyke disappearing into an inferno. The discovery of a woman’s body in the smouldering ruins rouses Grace and Charlie’s detective instincts. With marital bliss on their minds, an investigation is the last thing they need. But how can they ignore a murder, ...