Victorian Crime Mystery

In June of 1893, the future Nicholas II travels to London for a royal wedding, bringing with him his private security force and his ballerina mistress, Mathilde Kchessinska. Rumored to be the target of a professional assassin known only as La Sylphide, and the subject of conspiracies against his life by his own family who covet his future throne, Nicholas is protected by not only private security, but the professional forces of both England and Russia.

Who can resist the appeal of a beautiful woman pleading for assistance after an object she held as among her most precious possessions is mysteriously stolen? And what if that woman happens to be the most celebrated actress in Victorian London? Still recovering from a heartbreaking loss that nearly destroyed him, Dr. Watson is called to return to Baker Street as he ventures beside Holmes into a vast West End theater filled with odd characters and strange clues, all in pursuit of a truth that might be less welcomed by the esteemed client than she may care to face. Looming over all are hints ...

Inspector Witherspoon has been assigned another tough case. The latest murder victim has possibly swindled his shareholders out of a huge sum of money. When the businessman is found with a bullet through is chest, all of them are suspects - but no one is telling the truth. It is up to Mrs. Jeffries and the household staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens to crack the case.

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 ...

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...

It’s Christmastime in London, and Sherlock Holmes takes on two cases. The angelic three-year-old child of a wealthy couple is the target of a vicious kidnapper, and a country aristocrat worries that his handsome, favourite son has mysteriously vanished from his London pied à terre. Holmes and Watson, aided by the colourful Heffie O’Malley, slip slide in the ice to ensure a merry Christmas is had by nearly everybody.

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 ...

Welcome fans of Sherlockiana, to The Continuing Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes: Omnibus Four! We hope you’ll enjoy this collection of three short stories, a novella, and a bonus vignette, which is found nowhere else but in this volume, as we return to a time where gas-lights dimly illuminate foggy cobblestone streets….where gangs of child criminals stalk the unwary from the Thames dock yards to the gates of Buckingham Palace….where ruthless blackmailers reside in the shadows, and bribe servants for the secrets of their genteel employers’ lives, all dwelling in a Victorian world, ...

When Mr. Thomas Tapley is found bludgeoned to death in his sitting room, his neighbor, Inspector Benjamin Ross of Scotland Yard, is immediately summoned. Little is known about the elusive gentleman until Mr. Jonathan Tapley, QC, hears of the news, and the truth about his cousin's tragic past slowly begins to emerge. Meanwhile, Ben's wife, Lizzie, is convinced she saw someone following Thomas Tapley on the day he died, and she discovers that he received a mysterious visitor a few days before his death.

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.

A detective mystery novel set in bustling Paddington, London, during the late 19th century. In the heart of Paddington, London, Andrew Hendrickson is a young writer struggling to make ends meet. The pawnshop of Daniel Multenius becomes his lifeline, but he soon finds himself entangled in a web of deception, murder, and intrigue that will keep you on the edge of your seat. When Andrew pawns his watch and later his mother’s rings to stave off financial ruin, he stumbles into a mystery as old as time. Upon discovering Multenius murdered, Andrew is thrust into a perilous situation as a prime ...

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.

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.

Why do the fallen women in The Magdalen House refuge continue to die mysteriously? A devastating fire at Danvers’s ancestral home induces Charles to accept his brother Frederick’s plea for help with his work among fallen women and impoverished orphans in York. Charles soon finds himself struggling to identify a ruthless murderer while Antonia helps feed the women and children living in the asylum Frederick runs. The trial of notorious poisoner William Dove leads to surprising discoveries and sets legal precedent still followed today.

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...

The Ripper Lives: The Living and the Dead (2/10) A city on edge. A killer in the shadows. A crime scene like no other. The slums of Whitechapel reek of despair, a place where violence festers in the damp alleyways and darkness consumes the living as surely as it does the dead. When a mutilated body is discovered in full public view on Thrawl Street, it shatters the uneasy peace that had settled after the Ripper’s reign. But this murder feels different—chaotic, frenzied, and far too exposed. As Inspector Abberline and his secret task force dig deeper, they realize that everyone has ...

London, November 1890. Crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett faces a perfect storm of events. She and her husband Detective Sergeant Barrett are riding on a train that crashes. While rescuing other passengers, they find a woman who's been strangled to death.

Imagine the reaction at 221B Baker Street to a grieving widow’s claim that her late husband has fallen victim to murder, not merely once, but a second time, all within the same week! Thus begins this far-reaching novella, the forty-second title within The Continuing Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes. Venture back to 1880s England, as the world’s foremost detective and his faithful chronicler, seek answers to one of the more confusing cases ever brought to their door. What is the truth in the seeming impossibility of a man who can, not once, but twice be struck down by the cruel arm of death...

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 ...

Lord Charles Danvers, still mourning his lost love Charlotte, hopes to escape from his ghosts at the gala coming-of-age celebrations for the son of his oldest friend. All is jubilation and proper respectability until the evening is shattered by a brutal murder. The police are quick to point to a quarrelsome farmer, but Danvers has his doubts. Is the real culprit much closer to home? And does Danvers owe the greater loyalty to an old friend or to the truth? Then, Danver is even more unsettled by the entrance of the alluring Lady Antonia Hoover. The first in the Lord Danvers Investigates ...