Victorian Thriller

Victorian London was notorious for its pickpockets. But in the country houses of the elite, gentleman burglars, art thieves and con men preyed on the rich and titled. Wealthy victims—with their pride and reputation at stake—would never go to the police. What they needed was a society insider, one of their own, a person of discretion and finely tuned powers of observation.

Sebastian Cynster knows time is running out. If he doesn't choose a wife soon, his female relatives will line up to assist him. Yet the current debutantes do not appeal. Where is he to find the right lady to be his marchioness? Then Drake Varisey, eldest son of the Duke of Wolverstone, asks for Sebastian's aid.

Exclusively from Audible. The Secret Agent is based on an actual attempt made in 1894 to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. A labyrinth of greed, corruption, and betrayal, it is the most darkly humorous of all Conrad's tales. It follows a European secret agent, Adolf Verloc, 'a London shop owner' with anarchist leanings who becomes reluctantly involved in a plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Full of great characters, melodramatic irony and psychological intrigue the tale is far from simple....

As "Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective," Charlotte Holmes has solved murders and found missing individuals. But she has never stolen a priceless artwork - or rather, made away with the secrets hidden behind a much-coveted canvas. But Mrs. Watson is desperate to help her old friend recover those secrets and Charlotte finds herself involved in a fever-paced scheme to infiltrate a glamorous Yuletide ball where the painting is one handshake away from being sold and the secrets a bare breath from exposure.

Inspector Thomas Pitt is asked to reopen a three-year-old murder case which occurred in London's luxurious Hanover Close. With his wellborn wife, Charlotte, to aid him in penetrating the well-known reserve of high society, the inquisitive Pitts discover a shocking and deadly secret. Millions of ardent fans relish Anne Perry's highly atmospheric mysteries, set in Victorian London.

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.

Coronation Day, 1902. Charles and Kate Sheridan are pleased to be witness to the crowning of their king. Expatriate author Jack London is also watching the festivities—but with a more skeptical eye. He has come to London to write an exposé of the East End slums—and the coronation has not tempered his disdain for the monarchy. This special day takes a sinister turn when an anarchist accidentally blows himself up with a bomb meant for the king.

Newlyweds Charles and Kate Sheridan host an auto exhibition at Kate's ancestral home that's attended by Europe's foremost investors and inventors. But competition, speed, and money—more explosive than gasoline—are deadly for one auto builder! Now the amateur sleuths must unravel the mystery before the carnage spreads...

In The Limehouse Text, Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn discover a pawn ticket among the effects of Barker's late assistant, leading them to London's Chinese district, Limehouse. There they retrieve an innocent-looking book that proves to be a rare and secret text stolen from a Nanking monastery, containing lethal martial arts techniques forbidden in the West.

When Charlotte Pitt, well-born wife of Thomas Pitt, the police investigator, learned of her mother's distress in losing a locket with a compromising picture, she did not know it was the beginning of several bizarre events that would end in sudden death. For hidden behind the sumptuous elegance of Ruthland Place were terrible secrets. Secrets so horrifying that only murder could conceal them. And only the dogged persistence of Charlotte and Thomas could reveal them.

At the request of Her Majesty's government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment - he's to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador's head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island - a boat - has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed.

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.

London, 1851, and the Great Exhibition is on. A soaring success despite months of dour predictions, it is the event of the year, on front pages and wagging tongues the world over—and Miss Kara Levett is thrilled to be in the middle of it. The daughter of a baron and an exhibitor herself, she happily demonstrates her elaborate automatons and case clocks to the crowds. But her situation grows perilous when a man is murdered in the Crystal Palace and she becomes the prime suspect.

Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England's premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, he's developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history. But one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker's office with an offer.

Callander Square is the second of Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mysteries. Full of well-drawn and convincing characters, Callander Square offers a finely crafted recreation of Victorian England. The bodies of two newborn babies have been found in a park in the fashionable London neighborhood of Callander Square.

After feigning her own death in Cornwall to escape from Moriarty’s perilous attention, Charlotte Holmes goes into hiding. But then she receives a tempting offer: Find a dossier the crown is desperately seeking, and she might be able to go back to a normal life. Her search leads her aboard the RMS Provence. But on the night Charlotte makes her move to retrieve the dossier, in the midst of a terrifying storm in the Bay of Biscay, a brutal murder takes place on the ship.

Wolcott Balestier, the representative of an American book publisher, arrived in London on a singular mission—to contract with English authors for their latest works. When Balestier disappears on the streets of London one day, his great friend - Rudyard Kipling—bursts into Enola's office looking for help in finding him. Brash and unwilling to hire a young woman, instead he turns to Sherlock Holmes. Convinced that evil has befallen Balestier, at the hands of rival American publishers who pirate the works of English authors, he sets the elder Holmes on the trail.

Vera Sorokina loves reading the penny dreadfuls and immersing herself in tales of adventure, mystery, and romance. Her own days are filled with the often mundane work of running the book and print shop she owns with her father. The shop offers her the freedom and income to employ and protect the poverty-stricken Londoners she’s come to care about, and it gives her father something to do other than long for their hometown of St. Petersburg. She is grateful for the stability in their lives, but she often feels lonely.

After an odd encounter at a grand masquerade ball, Lady Emily becomes embroiled in the murder investigation of one of the guests, a sometime actress trying to pass herself off as the mysterious heiress and world traveler Estella Lamar. Each small discovery, however, leads to more questions. Was the intended victim Miss Lamar or the imposter? And who would want either of them dead?

In the grey mist of the early morning a body is dumped on the shore of the Thames by a boatman in a metal canoe. The city is soon alive with talk of the savage Esquimaux stalking Victorian London and an eyewitness who claims the killer had an accomplice: a tall woman dressed in widow's weeds, with the telltale look of the degenerate Irish.