It is 1879, and the young Detective Sergeant Sholto Lestrade has his work cut out for him as he investigates mysterious goings-on at "Lord" George Sanger's Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie the dwarf dies an agonising death whilst performing the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this comes after two bodies are found with multiple slashes.

Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself… Here you will find the complete Father Brown stories in the chronological order of their original publication. The Innocence of Father Brown Starts at Chapter 1, The Wisdom of Father Brown Starts at Chapter 13.

This follow-up volume to the bestselling Ghosts from the Library resurrects forgotten tales of the supernatural by some of the most accomplished mystery authors of all time. Close the windows. Draw the curtains. Just don’t let the lights go out…

England, 1920. Eleanor Swift has spent the last few years travelling the world: taking tea in China, tasting alligators in Peru, escaping bandits in Persia and she has just arrived in England after a chaotic 45-day flight from South Africa. Chipstone is about the sleepiest town you could have the misfortune to meet. But then, from the edge of a quarry, through the driving rain, Eleanor is shocked to see a man shot and killed in the distance. Before she can climb down to the spot, the villain is gone and the body has vanished.

Strange things happen in the picture-postcard English village of Lindsay Carfax. When a young man falls into a quarry, it takes nine days to find the body. When rowdy hippies descend on the village, they're given nine days to leave. When an outspoken schoolmaster is kidnapped for nine days, he stays eerily quiet after his release. Now Albert Campion has come to town - and he means to investigate all this strangeness. But whoever is behind the unusual goings - on quickly makes it very clear that his nosing around is not welcome.

From humble beginnings in Ireland, William Melville has risen through hard work, intelligence, and occasional brute force to become head of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, personal bodyguard to Queen Victoria and her family, and the scourge of anarchists at home and abroad. But when the aged Queen dies in January 1901 and the crowned heads of Europe converge on London for her funeral, Melville learns of a conspiracy, led by a mysterious nihilist known only as Akushku, to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany at the ceremony.

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.

When those harrowing words ring out during a children’s entertainment in Washington on the evening of April 14, 1865, a quick-thinking young chemist from England named Johnnie Holmes grabs the 12-year-old son of the dying president, races the boy to safety, and soon finds himself enlisted in the most infamous manhunt in history.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

There is a persistent and incorrect idea, reinforced by countless film misrepresentations, that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were always staid and dull British chaps of middle years (or older), with Holmes a spry, cranky, and impatient eccentric, and Watson a white-haired and portly Boobus Brittanicus, a la Nigel Bruce. Students of the true and Canonical Sherlock Holmes know this to be a falsehood.

Kate Ardleigh is everything the Victorian English gentlewoman is not - outspoken, free-thinking, American...and a writer of the frowned upon penny dreadfuls. Soon after her arrival in Essex, England, a body is unearthed in a nearby archeological dig - and Kate has the chance to not only research her latest story but to begin her first case with amateur detective Sir Charles Sheridan.

Singapore, 1910 - Desperate for a fresh start, Harriet Gordon finds herself living with her brother, a reverend and headmaster of a school for boys, in Singapore at the height of colonial rule. Hoping to gain some financial independence, she advertises her services as a personal secretary. It is unfortunate that she should discover her first client, Sir Oswald Newbold - explorer, mine magnate, and president of the exclusive Explorers and Geographers Club - dead with a knife in his throat.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish born author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of deductive reasoning (somewhat mistakenly - see inductive reasoning) and astute observation to solve difficult cases.

Professor James Moriarty has one desire left in his shattered life...revenge. All he wants is to shame the man who ruined him and stop the brute from harming anyone else. Then he meets amber-eyed Angelina Gould and his world turns upside down. An exploding steam engine kills a man at the International Exhibition. While Moriarty examines the wreckage, Sherlock Holmes appears, sent to investigate by Moriarty’s enemy. Holmes finds evidence that points at Moriarty, who realizes he must either solve the crime or swing it for it himself.

A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman’s watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned amidst the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street’s Christmas shopping. And lost in a snowstorm, a man finds a motive for murder.... This collection of mysteries explores the darker side of the festive season, from unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow to the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations.

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.

Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of the Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. The clues of the hunt have been devised by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end, however, when 'Samuel Pepys' is found murdered in the telephone room in bizarre circumstances.

A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman’s watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned amidst the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street’s Christmas shopping. And lost in a snowstorm, a man finds a motive for murder.... This collection of mysteries explores the darker side of the festive season, from unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow to the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations.

Felicity Carrol is interested in everything - except being a proper young matron of Victorian society. Brilliant and resourceful, Felicity took refuge in science and education after her mother died and her father abandoned her to servants. Now, all he wants is for her to marry into a family of status and money. Felicity has other ambitions - but her plans shudder to a halt when her mentor is murdered at the British Museum and his priceless manuscript of King Arthur lore is stolen.

Maisie is an innocent six year-old, torn between her divorced parents, pathetically isolated yet tragically involved.

Rowland Sinclair is an artist and a gentleman. In Australia's 1930s, the Sinclair name is respectable and influential, yet Rowland has a talent for scandal. He relies on the Sinclair fortune to indulge his artistic passions and friends: a poet, a painter and a brazen sculptress. Mounting tensions fuelled by the Great Depression take Australia to the brink of revolution, but Rowland Sinclair is indifferent to the politics...until a brutal murder exposes an extraordinary and treasonous conspiracy.

From Italy in 1733 to Edinburgh in 1831 to a series of chilling murders in London in 1870 and a lethal game of revenge decades later, a watch touches lives with misfortune - until it comes into the hands of one young woman who might be able to stop it for good. This outstanding collaboration between four outstanding novelists follows characters who are irrevocably linked by fate, each one playing a key role in breaking the curse once and for all.

Newly returned from finishing school, Lady Juliette Thorndike is ready to debut in London society. Due to her years away, she hasn't spent much time with her parents, and sees them only as the flighty, dilettante couple the other nobles love. But when they disappear, she discovers she never really knew them at all. They've been living double lives as government spies-and they're only the latest in a long history of espionage that is the family's legacy.

When George Abbershaw is invited to Black Dudley Manor for the weekend, he has only one thing on his mind - proposing to Meggie Oliphant. Unfortunately for George, things don't quite go according to plan. A harmless game turns decidedly deadly and suspicions of murder take precedence over matrimony. Trapped in a remote country house with a murderer, George can see no way out. But Albert Campion can.

Why was the redoubtable King Henry, an aborigine from Western Australia, killed during a thunderstorm in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? And who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-aborigine detective, takes him to a sheep station in the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well... mixed blood and divided loyalties.