Adult Historical Mysteries

A Stroke of Malice – Anna Lee Huber  

Kiera and Sebastian Gage have been invited to the Duchess of Bowmontʼs Twelfth Night party in Scotland. Upon their arrival at the opulent estate, it becomes obvious that the family appears to be under a great strain, and someone seems determined to cause mayhem among the guests with a series of forged notes. Matters swiftly turn from irksome to downright deadly when the partygoers stumble upon a decomposing body in the castleʼs crypt. Identified as the duchessʼs son-in-law thought to be in Paris, it is evident the man met with foul play, and Kiera and Gage soon realize that a ruthless murderer walks among them -- and may well be a member of the duchessʼs own family. When the investigation takes a treacherous turn, Kiera discovers just how deep the killer is willing to dig to keep their secrets from ever seeing the light of day.

 FIC Huber

Riviera Gold – Laurie King

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn the Riviera upside-down to crack their most captivating case yet. It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins.

FIC King

Who Speaks for the Damned – C.S. Harris

 It's June 1814, and the royal families of Austria, Russia, and the German states have gathered in London at the Prince Regent's invitation to celebrate the defeat of Napoléon. The festive atmosphere is marred by the brutal murder of a disgraced British nobleman long thought dead. Eighteen years before, Nicholas Hayes, the disowned third son of the late Earl of Seaford, was accused of killing a beautiful young French émigré and transported to Botany Bay, Australia, where he reportedly died a few years later. Those reports were obviously wrong. Recently Hayes returned to London with a mysterious young boy in tow--a child who vanishes shortly after Nicholas's body is discovered. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is drawn into the investigation by his valet, Jules Calhoun. With Calhoun's help, Sebastian begins to piece together the shattered life of the late Earl's ill-fated youngest son. Why did Nicholas risk his life and freedom by returning to England? And why did he bring the now-missing young boy with him? Several nervous Londoners had reason to fear that Nicholas Hayes had returned to kill them. One of them might have decided to kill him first. 

FIC Harris

 Above the Bay of Angels – Rhys Bowen

A single twist of fate puts a servant girl to work in Queen Victoria's royal kitchen. Isabella Waverly only means to comfort the woman felled on a London street. In her final dying moments, she thrusts a letter into Bella's hand. It's an offer of employment in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace, and everything the budding young chef desperately wants. In the stranger's stead, Bella can spread her wings. Arriving as Helen Barton from Yorkshire, she pursues her passion for creating culinary delights, served to the delighted Queen Victoria herself. Best of all, she's been chosen to accompany the queen to Nice. What fortune! Until the threat of blackmail shadows Bella to the Riviera, and a member of the queen's retinue falls ill and dies. Having prepared the royal guest's last meal, Bella is suspected of the poisonous crime. An investigation is sure to follow. Her charade will be over. And her new life will come crashing down--if it doesn't send her to the gallows.

FIC Bowen

The Lake House – Kate Morton

Living on her family's gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is an inquisitive and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. One midsummer's eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace. What follows is a tragedy that tears the family apart, leaving their estate as empty as their broken hearts. Nearly sixty years later, Sadie Sparrow, a young detective in the London police force, is staying at her grandfather's house in Cornwall. While out walking one day, she stumbles upon the old estate. Her curiosity is sparked, setting off a series of events that will bring her and Alice together, and at last, resolution to this tragic family mystery.

 FIC Morton

The Gangster – Clive Cussler

It is 1906, and in New York City, the Italian crime group known as the Black Hand is on a spree: kidnapping, extortion, arson. Detective Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Agency is hired to form a special “Black Hand Squad, ” but the gangsters appear to be everywhere, so much so that Bell begins to wonder if there are imitators, criminals using the name for the terror effect. And then the murders begin, each one of a man more powerful than the last, and as Bell discovers, to his dismay, the ultimate target may be the most powerful man of all.

 FIC Cussler

The Widows – Jess Montgomery

Kinship, Ohio, 1924: When Lily Ross learns that her husband, Daniel Ross, the town's widely respected sheriff, is killed while transporting a prisoner, she is devastated and vows to avenge his death. Hours after his funeral, a stranger appears at her door. Marvena Whitcomb, a coal miner's widow, is unaware her missing daughter. From only miles away but worlds apart, Lily and Marvena's lives collide as they realize that Daniel was not the man that that Daniel has died, and begs to speak with him about either of them believed him to be--and that his murder is far more complex than either of them could have imagined. Inspired by the true story of Ohio's first female sheriff, this is a powerful debut about two women's search for justice as they take on the corruption at the heart of their community. 

 FIC Montgomery

A Fatal Lie – Charles Todd 

 A peaceful Welsh village is thrown into turmoil when a body is found in a river, seemingly fallen from the canal aqueduct spanning the valley. There is no identification on the body, he isn’t a local, and no one will admit to having seen him before. With little to go on, the village police turn to Scotland Yard for help. When Inspector Ian Rutledge is sent from London to find answers, he is given few clues—a faded military tattoo on the victim’s arm and an unusual label in the collar of his shirt. They eventually lead him to the victim’s identity: Sam Milford. By all accounts, he was a good man and well-respected, so why is his death so mysterious? Rutledge uncovers a web of lies swirling around a suicidal woman, a child’s tragic fate, another woman bent on protecting her past. But where among all the lies is the motive for murder? Rutledge must retrace Milford’s last journey. Death seems to stalk his every move, and the truth seems to shift at every turn. Man or woman, this murderer stays in the shadows, and it will take desperate measures to lure him—or her—into the light. 

FIC Todd

Murder in Morningside Heights – Victoria Thompson 

Former police sergeant Frank Malloy and his wife, Sarah, adjust to life in New York high society as they investigate a death in the field of higher learning. Abigail Northrup was her parents' pride and joy. After graduating from a prestigious women's college in Morningside Heights, she took a job there as an instructor. She also joined the ranks of the New Women, ladies planning for a life without a husband in which they make their own decisions and make a difference in the world. Unfortunately, her murder ended all that. When the police declare the incident a random attack and refuse to investigate further, Abigail's parents request Frank's help. Of course, he'll need Sarah's assistance as she's more familiar with the world of academia, and it will be far easier for her to interview the lady professors. Yet difficulties arise as they learn that although Miss Northrup may have been an exemplary student and teacher, she lived in a world of secrets and lies.

FIC Thompson

Death in Focus – Anne Perry

On vacation from London on the beautiful Italian coast, twenty-eight-year-old Elena Standish and her older sister Margot have finally been able to forget some of the lasting trauma of the Great War. Touring with her camera in hand, Elena has found new inspiration in the striking Italian landscape, and she's met an equally striking man named Ian. Not ready to part from one another, she and Ian share a train trip home to England. But a shocking murder disrupts their agenda, forcing Elena to personally deliver a message to Berlin that could change the fate of Europe.

FIC Perry

Guardian of the Horizon – Elizabeth Peters

Ousted from their most recent archaeological dig and banned forever from the Valley of the Kings, the Emersons are spending a quiet summer at home in Kent, England, when a mysterious messenger arrives. Claiming to be the teenage brother of their dear friend, Tarek, Prince of the mysterious Lost Oasis, the charismatic herald brings troubling news of a strange malady that has struck down Tarek's heir and conveys his brother's urgent need for help only the Emersons can provide. The family sets off in secret for the land time forgot to a mountain fortress from which they narrowly escaped ten years before.

FIC Peters

In the Still of the Night – Jill Churchill

Lily Brewster and her brother Robert have all the appearances of being filthy rich, even though the family fortune went out the window with the crash of 1929. But thanks to great-uncle Horatio, who left them Grace and Favor Cottage, a huge mansion on the Hudson not far from Franklin Roosevelt's Hyde Park, the Brewsters live in the style to which they had become accustomed--with a few troublesome limitations.To make sure Lily and Robert didn't go back to being society bums, crafty old Horatio attached some strings to his bequest--and a penny-pinching attorney to manage the funds. Now the poor Brewsters have to actually work for money to survive, and Lily comes up with a brilliant scheme. They can turn a profit while they hobnob with their society friends, luring them to Grace and Favor for a paying weekend with the promise of big-name celebrities as guests. And if the Brewsters' celebrity/society bash hadn't been short on luminaries and long on snide barbs and open hostility among the guests, the glittering, glamorous affair might not have turned into a whodunit with one guest dead, one missing, and Lily and Robert chasing a murderer who is ready to strike again.

FIC Churchill

Fallen Women – Sandra Dallas

It is the spring of 1885, and wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen has been estranged from her younger sister, Lillie, for a year. Then she gets word from her aunt and uncle that Lillie has died suddenly in Denver. What they do not tell her is that Lillie had become a prostitute and was brutally murdered in the brothel where she had been living. When Beret discovers the sordid truth of Lillie's death, she makes her way to Denver, determined to find her sister's murderer. Detective Mick McCauley may not want her involved in the case, but Beret is determined, and the investigation soon takes her from the dangerous, seedy underworld of Denver's tenderloin to the highest levels of Denver society. Along the way, Beret not only learns the depths of Lillie's depravity, but also exposes the sinister side of Gilded Age ambition.

FIC Dallas

A Poisoned Season – Tasha Alexander

London's social season is in full swing, and Victorian aristocracy is atwitter over a certain gentleman who claims to be the direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Adding to their fascination with all things French, an audacious cat burglar is systematically stealing valuable items that once belonged to the ill–fated queen. Things take a dark turn when the owner of one of the pilfered treasures is found murdered after the theft is reported in the newspapers, and the mysterious thief develops a twisted obsession with Lady Emily Ashton. It takes all of Lady Emily's wit and perseverance to unmask her stalker and ferret out the murderer, while faced with a brewing scandal that threatens both her reputation and her romance with the dashing Colin Hargreaves.

FIC Alexander

In a Gilded Cage – Rhys Bowen 

Irish immigrant and New York City P.I. Molly Murphy is in the midst of a sweeping influenza epidemic, and a fight for women's suffrage that lands her in jail. Her betrothed, Police Captain Daniel Sullivan, finds her, but he hardly has time to bail her out, what with Chinese gangs battling for control of a thriving opium trade. The only consolation Molly can take from her vexing afternoon in the clink is that it made her some new friends among the Vassar suffragists---and brought her a pair of new cases. For the first, Emily Boswell is convinced her miserly uncle stole her inheritance and wants Molly to uncover the truth behind her parents' lives and deaths. Second, Emily's college roommate Fanny Poindexter wants Molly to find proof of her husband's philandering so that she can leave him without one red cent. But when Fanny dies and her husband claims she's a victim of the epidemic, it's more than Molly's conscience can take.

FIC Bowen