Book picks similar to
The Searcher by T.J. Alexander


mystery-historical
genre-myst-thrill-susp-historical
crime
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Bride By Choice


Mary L. Briggs - 2012
    Clues to her past are few, but questions are many as she struggles to remember her past and trust God to reveal her true identity. A task made more difficult by her growing attraction to the man who rescued her. Jared Murphy is a man who lost his heart to the wrong woman and vowed it would never happen again. Until the moment he and his aunt rescued an injured young woman from a nearby creek bank. Half-drowned, she has no memory of her name or her past--or the reason why someone tried to kill her. In his quest to help her, can Jared set aside his wounded pride and learn to love again?

Something Wicked: A Violet Carlyle and Friends Mystery (A Smith Investigates Mystery Book 1)


Beth Byers - 2021
    

Into The Silence


David F. Berens - 2020
    All by different authors.

Strong Spirits


Alice Duncan - 2003
    Kincaid comes to Daisy to help solve her husband's disappearance, Detective Sam Rotondo isn't far behind.Sam isn't fooled by Daisy's choice of "vocation" and blackmails her into spying on the Kincaids.Then Daisy reads Sam's cards... and the tables turn.

A Rifle By The Door


Dan L. Fuller - 2019
    Eighteen-year-old Jenny is under no illusions—it’ll take a miracle to survive, much less thrive, in the unforgiving wilderness, particularly when twelve-year-old David fights her every attempt to prepare. Unexpected help arrives when John Beck—once a close friend of their father’s—arrives at their cabin. The tough-as-nails bounty hunter reluctantly agrees to stay through the winter. He owes it to his murdered friend to help Foster’s children build a working ranch, even if it’s the last thing he wants to do. Their uneasy alliance is fraught with hardships, danger, and back-breaking work that still doesn’t guarantee anyone will survive until spring. Especially with their father’s killer still on the loose.

Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner


Amy Myers - 2007
    But she couldn’t. She’d stay there stuck fast in paint forever. A chimney sweep in Victorian London’s poverty-stricken East End, Tom Wasp is highly flattered to be asked to model for Valentine Drake, a painter in fashionable Chelsea, especially since his co-model is the beautiful and warm-hearted Bessie Barton, a red-headed stunner who becomes his friend. Grief-stricken when her body is found by mudlarks on the muddy banks of the river Thames, Tom vows to find her murderer. Tracking her pitiful past through London’s seamiest quarters, he discovers the monstrous shadow that hangs over her life, Moonman, from whose clutches Bessie had fled, only to fall into his murderous hands at last. But who is Moonman? Is he one of the Angels, the high-minded group of artists to which Valentine belongs? Or is the truth more terrifying still? Step by step Tom hunts down his quarry through the darkness, guided by his faith that there is goodness in this world as well as evil, and assisted by his chummy, the eleven-year-old Ned. Narrated by Tom himself, this unusual historical thriller whirls the reader from the squalor of London’s Victorian slums to the heady pleasures of its high-life, revealing both the evil and the goodness in both. Tom and Ned make a formidable team as they clean the filthy chimneys of life in this first book of the Tom Wasp series. Praise for Amy Myers ‘Victorian England hides a dark underbelly of misery and degradation along with a vicious murderer.’— Kirkus Reviews ‘Tom Wasp is one of the most engaging characters I’ve encountered in yeats’ – Ellen Keith, Historical Novels Review AMY MYERS has been a full-time writer since 1988, and has written a wide range of novels from historical sagas and contemporary romance to crime. She is married to an American and lives in Kent. Many of her novels have been published under the name of Harriet Hudson.

Before the Fall (Irish Trilogy, #2)


Orna Ross - 2012
    "A highly ambitious, engaging, and evocative novel and a hauntingly captivating read." -The Sunday IndependentWhat happens when a woman is haunted by the sins of her foremothers–and the men who betrayed them?Facing the birth of her child, and single motherhood, Jo Devereux has spent the last six months in Mucknamore, the Irish village she fled twenty years ago.A trunk of letters and diaries left by her grandmother and great-aunt has revealed a heartbreaking legacy of bitter secrets that have haunted the women of her family for four generations.Now she must find out the ultimate truth: What other secrets and lies lie under her mother’s and grandmother’s unshakeable silence? How does it connect with her failed life as a gender-bending agony aunt in San Franciso? And what of Rory… her lost love, son of her family’s sworn enemies?Will Jo’s mission to uncover the past unlock a possible future together? Or are they about to lose everything all over again?As she pieces together the poisonous fragments of the past, Jo must now face into the guilt and shame that were her legacy and see how she might best redeem them in her own life.

A Precarious Homecoming: An Arabella Stewart Historical Mystery


D.S. Lang - 2021
    An immediate impediment arises when she becomes involved in a murder investigation. Helping solve the crime is crucial, but Bella must work with Constable Jackson Hastings. Once part of her life, Jax turned his back on Bella after her brother, his best friend, died in the trenches. His cold attitude hasn’t softened, but she can’t let that stop her. Both her hometown and family resort, once popular tourist destinations, may not survive if the crime isn’t solved quickly.Jax, a war veteran, faces his own challenges. Wounded in body and spirit, his dreams shattered, he finds himself doing what he said he’d never do—follow in his father’s footsteps as constable. When a wave of crimes hit the town, culminating in murder, his competence is questioned. In a struggle to find the killer and save his job, Jax needs all the help he can get—but he doesn’t want assistance from Bella. Not when he feels responsible for her brother’s death. But more is at stake than his job. He can’t stand by and let Moreley become a ghost town. Nor can he watch while Bella loses Ballantyne.Working together is the only way to solve the crime and offer hope—to their community and for themselves. Will their efforts succeed, or will it be a precarious homecoming?

The Fifth Heart


Dan Simmons - 2015
    Clover's suicide appears to be more than it at first seemed; the suspected foul play may involve matters of national importance.Holmes is currently on his Great Hiatus--his three-year absence after Reichenbach Falls during which time the people of London believe him to be deceased. Holmes has faked his own death because, through his powers of ratiocination, the great detective has come to the conclusion that he is a fictional character.This leads to serious complications for James--for if his esteemed fellow investigator is merely a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can the master storyteller do to fight against the sinister power -- possibly named Moriarty -- that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?

The Strings of Murder


Oscar de Muriel - 2015
    A virtuoso violinist is brutally killed in his home. Black magic symbols cover the walls. The dead man's maid swears she heard three musicians playing before the murder.But with no way in or out of the locked practice room, the puzzle makes no sense...Fearing a national panic over a copycat Ripper, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Frey to investigate under the cover of a fake department specializing in the occult. However, Frey's new boss - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray - actually believes in such nonsense.McGray's tragic past has driven him to superstition, but even Frey must admit that this case seems beyond reason. And once someone loses all reason, who knows what they will lose next...

The King's Hounds


Martin Jensen - 2010
    The year is 1018 and the war is finally over, but the unified kingdom is far from peaceful.Halfdan’s mixed lineage—half Danish, half Saxon—has made him a pauper in the new kingdom. His father, his brother, and the land he should have inherited were all taken by the new king’s men. He lost everything to the war but his sense of humor. Once a proud nobleman, Halfdan now wanders the country aimlessly, powered only by his considerable charm and some petty theft. When he finds an unlikely ally in Winston, a former monk, he sees no reason not to accept his strange invitation to travel together to Oxford. Winston has been commissioned to paint a portrait of the king at the invitation of his new wife, and the protection of a clever man like Halfdan is well worth its price in wine and bread.But when the pair’s arrival in court coincides with news of a murder, the king has a brilliant idea: Why not enlist the newly arrived womanizing half-Dane and the Saxon intellectual to defuse a politically explosive situation? The pair represents both sides of the conflict and seem to have crime-solving skills to boot. In their search for the killer, Halfdan and Winston find seduction, adventure, and scandal in the wild early days of Cnut’s rule.

Bonds of Courage


Sandy Hill - 2012
    Within an hour, the family is torn asunder. While her husband is away, Indians seize her and their sons, carrying them to an unknown fate. Only her teenage daughter escapes. Alone in the world, young Jane fights to make her way, while her father searches frantically for her. Amidst the turmoil of the Revolutionary War, the family struggles to reunite. Soon even greater tragedy erupts. Book club discussion questions included. Also by Sandy Hill: "Tangled Threads," set in a 1890s cotton mill village. The novel tells the story of two strong women whose lives intersect through the years in both painful and joyful ways.

The Anatomist's Apprentice


Tessa Harris - 2011
    Thomas Silkstone, anatomist and pioneering forensic detective. . .The death of Sir Edward Crick has unleashed a torrent of gossip through the seedy taverns and elegant ballrooms of Oxfordshire. Few mourn the dissolute young man--except his sister, the beautiful Lady Lydia Farrell. When her husband comes under suspicion of murder, she seeks expert help from Dr. Thomas Silkstone, a young anatomist from Philadelphia.Thomas arrived in England to study under its foremost surgeon, where his unconventional methods only add to his outsider status. Against his better judgment he agrees to examine Sir Edward's corpse. But it is not only the dead, but also the living, to whom he must apply the keen blade of his intellect. And the deeper the doctor's investigations go, the greater the risk that he will be consigned to the ranks of the corpses he studies. . .

Hounds of Autumn


Heather Blackwood - 2013
    Chloe Sullivan is an amateur inventor whose holiday takes a dark turn when her friend and colleague, one of the few female mechanical experts in the British Empire, is murdered.A black mechanical hound roams the moors, but could it have killed a woman? And what secrets are concealed within the dark family manor?Accompanied by her naturalist husband and her clockwork cat, Chloe is determined to see her friend’s killer found.But some secrets have a terrible cost.

Murder as a Fine Art


David Morrell - 2013
    Fogbound streets become a battleground between a literary star and a brilliant murderer, whose lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.