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.

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

    Saddled with a clerk who names Faucon his ‘penance', the shire’s first Crowner must thread the tangled relationships between the sheriff, the village of Priors Holston and the priory that once ruled it. As a simple task takes a turn to the political, what seems obvious isn’t and what appears safe turns out to be more dangerous than he could imagine.

    The assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo that summer effectively ended the Old Europe into which she was born to a noble Czech father and an English mother. Through the lens of Trixie, whose own journey from pampered aristocrat (albeit in a polite and impoverished marriage) to a degree of emancipation has an exciting yet humorous and sympathetic dynamic, we witness stirring events and societal shifts. Trixie begins her new career at 28. She's leading a society life and growing apart from her husband although she is as yet too conventional to take a lover. When the brutalized body of an old man once under the command of her military uncle is fished from the Vltava, she takes to the role of a detective and finds solace in it, mixing with ease with kings and princes, but never losing touch with ordinary men and women with whom her new role often puts her in contact. Investigating alters the formality of her relations with her servants and with public officials as we see when she encounters her butler in an unexpected role (and place) and then goes undercover (as a young man) on a train journey to Paris and London. Eventually, liaising with various officials, she arrives at Marienbad, the famous Czech spa, where Edward VII of England and his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm have staged a surprising May meeting....and it is here that the mystery unfolds.

    But his plans are derailed when, passing through a country village, he discovers a helpless woman being auctioned off to the highest bidder--by her husband.In order to save her from being violated by another potential buyer, Atlas purchases the lady, Lilliana, on the spot to set her free. But Lilliana, desperate to be with her young sons and knowing the laws of England give a father all parental rights, refuses to be rescued--until weeks later when her husband is murdered and Atlas is the only one who can help clear her name of the crime.Fortunately, Atlas is a master at solving complicated puzzles, both with games and the intricacies of human motivation, and finds himself uniquely suited to the task, despite the personal peril it may put him in. But soon Altas learns the dead man had many secrets--and more than a few enemies willing to kill to keep them quiet--in Murder in Mayfair, the first in a new historical mystery series by D. M. Quincy.

    Apointed by Richard the Lionheart as the first coroner for the county of Devon, Sir John de Wolfe, recently returned from the Crusades, rides out to the lonely moorland village of Widecombe to hold an inquest on an unidentified body.But on his return to Exeter, the new coroner is incensed to find that his own brother-in-law, Sheriff Richard de Revelle, is intent on thwarting the murder investigation, particularly when it emerges that the dead man is a Crusader, and a member of one of Devon's finest and most honourable families...

    As the only man aboard with any medical training, Duncan is ordered to assemble evidence to hold another prisoner accountable for the deaths - or face punishment that will mean his own death. His conclusions suggest that the wave of violence is somehow linked to the "savages" of the American wilderness. Duncan's suspicions that the prison company is to be sacrificed in the war seem to be confirmed when he learns that they are all indentured to Lord Ramsey's estate in the uncharted New York woodlands, a Heart of Darkness where multiple warring factions are engaged in physical, psychological, and spiritual battle. Following a strange trail of clues that seem half Iroquois and half Highland Scot, mesmerized by the Lord Ramsey's beautiful daughter, and frequently defying death in a dangerous wilderness populated by grizzled European settlers, mysterious scalping parties, and Indian sorcerers, Duncan McCallum, exiled chief of his near-extinct clan, finds the source of all evil at the site of an Indian massacre.

    But in her years as lady-in-waiting to Princess Isabella, she was drawn into the murky politics of the English court, where sudden, mysterious death was part of the tapestry of life.Many years later, Mathilde looks back and chronicles her turbulent life. With her sharp, suspicious intellect ready to distinguish between a fatality and an unnatural death, Mathilde is confronted by a host of chilling murders. The source of these horrors is the fierce political rivalry between Philip of France and Edward of England. This manifests itself in a series of gruesome killings, one of which actually took place during Edward II's Coronation, when a knight of the Royal Household, Sir John Baquelle was crushed to death.

    Wrongly accused of the slaughter of pauper children in the wake of the touring theater company he manages, Tom Sayers is forced to disappear into a twilight world of music halls and traveling boxing booths. Beginning with a chance encounter in a Philadelphia pleasure park one weekend in 1903, this brilliantly macabre mystery traces Sayers' journey from England's provincial playhouses through London's mighty Lyceum Theatre and on to the high society of a transforming American South--with many a secret to be uncovered in the dark alleyways, backstage areas, and houses of ill repute that lie along the way. As Sayers seeks the truth behind the killings, he is pursued in turn by the tireless Detective Inspector Sebastian Becker. Desperate to ensure the safety of actress Louise Porter, Sayers calls on an old friend, Bram Stoker, for help. But Stoker's links with the world of the Victorian occult lead Sayers to discover a danger even greater than he could have imagined. Thrown into a maelstrom of obsession, betrayal, and sacrifice--where even the pure may not escape damnation--Sayers must face the implications of an unthinkable bargain: the exchange of a soul for a chance at eternal life. With action that spans continents, decades, and every level of society, "The Kingdom of Bones" follows the troubled lives of those touched by Tom Sayers, ultimately weaving their stories into a harrowing climax that stirs the mind--and the blood.

    A Burnable Book is an irresistible thriller, reminiscent of classics like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose and The Crimson Petal and the White. London, 1385. Surrounded by ruthless courtiers—including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, and Gaunt’s flamboyant mistress, Katherine Swynford—England’s young, still untested king, Richard II, is in mortal peril, and the danger is only beginning. Songs are heard across London—catchy verses said to originate from an ancient book that prophesies the end of England’s kings—and among the book’s predictions is Richard’s assassination. Only a few powerful men know that the cryptic lines derive from a “burnable book,” a seditious work that threatens the stability of the realm. To find the manuscript, wily bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer turns to fellow poet John Gower, a professional trader in information with connections high and low. Gower discovers that the book and incriminating evidence about its author have fallen into the unwitting hands of innocents, who will be drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy that reaches from the king’s court to London’s slums and stews--and potentially implicates his own son. As the intrigue deepens, it becomes clear that Gower, a man with secrets of his own, may be the last hope to save a king from a terrible fate.Medieval scholar Bruce Holsinger draws on his vast knowledge of the period to add colorful, authentic detail—on everything from poetry and bookbinding to court intrigues and brothels—to this highly entertaining and brilliantly constructed epic literary mystery that brings medieval England gloriously to life.

    Felons have been released from English prisons at the command of the new king, Richard Plantagenet, and suspicion centers on them. But when Josse d'Acquin, the king's knight, arrives from France to investigate, he discovers treacherous currents of lust, greed, and anger flowing closer to the Abbey, and in the haunted Weald of Kent, whose woods hide strange secrets....With the help of the worldly, beautiful Abbess Helewise, Josse ferrets out an array of suspects. Their one precious piece of evidence is a gold, rubied cross. But the shocking truth of Gunnora's death is an elusive-and far more dangerous-prize.AUTHORBIO: ALYS CLARE lives in Tonbridge, England, in the area where Fortune Like The Moon is set. This is the first in a series of medieval mysteries set in the Weald of Kent.

    Armed with a sharp eye, dangerous curiosity, and uncanny intelligence, Ursula pledges...To Shield the Queen Rumor has linked Queen Elizabeth I to her master of horse, Robin Dudley. As gossip would have it, only his ailing wife, Amy, prevents marriage between Dudley and the Queen. To quell the idle tongues at court, the Queen dispatches Ursula Blanchard to tend to the sick woman's needs. But not even Ursula can prevent the "accident" that takes Amy's life. Did she fall or was she pushed? Was Ursula a pawn of Dudley and the Queen?Suddenly Ursula finds herself at the center of the scandal, trying to protect Elizabeth as she loses her heart to a Frenchman who may be flirting with sedition against her Queen. She can trust no one, neither her lover nor her monarch, as she sets out to find the truth in a glittering court that conceals a wellspring of blood and lies.

    But what begins as a clandestine arrest ends in cold-blooded murder. And when Fitzurse, the knights’ ringleader, kidnaps Theodosia, a beautiful young nun who witnessed the crime, Palmer can sit silently by no longer. For not only is Theodosia’s virtue at stake, so too is the secret she unknowingly carries—a secret he knows Fitzurse will torture out of her. Now Palmer and Theodosia are on the run, strangers from different worlds forced to rely only on each other as they race to uncover the hidden motive behind Becket’s grisly murder—and the shocking truth that could destroy a kingdom.

    After destruction wrought by the Great Fire, he is also one of the architects working to restore London to its previous splendor. This novel is a historical drama centered on the turmoil of restoration England.

    Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her celebrated play "Richard of Bordeaux," But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride, and Tey quickly finds herself plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any of those in her own works.Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to her play. "Richard of Bordeaux" has been the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that strike a chord in a world still haunted by war. Now, however, it seems that Tey could become the victim of her own success, as her reputation--and even her life--is put at risk.A second murder confirms Penrose's suspicions that somewhere among this flamboyant theatre set is a ruthless and spiteful killer. Together, Penrose and Tey must confront their own ghosts in search of someone who will stop at nothing.An Expert in Murder is both a tribute to one of the most enduringly popular writers of crime and a richly atmospheric detective novel in its own right.