Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman


Tessa Arlen - 2015
    Pulling together the food, flowers and a thousand other details for one of the most significant social occasions of the year is her happily accepted responsibility. But when her husband's degenerate nephew is found murdered, it's more than the ball that is ruined. In fact, Lady Montfort fears that the official police enquiry, driven by petty snobbery and class prejudice, is pointing towards her son as a potential suspect.Taking matters into her own hands, the rather over-imaginative countess enlists the help of her pragmatic housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, to investigate the case, track down the women that vanished the night of the murder, and clear her son's name. As the two women search for a runaway housemaid and a headstrong young woman, they unearth the hidden lives of Lady Montfort's close friends, servants and family and discover the identity of a murderer hiding in plain sight.In this enchanting debut sure to appeal to fans of Downton Abbey, Tessa Arlen draws readers into a world exclusively enjoyed by the rich, privileged classes and suffered by the men and women who serve them. Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman is an elegant mystery filled with intriguing characters and fascinating descriptions of Edwardian life—a superb treat for those who love British novels.

The Leavenworth Case


Anna Katharine Green - 1878
    Green is credited with many firsts. With the character Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force, Green developed the series detective. Amelia Butterworth, a nosy society spinster who assists Gryce in three novels, is the prototype for Miss Marple, Miss Silver and other similar mystery solving female characters. And with Violet Strange, a debutante with a secret life as a sleuth, she invented the ‘girl detective.’ The Leavenworth Case predates the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes by nine years, yet it feels much more modern. Although it bears the romantic sentimentalism of its time, the story possesses a never seen before mastery of detection.

The King's Justice


E.M. Powell - 2018
    Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York.The case appears straightforward. A suspect is under lock and key in the local prison, and the angry villagers are demanding swift justice. But when more bodies are discovered, certainty turns to doubt—and amid the chaos it becomes clear that nobody is above suspicion.Facing growing unrest in the village and the fury of the lord of the manor, Stanton and Barling find themselves drawn into a mystery that defies logic, pursuing a killer who evades capture at every turn.Can they solve the riddle of who is preying upon the villagers? And can they do it without becoming prey themselves?

Cover Her Face


P.D. James - 1962
    Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James's electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.

The Judas Pair


Jonathan Gash - 1977
    Or are they? By the time he finds out the truth, two people are dead, and Lovejoy has to pull a nifty scam to avoid the same fate. First in the Lovejoy series.

Grey Mask


Patricia Wentworth - 1928
    Charles turns to Miss Silver to uncover the strange truth behind Margaret's complicity, and the identity of the terrifying and mysterious individual behind the grey mask.

Murder in Keswick: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery


William Todd - 2018
    As soon as they exit the train they hear news of a grisly murder making its way around the murmuring commuters. A local aristocrat, Mr. Darcy, has been found missing his head! And that very night, the wealthy widow finds a stranger in her home who, upon seeing her, abandons his plans and quickly leaves. She believes the intruder to be the murderer of her husband who is now after a large sum of cash she keeps in the house safe. Unsure if the would-be thief is the murderer or an opportunistic burglar, Holmes devises a plan to catch the burglar, all the while investigating the murder of Mr. Darcy. Follow Holmes, Watson, and the local constable, Mr. Wickham, as they untangle the mystery surrounding a Murder in Keswick.

The War Widow


Tara Moss - 2019
    Though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be home, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance in Europe of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, now that the war is over, the newspapers are sidelining her reporting talents to prioritize jobs for returning soldiers. But Billie is a survivor and she's determined to take control of her own future. So she reopens her late father's business, a private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking.At first, Billie's bread and butter is tailing cheating husbands. Then, a young man, the son of European immigrants, goes missing, and Billie finds herself on a dangerous new trail that will lead up into the highest levels of Sydney society and down into its underworld. What is the young man's connection to an exclusive dance club and a high class auction house? When the people Billie questions about the young man start to turn up dead, Billie is thrown into the path of Detective Inspector Hank Cooper. Will he take her seriously or will he just get in her way? As the danger mounts and Billie realizes that much more than one young man's life is at stake, it becomes clear that though the war was won, it is far from over.

Mistress of the Art of Death


Ariana Franklin - 2007
    In medieval Cambridge, England, four children have been murdered. The crimes are immediately blamed on the town's Jewish community, taken as evidence that Jews sacrifice Christian children in blasphemous ceremonies. To save them from the rioting mob, the king places the Cambridge Jews under his protection and hides them in a castle fortress. King Henry II is no friend of the Jews-or anyone, really-but he is invested in their fate. Without the taxes received from Jewish merchants, his treasuries would go bankrupt. Hoping scientific investigation will exonerate the Jews, Henry calls on his cousin the King of Sicily-whose subjects include the best medical experts in Europe-and asks for his finest "master of the art of death," an early version of the medical examiner. The Italian doctor chosen for the task is a young prodigy from the University of Salerno. But her name is Adelia-the king has been sent a "mistress" of the art of death. Adelia and her companions-Simon, a Jew, and Mansur, a Moor-travel to England to unravel the mystery of the Cambridge murders, which turn out to be the work of a serial killer, most likely one who has been on Crusade with the king. In a backward and superstitious country like England, Adelia must conceal her true identity as a doctor in order to avoid accusations of witchcraft. Along the way, she is assisted by Sir Rowley Picot, one of the king's tax collectors, a man with a personal stake in the investigation. Rowley may be a needed friend, or the fiend for whom they are searching. As Adelia's investigation takes her into Cambridge's shadowy river paths and behind the closed doors of its churches and nunneries, the hunt intensifies and the killer prepares to strike again . .

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Classic Crime)


Richard Lancelyn GreenS.C. Roberts - 1985
    This anthology of stories featuring the character of Sherlock Holmes follows on from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories which ended with Holmes at Reichenbach Falls.

Death in the Stocks


Georgette Heyer - 1935
    Superintendent Hannasyde's consummate powers of detection and solicitor Giles Carrington's amateur sleuthing are tested to their limits as they grapple with the Vereker family - a group of outrageously eccentric and corrupt suspects

Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes


Loren D. Estleman - 2013
    Award-winning author Loren D. Estleman has curated a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories from some of the finest authors in Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes. This is the first time that these stories appear together in one anthology, including Sons of Moriarty, a Sherlock Holmes novella, appearing here for the first time.Estleman's last Holmes collection, The Perils of Sherlock Holmes, was authorized by the Estate of Arthur Conan Doyle and was met with rave reviews. It was dubbed "an excellent collection of short stories and essays" by the New York Review of Books, "an entertaining and diverting read" by Bookpleasures.com, and was said to transport readers "to another place and time during the series of short stories that pay homage to the legend that is Sherlock Holmes" on the Pop Culture Guy Blog.

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows


James Lovegrove - 2016
    Sherlock Holmes, in the infancy of his detecting career, deduces a connection between these sinister “shadows” and an Oriental drug lord who is bent on expanding his criminal empire. Yet there are even more sinister forces at work, as the great detective faces a challenge so fearsome and deadly that his career may be over almost as soon as it has begun.

The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures


Mike AshleyH.R.F. Keating - 1997
    Almost all the stories are specially written for the collection and the cases are presented in the order in which Holmes solved them. The result is a life of Sherlock Holmes, with a continuous narrative alongside the stories which identities the gaps in the canon and places the new and hitherto unrecorded cases in their correct sequence - plus there is an invaluable, complete Holmes chronology.(back cover)

A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia


Clara Benson - 2016
    Now it turns out that numerous people with secrets to hide had every reason to wish him dead. But which of them murdered him? For Freddy Pilkington-Soames, newspaper reporter and man-about-town, the question hits a little too close to home, thanks to an unfortunate drunken encounter with Ticky's corpse which he'd much rather the police didn't find out about—and thanks also to his exasperating mother Cynthia's seeming determination to get herself arrested by tampering with the evidence. But a pretty girl with big blue eyes is demanding his help in solving the mystery, so what can he do but agree? Now all he has to do is hide the wrong clues, find the right ones, and unmask the murderer before the police discover what's really been going on. That ought to be easy enough. If only people didn't keep getting killed...