Book picks similar to
The Dragon Sleeps by Ellen Read


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The Last Passenger


Charles Finch - 2020
    Slumped in a first-class car at Paddington Station is the body of a young, handsome gentleman. He has no luggage, empty pockets, and no sign of violence upon his person - yet Lenox knows instantly that it's not a natural death.Pursuing the investigation against the wishes of Scotland Yard, the detective encounters every obstacle London in 1855 has to offer, from obstinate royalty to class prejudice to the intense grief of his closest friend. Written in Charles Finch's unmistakably warm, witty, and winning voice, The Last Passenger is a cunning and deeply satisfying conclusion to the journey begun in The Woman in the Water and The Vanishing Man.

The Deadly Mystery of the Missing Diamonds


T.E. Kinsey - 2021
    Mysterious deaths. And all that jazz.London, 1925. With their band the Dizzy Heights, jazz musicians Ivor ‘Skins’ Maloney and Bartholomew ‘Barty’ Dunn are used to improvising as they play the Charleston for flappers and toffs, but things are about to take a surprising turn.Superintendent Sunderland has had word that a deserter who stole a fortune in diamonds as he fled the war is a member of the Aristippus private members’ club in Mayfair—where the Dizzy Heights have a residency. And the thief is planning to steal a hoard of jewels hidden there under the cover of a dance contest.As mutual pal Lady Hardcastle has suggested, Skins and Dunn are perfectly placed to be Sunderland’s eyes and ears—and Skins’s wife Ellie soon lends a hand with a bit of light snooping. But the stakes change dramatically when a mysterious death at the club brings a sinister note to the investigation.With the dance contest fast approaching, the trio must solve the mystery of the missing diamonds, unmask the murderer, and prevent more deadly crimes—all without missing a beat.

A Beautiful Place to Die


Malla Nunn - 2008
    It is 1952, and new apartheid laws have recently gone into effect, dividing a nation into black and white while supposedly healing the political rifts between the Afrikaners and the English. Tensions simmer as the fault line between the oppressed and the oppressors cuts deeper, but it's not until an Afrikaner police officer is found dead that emotions more dangerous than anyone thought possible boil to the surface.When Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder, his mission is preempted by the powerful police Security Branch, who are dedicated to their campaign to flush out black communist radicals. But Detective Cooper isn't interested in political expediency and has never been one for making friends. He may be modest, but he radiates intelligence and certainly won't be getting on his knees before those in power. Instead, he strikes out on his own, following a trail of clues that lead him to uncover a shocking forbidden love and the imperfect life of Captain Pretorius, a man whose relationships with the black and coloured residents of the town he ruled were more complicated and more human than anyone could have imagined.The first in her Detective Emmanuel Cooper series, "A Beautiful Place to Die" marks the debut of a talented writer who reads like a brilliant combination of Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene. It is a tale of murder, passion, corruption, and the corrosive double standard that defined an apartheid nation. I

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab


Fergus Hume - 1886
    When a man is found dead in a hansom cab one of Melbourne’s leading citizens is accused of the murder. He pleads his innocence, yet refuses to give an alibi. It falls to a determined lawyer and an intrepid detective to find the truth, revealing long kept secrets along the way. Fergus Hume’s first and perhaps most famous mystery... The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab.

A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem


Manda Collins - 2020
    And she's determined to inform and educate the ladies of London on the nefarious-and deadly-criminals who are preying on the fairer sex. When her reporting leads to the arrest of a notorious killer, however, Katherine flees to a country house party to escape her newfound notoriety-only to witness a murder on her very first night. And when the lead detective accuses Katherine of inflaming-rather than informing-the public with her column, she vows to prove him wrong.Detective Inspector Andrew Eversham's refusal to compromise his investigations nearly cost him his own career, and he blames Katherine. To avoid bad publicity, his superiors are pressuring him to solve cases quickly rather than correctly. When he discovers she's the key witness in a new crime, he's determined to prevent the beautiful widow from once again wreaking havoc on his case. Yet as Katherine proves surprisingly insightful and Andrew impresses Katherine with his lethal competency, both are forced to admit the fire between them is more flirtatious than furious. But to explore the passion between them, they'll need to catch a killer.

A Dangerous Crossing


Rachel Rhys - 2017
    But as the sun beats down, long-hidden secrets begin to surface. Her heart beats faster for the attention of handsome Edward, but is his heart already taken?Australia, six-weeks laterThe world is at war, the cruise liner docks, and Lily's desire for Edward is untameable. But something else is awry on this ship and Lily is determined to find out ....

The Unfinished Clue


Georgette Heyer - 1933
    His arrogance and abrasive manner had alienated his wife, her sister, his house guests, his wayward son, even a desperate friend. Of course, his attentions to one attractive young guest in plain view of her husband simply multiplied the possible suspects in his murder.

The Way of All Flesh


Ambrose Parry - 2018
    City of Medicine, Money, Murder.Young women are being discovered dead across the Old Town, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. In the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson.Simpson's patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia. It is here that Raven meets housemaid Sarah Fisher, who recognises trouble when she sees it and takes an immediate dislike to him. She has all of his intelligence but none of his privileges, in particular his medical education.With each having their own motive to look deeper into these deaths, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh's underworld, where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to make it out alive.

Murder at Hartigan House


Lee Strauss - 2017
    Ginger's Boston terrier, Boss, noses out a missing phalange from under the cot.It's a mystery that once again puts Ginger alongside the handsome Chief Inspector Basil Reed. Who is the victim? And how did she end up in Ginger's home?Clues lead Ginger and her good friend Haley Higgins to a soirée hosted in 1913 by Ginger's late father, George Hartigan. A shadow of suspicion is cast on her father's legacy, and Ginger isn't so sure she wants to know the truth about the man she dearly loved.Ginger decides to host another soirée, inviting the guest list from ten years previous. Before the night is over, another person is dead.

Nowhere Man: Another John Pickett Novella


Sheri Cobb South - 2020
    As weeks go by with no responses to his newspaper advertisement, he has taken to spending his days wandering idly about London rather than admit his failure to his beloved wife Julia, the former Lady Fieldhurst.One day, while loitering amidst the crowds thronging the Covent Garden market, he wonders morosely if it might have been better had he not been born at all. Then he sees one of his former colleagues and, in an attempt to make a discreet exit, contrives instead to knock himself unconscious.He awakens to discover that his Bow Street colleague doesn’t seem to remember him, and after staggering back home to Curzon Street, he finds someone else living in the house where he lived with Julia. But still greater surprises are in store for Pickett as he attempts to navigate his way through a world in which he never existed…With a wink and a nod to Frank Capra’s classic film IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, NOWHERE MAN offers an alternate version of many of the earlier entries in the John Pickett mystery series.

Outback Flames


Suzanne Brandyn - 2015
    The incident and her previous memories are wiped from her mind. Whisked away moments later by an unknown aunt, Zoe learns to grow up fast and learns the value of hard work.Fifteen years later, after overhearing her aunt's whispers about Montagreen, and a girl called Zoe Montgomery, the name on her bracelet, Zoe's suspicions increase. She flees the only life she has ever known, and escapes her aunt's harsh lies and abuse, to return home to find answers and rebuild.However, returning opens not only the devastation she'd left behind, it reveals the torment her childhood sweetheart suffered which almost destroyed his life.As Jordan works on the restoration of Montagreen, can they battle their way through a mountain of obstacles and take over where they left off, or is it too late?

Night and Day


Caron Allan - 2016
    Dottie Manderson stumbles upon the body of a dying man in a deserted night-time street. As she waits for help to arrive, she holds the man’s hand and tries to get him to tell her what happened. But with his last breaths he sings to her some lines from a popular stage show. But why, Dottie wonders? Why would he sing to her instead of sending a final message to his loved ones? Why didn’t he name his attacker? Dottie needs to know the answers to these questions and so, even though a particular, very annoying, young policeman is investigating the case officially, she feels compelled to carry out her own investigation into the mysterious death. Introducing a new 1930s female sleuth in a traditional, cozy mystery series set in London between the two world wars, from Caron Allan, the writer of Criss Cross, Cross Check and Check Mate, a diary-based murder not-so-mysterious trilogy set in contemporary Britain. Extract from Night and Day: a Dottie Manderson mystery: If she hurried, she shouldn’t get too wet. She had been hopelessly optimistic when she told the cabby the rain had stopped. It hadn’t. Dottie drew her fur coat more tightly around her and held onto her hat, now not much more than a bit of limp lace and ribbon. But almost her first step took her an inch deep into a puddle and she couldn’t help but give a little yelp at how cold the water was, and the shock of it. ‘Blast it,’ she grumbled, and leaning against a nearby gate-post, she shook the worst of the water from her silver sandals. Almost new, too, she thought ruefully, and almost certainly ruined. At least her dress hadn’t seemed to suffer too badly. She hitched the skirt of it up a little higher and continued her short but eventful journey. A sound came to her ears. A soft shushing sort of sound but almost melodic. She paused a moment. Listened. Her eyes, growing accustomed to the darkness, made out a shape on the pavement not ten yards ahead. Her heart gave an odd lurch, as if a cold hand gripped it. ‘Idiot,’ she muttered, and forced herself to keep going. She really shouldn’t read gothic novels late at night, it made her jumpy. No doubt all she would find were the pages of a newspaper all spread about by the wind, and made to look odd by the streetlamp behind her creating shadows. The sound came again. A little louder, a little more insistent. It sounded almost like… There was someone—a man—lying on the pavement. She felt a little shimmer of fear. Could it be a drunk? Perhaps she ought to step into the road, walk round him very carefully, keeping her distance… The head moved very slightly. His face was a pale oval in the dim lamplight. And she saw that the lips moved too. It was him making that odd noise. So it was a drunk, after all. He was singing to himself in a soft sibilant whisper. Her ear caught the rough melody of it, and even then, just as she saw the blood on his shirt-front, one part of her mind was saying, I know that song. She forgot her fears and ran to his side. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’ she asked, then berated herself for asking such a stupid question. Because it was all too obvious he was not all right. She knelt beside him and put out a hand to take his groping one. He was quite young, though older than her own nineteen years of age. But no more than perhaps his early thirties. Fairish hair, slightly receding, and dark from the rain. One of those moustaches that were all the rage at the moment. Blue eyes, very blue like a child’s, wide and astonished-looking. From his smart evening dress, he was clearly well-to-do, although she didn’t recognise him. But the blood—oh the blood.

No Game For a Dame


M. Ruth Myers - 2011
     Moving through streets where people line up at soup kitchens, Maggie draws information from sources others overlook: The waitress at the dime store lunch counter where she has breakfast; a ragged newsboy; the other career girls at her rooming house. Her digging gets her chloroformed and left in a ditch behind the wheel of her DeSoto. She makes her way to an upscale bordello and gets tea – and information – from the madam herself. A gunman puts a bullet through Maggie’s hat. Her shutterbug pal on the evening paper warns her off. A new cop whose presence unsettles her thinks she’s crooked. Before she finds all the answers she needs, she faces a half-crazed man with a gun, and a far more lethal point-blank killer. If you like Robert B. Parker's hard boiled Spencer series and strong women sleuths, don't miss this one-of-a-kind Ohio detective from a time in United States history when dames wore hats -- but seldom a Smith & Wesson.

Bonfire Night


Deanna Raybourn - 2014
    Just as the couple begins to adapt, a solicitor arrives with a strange bequest. Nicholas, it seems, has inherited a country house—but only if he and his family are in residence from All Hallows' Eve through Bonfire Night.Neither Lady Julia nor Nicholas is likely to be put off by local legends of ghosts and witches, and the eerie noises and strange lights that flit from room to room simply intrigue them. Until a new lady's maid disappears, igniting a caper that will have explosive results…The fourth in a series of Lady Julia Grey stories set during traditional English holidays, Bonfire Night follows Silent Night, Midsummer Night and Twelfth Night. Look for Deanna's newest 1920s novel, Night of a Thousand Stars, in October!

The Christie Affair


Nina de Gramont - 2022
    It’s a particular feeling, the urge to murder. It takes over your body so completely, it’s like a divine force, grabbing hold of your will, your limbs, your psyche. There’s a joy to it. In retrospect, it’s frightening, but I daresay in the moment it feels sweet. The way justice feels sweet.”The greatest mystery wasn’t Agatha Christie’s disappearance in those eleven infamous days, it’s what she discovered.London, 1925: In a world of townhomes and tennis matches, socialites and shooting parties, Miss Nan O’Dea became Archie Christie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Agatha Christie.The question is, why? Why destroy another woman’s marriage, why hatch a plot years in the making, and why murder? How was Nan O’Dea so intricately tied to those eleven mysterious days that Agatha Christie went missing?