Struggling to support herself after her father's disappearance, Katherine has neither time nor money to solve the mystery alone. She has no choice but to seek help from a woman she has only just met; awkward socialite Connie Swift.As the letters become increasingly frantic, this unlikely team of amateur detectives must learn to work together, while struggling to navigate the rigid rules of Victorian propriety, their families’ expectations, and the complicating interference of men.Confronting danger as they venture into new and frightening territory, Katherine and Connie risk arrest, exposure, and even their reputations to solve the Case of the Black Tulips. Can they solve the mystery before someone gets killed....or they kill each other?The Case of the Black Tulips is the first book in the Caster & Fleet mystery series, set in 1890s London.

    Allingham's daughter Arabella has run away with a debauched fortune-hunter and Allingham wants her back before a scandal ruins her reputation. Lazarus is not inclined to help, but has no choice when he realizes that Arabella's life could be in danger. When a series of poisonings distract him from Arabella's abduction, Allingham uses his attractive niece Constance to bring Lazarus back to the matter in hand. The inspector would like to dispense with Constance's help as she is a member of the despised Allingham family, but he needs her aid in interviewing the tight-knit gentry, who use their influence with the upper echelons of the police force to protect their own. As more young women fall victim to the killer, Lazarus begins to rely more and more on Constance and slowly overcomes his initial prejudice.

    Detective William Murdoch quickly finds out that more than one person connected with the girl’s simple life has something to hide.

    New York City forms its first police force. The great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly disparate events will change New York City. Forever. Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, fantasizing about the day he has enough money to win the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate in a fire devastating downtown Manhattan, he finds himself disfigured, unemployed, and homeless. His older brother obtains Timothy a job in the newly minted NYPD, but he is highly skeptical of this new "police force." And he is less than thrilled that his new beat is the notoriously down-and-out Sixth Ward - at the border of Five Points, the world's most notorious slum. One night while making his rounds, Wilde literally runs into a little slip of a girl - a girl not more than ten years old - dashing through the dark in her nightshirt... covered head to toe in blood. Timothy knows he should take the girl to the House of Refuge, yet he can't bring himself to abandon her. Instead, he takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street. Timothy isn't sure whether to believe her or not, but, as the truth unfolds, the reluctant copper star finds himself engaged in a battle for justice that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life.

    473 Five Star reviews on Amazon. Historical novel with a psychological mystery in the unearthing of family secrets. In May of 1935, Blinny Platt's homestead shack burns to the ground forever leaving her family asunder, scattering them like the embers flew on the Montana wind. She was only eight-years-old, sent away and in charge of her little sister. She could handle that because Platts take care of Platts.However, it is the hidden secrets of her parents smoldering beneath the charred remains that haunts Blinny until 1982. She once again leaves the home place to build a house for herself. As the foundation is poured and the walls go up, each of the hurtful memories are uncovered. Finally the mystery, left in the ashes of the burned home, is revealed. How could her mother do what she did?Recent Five-Star Reviews:By the end of the very first paragraph, I knew Marie F. Martin had written a book I would have a hard time putting down. In between high drama, there is a love letter to Montana, and she uses her love of the English language throughout. More "Oh wow" moments in this book than any other I have ever read in my more than half a century of life.  Yvonne Bechtold, Five-star reviewerThis is a tale so well told, you can smell the sage, feel the heat, and pain this family shares. I wish more authors crafted their characters so well.  Renita Hulsey Five-Star Reader Review.The author was a master at weaving the past with the present.  Quaintreader Five-Star Reader ReviewMartin knows family dynamics and human frailties.  From these she has crafted a heartbreaking story, of love, loss, and endurance.   Barb Ward Five-Star Reader Review

    Yet Nell is determined to elude the duties and restrictions of matrimony. So when she finds herself pregnant at the age of 17, she refuses to divulge the name of the father and even her childhood friend Martin is kept in the dark.Nell's stepfather Hiram sends Nell to live at the Poor Farm of which he is a governor, to await the day when her baby can be discreetly adopted. Nell is ready to go along with Hiram's plans until an unused padded cell is opened and two small bodies fall out.Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is convinced that the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and the incident prompts her to rethink her decision to abandon her own child to her fate. But the revelations to which her questions lead make her realize that even if she manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby, she may have no safe place to run to.

    When their parents commit Phoebe to a notorious asylum, Charlotte knows there's more to the story than madness. Shedding her identity to become an anonymous inmate, "Woman Ninety-Nine," Charlotte uncovers dangerous secrets. Insanity isn't the only reason her fellow inmates were put away - and those in power will do anything to keep the truth, or Charlotte, from getting out.

    Though seldom strong enough to leave his rooms, his gouty legs never hinder his agile mind. He’s built the most valuable intelligence service in Europe. Now the Bacon brothers are ready to offer it to the patron with the deepest pockets.Then Francis finds a body lying near Anthony’s coach. The clues inside point to Anthony’s secretary. Worse, the murdered man had been spreading rumors that could destroy Anthony’s reputation.Francis thinks his brother did it. Assistant Thomas Clarady thinks the secretary did it. As they investigate, they hear one story after another about what happened. Which is the truth? Can they sort through the lies before disaster strikes?

    Timothy comes an ingenious tale of murder and revenge, featuring a retired New York City detective and a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe.At West Point Academy in 1830, the calm of an October evening is shattered by the discovery of a young cadet's body swinging from a rope just off the parade grounds. An apparent suicide is not unheard of in a harsh regimen like West Point's, but the next morning, an even greater horror comes to light. Someone has stolen into the room where the body lay and removed the heart.At a loss for answers and desperate to avoid any negative publicity, the Academy calls on the services of a local civilian, Augustus Landor, a former police detective who acquired some renown during his years in New York City before retiring to the Hudson Highlands for his health. Now a widower, and restless in his seclusion, Landor agrees to take on the case. As he questions the dead man's acquaintances, he finds an eager assistant in a moody, intriguing young cadet with a penchant for drink, two volumes of poetry to his name, and a murky past that changes from telling to telling. The cadet's name? Edgar Allan Poe.Impressed with Poe's astute powers of observation, Landor is convinced that the poet may prove useful—if he can stay sober long enough to put his keen reasoning skills to the task. Working in close contact, the two men—separated by years but alike in intelligence—develop a surprisingly deep rapport as their investigation takes them into a hidden world of secret societies, ritual sacrifices, and more bodies. Soon, however, the macabre murders and Landor's own buried secrets threaten to tear the two men and their newly formed friendship apart.A rich tapestry of fine prose and intricately detailed characters, The Pale Blue Eye transports readers into a labyrinth of the unknown that will leave them guessing until the very end.

    But in the dead of night Sir Neville is murdered. Who did it? As suspicion falls on each of the house guests in turn, Knox finds himself faced with deception and betrayal on all sides, and only the enigmatic Angela Marchmont seems to offer a solution to the mystery. This 1920s whodunit will delight all fans of traditional country house murder stories.

    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?

    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.

    The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.

    He locates the youth in Bedlam asylum, silent and starving himself. When he tries to free Jessop, he is warned off the case by a politic lawyer, Anstis. Soon after, Belstrang finds himself drugged, robbed and falsely imprisoned.Once released Belstrang persists in his investigation, but he is thwarted at every turn: unseen forces are at work who seemingly want Thomas Jessop to die. When Belstrang confronts Anstis, even he turns up dead.The trail grows murkier by the hour, drawing Belstrang into the fear-ridden Catholic underworld - until he uncovers a plan with its roots in the Gunpowder Plot of more than a decade ago. Young Thomas, an embittered papist, was being used in a desperate scheme to mark the anniversary of the Plot. The scheme failed – and now the conspirators seem eager to cover up the whole business.But Belstrang’s a stubborn man. With the help of ex-soldier Daniel Oldrigg, he sticks doggedly to his purpose - and stumbles on the real causes of the Anniversary Plot, which stem from the very heart of a corrupt government.Belstrang must uncover the truth, or die trying.

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