Fiction - Mystery & Detective - Historical

Read Barbara Hamilton's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. "Abigail Adams could become my favorite historical sleuth." (Sharon Kay Penman) Abigail Adams, wife of attorney John Adams-who is deeply involved with the Sons of Liberty-is shocked when one of the Sons is...

In The Lost World, Edward D. Malone, a newspaper reporter for The Daily Gazette, has been assigned to write an article on the irascible Professor George Edward Challenger who has recently returned from South America with unbelievable accounts of prehistoric life on a remote,...

The ordered calm of Gloucester Abbey is shattered by the murder of one of its monks. The Abbot, ill-equipped to deal with such a heinous crime, is stunned by the Sheriff's belief that one of the monks is guilty. This is the confusion that...

Mystery novelist Hazel Martin's maid suspects foul play when her childhood friend Doris jumps from the third-story turret of Farnsworth Abbey. Unable to resist an investigation, especially one that's staged to look like suicide, Hazel calls in help from her chauffeur, her cook, and...

London, 1921. Cabinet minister Lord Amersham is shot dead outside his Regents Park home, two bullets to the chest, one to the forehead. The killing bears the hallmarks of a professional hit. DCI Paul Stark of Scotland Yard is under pressure to produce a...

Of all the ghastly crimes in Victorian London, none are as infamous--or unsolvable--as those of Jack the Ripper . . . The murder scene is chillingly familiar. A young prostitute has been slaughtered in her flat on Framingham Street in the East End. It's...

A betrayed and lonely young woman. An old lady locked in silence and regret. The ghosts of mothers who made their own choices.When her controlling boyfriend runs out on her, Laura believes she must pick up the pieces alone. But Peggy, her grandmother, has...

"A sparkling, intelligent series, not to be missed" - The Historical Novel SocietyWith the recent series of college murders behind him, Cambridge Fellow Jonty Stewart is in desperate need of a break.A holiday on the beautiful Channel Island of Jersey seems ideal, if only...

"A sparkling, intelligent series, not to be missed" - The Historical Novel SocietyA dangerous crime and a thrilling romance...It's the turn of the century, Queen Victoria's reign is over, it's time for a new beginning. In Cambridge, Jonty Stewart takes up a teaching post,...

'Brilliant' -Publishers Weekly Starred ReviewThe legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in this intriguing companion novel to Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder set in seventh-century China.Judge Dee Renjie, Empress Wu's newly appointed Imperial Circuit Supervisor for the Tang Empire,...

When Lillian Crawford becomes a guest at a country house party, she hopes it will be her opportunity to get closer to her attractive host, Eugene Osbourn. But it isn't the famous pianist who winds up capturing Lillian's attention, as a fellow guest turns...

"Erica Vetsch is the master of all things Regency." --Lorri Dudley, author of The Duke's Refuge Caught in the explosion of the Hammersmith Mill in London, Bow Street runner Daniel Swann rushes to help any survivors only to find the mill's owner dead of...

Christine de Pizan is in danger when she is sent to the Priory of Poissy to catch the killer of a young nun in this vividly imagined historical mystery set in fourteenth-century France. Paris, 1399. Scribe Christine de Pizan is sent to the Priory...

The body of a local priest is discovered in an abandoned New Orleans warehouse. Damon Rourke, the hard-nosed detective introduced in Mortal Sins, attempts to catch a killer even as a shocking mystery is revealed.Author: Penelope WilliamsonISBN-10: 0446613835ISBN-13: 9780446613835Publisher: Grand Central PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/01/2004Pages:...

It is April 1922. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle arrives in New York on a spiritualist crusade. To packed houses at Carnegie Hall, he displays photographs of ghosts and spirits; of female mediums bound and gagged, ectoplasmic goo emerging from their bodies. In the newspapers,...

A nameless narrator, abandoned on an island soon to be obliterated by volcanic activity, tells the story of his life and exile from England. The tale is as extraordinary for its observations of a surreal natural history as for the dark twistings of human...

Phryne Fisher loves dancing, especially with gorgeous young Simon Abrahams. But Phryne's contentment at the Jewish Young People's Society Dance is cut short when Simon's father asks her to investigate the strange death of a devout young student in Miss Sylvia Lee's East Market...

A controversial verse in the Bible sparks college graduate student Ty Larson's curiosity causing him to stumble onto the faint trace of an ancient advanced civilization that's been all but lost to the sands of time. It soon becomes apparent that he's not the...

The eleventh enthralling adventure to feature Ursula Blanchard, reluctant spy in the service of Queen Elizabeth I February, 1571. Ursula is once more plunged into affairs of the state when she escorts her foster daughter Margaret to the Netherlands to meet her suitor. The...

1937. A young press photographer for the Daily Mirror falls in love with a crusading reporter. There's murder before breakfast and a beer and a beating for lunch. Just don't be late for dinner or a deadline. And remember, sometimes it's not your best...

At the behest of his powerful patron, Joliffe journeys to France to act as a servant to the widowed duchess Jacquetta of Bedford?while actually training in spycraft. But when a member of the duchess's household is murdered, Joliffe learns just how dangerous secrets can...

LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER 'Simply glorious. Every nook and cranny of 1930s Singapore is brought richly to life' CATRIONA MCPHERSON 'Charming' RHYS BOWEN 'One of the most likeable heroines in modern literature' SCOTSMAN _________ Mirza, a secretive neighbour of the Chens in...

A country house murder mystery classic, as a party find themselves snowed-in on Christmas Eve with a murderer among them... The snow is thick, the phone line is down, and no one is getting in or out of Warbeck Hall. All is set for...

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year! "The Alienist meets The City & The City in this brilliant debut that mixes fantasy and mystery. Gilda Carr's 'tiny mysteries' pack a giant punch." --David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As...

"Ray Celestin skillfully depicts the desperate revels of that idiosyncratic city and its bizarre legends in his first novel."--The New York Times Book ReviewThe Axeman stalks the streets of The Big Easy...New Orleans, 1919: In a town filled with gangsters, voodoo, and jazz trumpets...

Set in 1894, in Not All Widows Wear Black, independent, spirited Margaret Bell marries Thomas Bishop, a successful but complicated businessman. Thomas' vague background unravels when Margaret's father discovers his family secret. Thomas is soon implicated in two murders. Trapped in an abusive, poisonous...

"[Murder After Christmas] supplies cheerfully calculating relatives, decorously brutal dialogue, and a fiendishly intricate set of Chinese boxes before the surprising reveal...no, they don't make them like this anymore."--Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review"A war's on and a murder has been committed--and we sit here talking...

Lily Brewster and her brother Robert were living high on the hog in Manhattan until the Crash of '29 took the family fortune south. Abruptly penniless, they have taken up residence in their late great-uncle Horatio's upstate estate on the banks of the Hudson...

Tightly paced and cleverly defying the conventions of the classic detective story, this 1933 novel remains a milestone of the inverted mystery subgenre. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger and Edgar (R) Award-winning author Martin Edwards.At a costume party with the...

A novel pairing dark humor and intelligent detection work, this 1932 whowasdunin? mystery is an example of a celebrated Golden Age author's most inventive work. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning author Martin Edwards.When two newlyweds discover that a corpse...

"An invitation to a "treasure hunt" open to thriller writers and lesser mortals confronts Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Macdonald with two baffling deaths."-- Kirkus ReviewsIt's all fun and games (and fake names) until someone ends up dead...Amidst the confusion of too many fake names,...

Solving mysteries is her business. Finding love is her dream. Will combining the two get her killed?Daring Duplicity: The Wellington Mysteries, Vol. 1, Adventures of a Lesbian Victorian Detective is a collection of five sequential novellas, each encompassing its own exciting mystery while furthering...

Set against the heroism and heartbreak of WW II, former Army officer Ed Ruggero's Comes the War brilliantly captures the timeless stories of ordinary people swept up in extraordinary times April 1944, the fifty-fifth month of the war in Europe. The entire island of...

The T rten Project: Murder and Crime Mysteries from a Bauhaus Estate takes readers beyond the chaste white facades of the world-renowned Bauhaus Settlement by Walter Gropius. The book features 10 quirky narratives about mysterious entanglements, morbid secrets, and grisly intrigues.Author: Natascha MeuserISBN-10: 3869227192ISBN-13:...

In Dianne Freeman's lighthearted mystery series set in Victorian England, the American-born Countess of Harleigh uncovers more deadly intrigue among the uppercrust... For Frances Wynn, widow to the late Earl of Harleigh, life has a cosmopolitan flavor of late. No sooner has she sent...

For the first time in its one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year history, the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate has authorized a new Sherlock Holmes novel. Once again, The Game's Afoot... London, 1890. 221B Baker St. A fine art dealer named Edmund Carstairs visits Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson...

When Lady Swift is invited to her old school, she walks through familiar classrooms, finds her favourite books in the library... and surely that's not a body? Time for a lesson in murder! Autumn, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift is invited to her old school,...

Bringing Sherlock Holmes from the Victorian Era into the dark days of World War II, this imaginative new thriller confronts the world's greatest detective with a killer emulating the murders of Jack the Ripper.London, 1942.A killer going by the name of "Crimson Jack" is...

A STUNNING NEW NOVEL FROM ONE OF THE BEST-SELLING AUTHORS OF ALL TIME! The #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to...

A theatre company bring secrets, magic and murder along with them on their 'Plague Tour', in this bewitching historical mystery starring physician-sleuth Dr Gabriel Taverner."Plausible period detail and characters who feel real bolster the involving plot, and the prose and pacing are both top-notch....

Murder always sells. But when a series of dark and puzzling crimes takes place in seventeenth-century London, will printer's apprentice Lucy Campion be publishing the news - or starring in it? London, 1667. Printer's apprentice Lucy Campion is unsettled when, on a frozen December...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Diana Gabaldon weaves a dazzling tale of history, intrigue, and suspense in this first novel featuring one of her most popular characters from the Outlander saga: Lord John Grey. The year is 1757. On a clear morning in mid-June,...

A Killer Weaves a Deadly Blend of Betrayal and Revenge that Threatens Chloe's Work ... and Her LifeWhen offered a rare opportunity to help develop a fledgling historic site dedicated to Finnish American history and heritage, curator Chloe Ellefson journeys to the remote Northwoods...

Horror historians Gary D. Rhodes and John Edgar Browning present a long lost slice of American literature: The Vampire is a detective dime novel that predates both Dracula and the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, and it's sure to thrill audiences today just as...

A Double Murder Mystery Inspired by Actual Events.Jerry Banks was arrested on December 11, 1974 for the murders of a high school band director and a pretty young college student. He was arraigned and bound over to the Grand Jury. They determined the evidence...

From the critically acclaimed author of All That's Bright and Gone comes an atmospheric thriller that unearths a cache of age-old secrets--and a hidden danger--in the Florida Keys. Magda Trudell is the present-day caretaker of Whimbrel Estate, the Key West home of the famous...

Regency widow Lily Adler didn't expect to find a corpse when visiting a family friend. Now it's up to her to discover the killer in the charming second installment in the Lily Adler mysteries. Regency widow Lily Adler has finally settled into her new...

Christmas at the castle with holly, handmade gifts, snowflakes and... is that a body under the tree? Someone call Lady Swift! Winter, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, amateur sleuth and reluctant lady of the manor, has been invited to spend Christmas in Scotland, at the...

A fascinating historical mystery by Sulari Gentill, author of #1 LibraryReads pick The Woman in the Library2021 NED KELLY AWARD NOMINEE, BEST CRIME FICTIONHell hath no fury like a family disinherited...American millionaire Daniel Cartwright has been shot dead: three times in the chest, and...

In USA Today bestselling author Callie Hutton's third Victorian Book Club mystery, will wedding bells or death knells ring for Lady Amy and Lord William? Bath, England, 1892. Celebrated mystery author Lady Amy Lovell is set to tie the knot with Lord William Wethington,...