Fiction - Mystery & Detective - Traditional

A monk's journey of amends leads to murder in this "thoroughly entertaining medieval mystery" in the Silver Dagger Award-winning series (Publishers Weekly). Winter arrived early in 1142, bringing with it a heavy snowfall. The safety of the guest-hall roof at the Benedictine Abbey of...

Governess-turned-detective Miss Silver investigates a deadly conspiratorial ring Charles Moray has come home to England to collect his inheritance. After four years wandering the jungles of India and South America, the hardy young man returns to the manor of his birth, where generations of...

The twelfth-century Welsh monk is caught up in civil war and captured by Danish mercenaries, in the Silver Dagger Award-winning medieval mystery series. In the summer of 1144, a strange calm has settled over England. The armies of King Stephen and the Empress Maud,...

In this "enchanting" historical mystery, "medieval England comes marvelously alive" as Brother Cadfael investigates a woman's baffling disappearance (The Washington Post). In the year of our Lord 1141, August comes in golden as a lion, and two monks ride into the Benedictine Abbey of...

A murder in a crowded Broadway theater presents a full house of suspects--the first in this classic mystery series starring Ellery Queen! Despite the dismal Broadway season, Gunplay continues to draw crowds. A gangland spectacle, it's packed to the gills with action, explosions, and...

From the Edgar Award-winning author: When a troubled novice is blamed for a priest's disappearance, Brother Cadfael seeks to save his soul--and his life. Outside the pale of the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in September of 1140, a priestly emissary for...

To save his estranged son, a monk risks breaking his vows in this "moving and suspenseful" entry in the Silver Dagger Award-winning medieval mystery series (Booklist). For Brother Cadfael in the autumn of his life, the mild November of our Lord's year 1145 may...

The medieval monk digs for clues when a body is unearthed by a plow: "His detecting talents are as dazzling as ever" (Publishers Weekly). When a newly plowed field recently given to the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul yields the body...

A lawyer is sucked into a couple's hostile divorce in this mystery with "a stellar ending" from the original detective series that inspired the HBO show (Kirkus Reviews). Edward Garvin is a very successful businessman with a very unhappy ex-wife--who wants his money. So...

When a loudmouthed, arrogant author is silenced, the reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe looks for the killer: "A very clever mystery . . . A masterly job" (Booklist). The gun was fired close to Charles Childress's head, and his were the only fingerprints on...

Based on the Sherlock Holmes film: Ellery Queen matches wits with the Baker Street sleuth to unmask Jack the Ripper. Ellery Queen is struggling over his latest book when a friend brings him a mystery. It is a journal, written by a Victorian doctor,...

A stylish puzzle mystery from the author who "took the intellectual game that was the formal detective novel to greater heights than any American writer" (The Weekly Standard). The windows of French's department store are one of New York's great attractions. Year-round, their displays...

To save his favorite newspaper, Nero Wolfe steps into the crossfire of a tabloid war. Master sleuth Nero Wolfe's small circle of friends is limited to his assistant, Archie Goodwin; his chef, Fritz; and Lon Cohen, the head man at the New York Gazette....

A soda war explodes into murder for Nero Wolfe, "one of the two or three most beloved detectives in fiction" (Publishers Weekly). For the men of Madison Avenue, the battle between soft-drink giants Cherr-o-key and AmeriCherry seems heaven sent. For years now, the firm...

Inspector Charlesworth investigates a strange murder in a dress shopThe sales room at Christophe et Cie is staffed by five young women. Each is beautiful in her own way--and each could be a murderer. One morning, two of the women purchase some oxalic acid...

In this classic British mystery starring a sleuth "who has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot," Miss Silver investigates a murder that may have its roots in a new romance--or an old family feud (Manchester Evening...

Iconic sleuth Nero Wolfe returns to track down the murderer of a New York Symphony Orchestra conductor in this Nero Award-winning mystery. Ever since disgraced associate Orrie Cather's suicide, armchair detective Nero Wolfe has relished retirement in his Manhattan brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street....

A professor's death lures the reclusive detective and his sidekick to a bucolic crime scene: "Goldsborough does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy" (Booklist). An academic so conservative he thought Ronald Reagan was a pinko, Hale Markham rules Prescott University like an intellectual...

Threats against a televangelist lead Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin into a murder case in this "brisk and beguiling page-turner" (Publishers Weekly). Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every...

After the heir to a frozen-food fortune gets iced, Nero Wolfe's right-hand man becomes a suspect: "Goldsborough does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy" (Booklist). When Lily Rowan doesn't laugh at his jokes, Archie Goodwin knows something's wrong. Her niece Noreen has been...

A sophisticated 1930s Greenwich Village couple finds an inconvenient body in their upstairs bathtub in the first installment of an "excellent series" (The New Yorker). Jerry and Pamela North's upstairs apartment has been empty as long as they can remember. It's an ordinary Greenwich...

John Dickson Carr, a master of the Golden Age British-style mystery novel, presents Dr. Gideon Fell's most chilling case, in which a clock-obsessed killer terrorizes LondonA clockmaker is puzzled by the theft of the hands of a monumental new timepiece he is preparing for...

If Nancy Drew drank Jack Daniels... Meet Jessica James.Her cousin's dead, a killer is on the loose, and her roommate's sisters have gone missing...Within an hour of Jessica returning home to Montana, her cousin Mike hints that a series of freak accidents at the...

A strange malady afflicts the children of McNair House in this British mystery featuring former Scotland Yard superintendent James Pibble, from CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson Recently given the sack by Scotland Yard, James Pibble arrives at McNair House on a private matter,...

The "intensely logical" master sleuth discovers a crowded coffin in one of his earliest and most puzzling cases (The New York Times). The scion of a famous New York art-dealing family, Georg Khalkis spent his final years housebound with blindness until he died of...

The famous sleuth comes out of retirement to help his father hunt down a New York City serial killer: "Marvelous . . . one of his best" (Classic Mysteries). In the dog days of August, it is no surprise to see New Yorkers perspire....

The Skeleton Detective puzzles over the theft of an ancient bit of bone--and a student's murder--in this novel by the Edgar Award-winning author of Switcheroo. Anthropology professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride Julie during their English...

Looking for trouble, Ellery Queen descends on a small town At the tail end of the long summer of 1940, there is nowhere in the country more charming than Wrightsville. The Depression has abated, and for the first time in years the city is...

A Yorkshire cop's reunion with old friends is marred by murder in this mystery by "the finest male English contemporary crime writer" (Val McDermid). With his longtime girlfriend, Ellie, detective Peter Pascoe is off to Thornton Lacey for an exciting weekend reunion with a...

She wants her degree. But she just became a suspect of first-degree murder... Jessica James is broke and counting down the days until she can defend her philosophy thesis. Desperate to get out of her grubby attic digs, she and her friends break into...

A hilarious police procedural set in the strangest town in the Ozarks, where whip-smart sheriff Arly Hanks does everything she can to keep the peace. Nothing ever happens in Maggody, Arkansas, population 755. Aside from handling the occasional barroom brawl or exploding still, Chief...

Death Valley lives up to its name when a murder draws Ellery Queen into the strange practices of a religious cult. It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes...

Governess-turned-sleuth Miss Silver, who "has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot," visits a small village hiding big secrets (Manchester Evening News). The citizens of Melling are perfectly ordinary. Some might even consider them boring, but not...

Inspector Cockrill is called in to solve the murder of a most unpopular Belgian Few were disappointed when Raoul Vernet was found with his head bashed in, dead in a pool of his own blood. On vacation in England, the Belgian seducer comes to...

Surrounded by war, stalked by murder, can she stay alive?October 1940. Livvy Redmond is thrilled to receive an invitation to a country house party away from the Blitz. There she hopes to help her husband overcome his injuries from fighting in France. But excitement...

Chief of Police Arly Hanks will do whatever it takes to keep Maggody from losing its mind in this charming cozy mystery. In a town as peculiar as Maggody, Arkansas, it doesn't take much to tip the community into chaos. When Mayor Jim Bob...

"A top-notch thriller . . . The identities of the murderer and the twelfth victim come as a stunner" (Publishers Weekly). At Maude Daneson's rooming house, the holiday season has everyone bustling about in anticipation, and Maude herself is planning a glorious Christmas dinner....

In World War II-era England, it seems a noblewoman may have come back from the dead Anne Jocelyn and a friend were killed trying to escape the first German assault on France. Before leaving to join the war, it was up to Anne's husband,...

For Mr. and Mrs. North, there's no vacation from murder In a remote cabin far from New York City, Jerry and Pamela North are getting killed. On the brink of annihilation, they grit their teeth and battle back. In a minute, the fight is...

When a woman is shot in a cannabis patch, Arly Hanks must restore order to her Ozarks community, in this sharp-witted mystery by an Agatha Award-winning author. When small-town police chief Arly Hanks returns to Maggody, Arkansas, after vacation, she finds the population has...

A British doctor is caught up in suspicions of spousal abuse and murder in a riveting mystery by the author of Death by Appointment. When a patient visits Dr. Cathy Moreland with a disturbing story of marital tension and a bruise on her upper...

Yorkshire's detective duo descends into the kinky world of underground films in an "undeniably lively" mystery of murder and illusion (Kirkus Reviews). Reginald Hill "raised the classical British mystery to new heights" when he introduced pugnacious Yorkshire Det.Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his partner, the...

The "consistently witty" Agatha Award-winning author presents a tale of murder in a country mansion (Mystery News). With their fortunes dwindling, Reggie and his wife, Midge, have turned the family mansion into an English country inn. When Midge gets a call from an old...

The threat from above casts a dark shadow.A man falls to his death from a cliff face in western Scotland. From a distance, another man watches. He approaches the body, tucks a book into the dead man's pocket, and leaves. When the Scottish police...

Another outrageous Maggody mystery, starring police chief Arly Hanks alongside a smooth-talking televangelist and a whole town full of sinners. Some days, police chief Arly Hanks can't help but see Maggody, Arkansas, as little more than a cesspool of poverty, ignorance, and incest--the kind...

A detective is drawn to a newly widowed woman in this "darkly funny" British murder mystery in the Gold Dagger Award-winning series (Kirkus Reviews). With his partner away on a honeymoon, Yorkshire detective Andrew Dalziel tries to beat the blues by taking a vacation...

Scotland Yard detective James Pibble travels to a remote Scottish island to free an old man from a dangerous cult of self-proclaimed saints and saviors in this mystery by CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson Ninety-two-year-old Sir Francis Francis summons James Pibble to an...

Along the canals of Venice, Bognor investigates a mogul's medieval murderFlush with cash from the success of his latest insipid blockbuster, aspiring film mogul Irving Silverburger takes to Venice to soak himself in luxury. Instead, he is quickly soaked in blood. Cruising down the...

Tolling church bells are as much an aspect of rural England as are slate-roof cottages and verdant-hedged lanes. But someone in this sleepy village evidently takes exception to one slice of Merrie Olde England, for Roger, Lord Swinbrook is found on Valentines' Day in...

A detective crime investigation novel. First book in the Mark Guilardi Investigation series by Montreal-based author Valerie Drego. Story based in Montreal, Quebec. Private Investigator Mark Guilardi is handed a go-nowhere case: the murder of semi-recluse Cedric Allard, his death apparently collateral damage from...