When a carriage bearing the Arnifour family crest-a vulture devouring a slaughtered lamb-arrives at the Kensington home of Colin Pendragon, it is an ominous beginning to a perplexing new case. Lady Arnifour's husband has been beaten to death and her niece, Elsbeth, left in a coma. Is the motive passion, revenge, or something even more sinister? Police suspicions have fallen on the groundskeeper and his son, yet the Earl's widow is convinced of their innocence. Even as Colin and his partner...

Despite their investigative prowess, Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Michael Sinclair, Lord Acton, and rookie detective Kathleen Doyle stir more than a few feathers at CID Headquarters when their relationship comes to light. But office politics quickly become trivial when a rash of underworld murders shatters London's normally austere façade.With a growing list of successfully solved cases to her name, the ever-dauntless Doyle shakes off the gossip and sets out to investigate the ...

A female undertaker in Victorian London suspects death by unnatural causes in a mystery "rich with historical incidents and details" (Publishers Weekly).Only a woman with an iron backbone could succeed as an undertaker in Victorian England, but Violet Morgan takes great pride in her trade. While her husband, Graham, is preoccupied with elevating their station in society, Violet is cultivating a sterling reputation for Morgan Undertaking. She is empathetic,...

From Anne Cleeland comes a captivating new mystery series following the perilous exploits of two Scotland Yard detectives as they track down London's most elusive killers.First-year detective Kathleen Doyle is a plucky Irish redhead of humble origins and modest means. Chief Inspector Michael Acton is her antithesis: a British lord turned cop. He's tall, handsome, and enigmatic—to a fault. He also has a knack for solving London's most high-profile crimes. Acton selects Doyle out of ...

On a spring morning in London, 1875, Charles Lenox agrees to take time away from his busy schedule as a Member of Parliament to meet an old protege's client at Charing Cross. But when their cryptic encounter seems to lead, days later, to the murder of an innocuous country squire, this fast favor draws Lenox inexorably back into his old profession. Soon he realizes that, far from concluding the murderer's business, this body is only the first step in a cruel plan, many years in the plotting...

An undertaker follows a mystery from Windsor Castle to Egyptian tombs: "Violet remains an engaging guide with an unusual perspective on Victorian society." —Publishers WeeklyAfter establishing her reputation as one of London's most highly regarded undertakers, Violet Harper decided to take her practice to the wilds of the American West. But when her mother falls ill, Violet and her husband, Samuel, are summoned back to England, where her skills are as soug...

Queen Victoria, still mourning her long-dead husband Prince Albert, has found solace in John Brown, an enigmatic palace servant who dabbles in the occult and keeps the grieving queen entertained with his tarot card readings. Undertaker Violet Harper is invited to attend one of Mr. Brown's infamous readings, during which he implies that Buckingham Palace will soon be shrouded in death's dark veil. Well acquainted with death, Violet shrugs him off as a charlatan—until his sinister divination...

Chief Inspector Acton and Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle know firsthand how the administration of justice can often follow a labyrinthine path. As they pursue a self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner, Acton's own questionable methods may prove his undoing.The notoriety of being married to the enigmatically brilliant Lord Acton presents its own challenges as newly promoted Detective Sergeant Doyle contends with a series of homicides that seem to point to a vigilante killer. ...

Legendary thriller writer David Morrell transports readers to the fogbound streets of London, where a killer plots to assisinate Queen Victoria.The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The Empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, an...

Captain Lacey is asked by Peter Thompson of the Thames River Police to help him investigate a cold case–the murder of a woman found near the docks Thompson patrols. The investigation was sidelined, considered unsolvable, but Thompson has long wished to find her killer.Captain Lacey joins him in the hunt, entering a part of society that is closed to outsiders. Meanwhile, he must deal with his daughter’s debut and more developments in his new domestic life, including an anonymous bla...

A ruined abbey on a beautiful estate in Derbyshire, a murdered peer, and a most unlikely romance make New York Times bestseller Tasha Alexander's new novel Behind the Shattered Glass absolutely irresistibleAnglemore Park is the ancestral home of Lady Emily Hargreave's husband Colin. But the stately calm of country life is destroyed when their neighbor, the Marquess of Montagu, bursts through the French doors from the garden and falls down dead in ...

A brilliant historical mystery series begins: in gaslit Victorian London, writer Thomas De Quincey must become a detective to clear his own name.Thomas De Quincey, infamous for his memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, is the major suspect in a series of ferocious mass murders identical to ones that terrorized London forty-three years earlier.The blueprint for the killings seems to be De Quincey's essay On Murder Considered as One of th...