For fans of Alexander McCall Smith and James Runcie's Grantchester Mysteries, the first novel in a clever new crime series about Victorian London and an indomitable female detective.Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, aged fifty-two, is the widow of an archdeacon. Living in London with her confidante and landlady, Mrs. Bentley, who once let rooms to John Keats, Laetitia makes her living as a highly discreet private investigator.Her brother, Frederick Tyson, is a criminal b...

It's 1973 and 12-year-old Jenny is in shock. She's just been cast as one of the lead roles in a feature film. She's going to be a child actor! Soon she must jet off to France, to the idyllic Château Mouchotte, where she will join her film family: three other children and two renowned actors.The glitz and glamour of being on set is a million miles away from Jenny's normal life, but showbiz is never straightforward and there's one fierce and famous actor that threatens the whole shoo...

Cassie is nothing if not organised. A successful journalist, she's ticked almost all the boxes: attentive boyfriend, own flat, good job, great friends - it's all fallen into place. In theory, at least. There's one part of Cassie's life, however, which is anything but organised, and that's her love for the Darling family. As the only child of ambitious parents, Cassie spent her childhood abandoned to the somewhat peremptory care of a series of nannies until one day, peeping over the garden ...

Tom is in shock. He's just discovered that his dad is an escaped fairy on the run. And that he must trust his life to three dangerous fairy godmothers he's never met. Two of them are hardened criminals, and one falls out of the window when she tries to fly . . .Will their mad magic be enough to help Tom rescue his dad from the clutches of some killer fairies?

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, another future classic from Costa Winner Kate Saunders ( Five Children on the Western Front).Emily watched, in a trance of astonishment, as the bear opened the picnic basket, took out a tartan rug and spread it on Holly's bed.And then the penguin spoke.Actually spoke .'What's going on? This isn't Pointed End!'The bear said, 'It looks like a hum...

"Reminiscent of Road Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . . . a great read-aloud." --BooklistWelcome to the most magical house in London.The family of eleven-year-old twins Oz and Lily have inherited it, together with the mysterious shop downstairs. Long ago, the shop's famous chocolate-makers, who also happen to be Oz and Lily's great uncles, were clever sorcerers. Now evil villians are hunting for the secret of their greatest recipe. The terrifying...

Kate is a thirty-something-year-old adventurer and single mother who sells her stateside business to go to Kathmandu, Nepal with her young son, Jack. Her intention is to adopt an orphaned toddler named Devi, a little girl she knows only from a photograph. The expedition ends up completely redirecting Kate’s moral compass and forcing her to find peace within chaos. Stand in the Traffic is the story of Kate’s year long journey through culture shock, paperwork delays, and revolution....

Lily-Josephine had a talent for love. Wilful, enchanting and passionate, she was the centre of a charmed universe - until her foolish, indulgent father married again.Like Snow-Drop in Grimms' fairy tale, Lily ran from her jealous stepmother one idyllic summer evening in 1941. She escaped to find sanctuary but, at Randalls, discovered a love far greater than any she had ever known...A generation later, the events set in train that night begin to unravel when Sophie Gently fa...

Melissa Lamb and her cousin Ernestine are at the centre of the Wild Young Bohemians, an exclusive dining club at Oxford for the beautiful and ambitious. Melissa is in the grip of an obsession. Ernestine, however, mild and practical, does not see through Melissa's ruthless determination to restore her derelict family mansion - a Gothic legacy of lust, greed and death, with a spectacular secret that has slept for a hundred years.Melissa will let nothing stand in her way - until a ven...

Nobody marries for money any more. Or do they? The aristocratic Hasty sisters are astonishingly beautiful, irresistibly sexy and startlingly intelligent. They are also, unfortunately, extremely poor. On the death of their charming, autocratic father, they discover that their sole inheritance is their ravishing good looks. Even worse, Melismate, home of their ancestors for nearly a thousand years, is to be sold, leaving them homeless. Rufa, the eldest and most beautiful of the Hastys, is al...

In 1851, private-detective Laetitia Rodd is enjoying a well-earned holiday when she gets an urgent request for her services. Mrs. Rodd’s neighbor Jacob Welland is a reclusive rich gentleman dying of consumption, and he wants Mrs. Rodd to find his brother, who has been missing for fifteen years. Joshua Welland was a scholar at Oxford, brilliant, eccentric, and desperately poor when he disappeared from the university. Friends claim to have seen him since, in gypsy camps and wandering around ...

M. C. Beaton meets Miss Marple in the second book in the Laetitia Rodd Mysteries, which sees Kate Saunders's Victorian detective on the hunt for a missing Oxford academic.In 1851, private detective Laetitia Rodd is enjoying a well-earned holiday when she gets an urgent request for her services. Mrs. Rodd's neighbor Jacob Welland is a reclusive, rich gentleman dying of consumption, and he wants Mrs. Rodd to find his brother, who has been missing for fifteen years.