Historical Mysteries With Tough Leading Ladies

Set in 19th century Sri Lanka and inspired by local folklore, the daughter of a traditional demon-priest — relentlessly bullied by peers and accused of witchcraft herself — tries to solve the mysterious attacks that have been terrorizing her coastal village.

Charlotte Holmes is the typical English rose: beautiful, fashionable, and entirely charming. She’s also a social pariah, insanely smart, in danger of losing her figure to one too many sweets, and—oh yeah—the legendary Sherlock Holmes. And when a trio of unexpected deaths strikes London, Lady Sherlock is gonna get the job done. See the whole series here.

Veronica Speedwell is a sexually liberated Victorian butterfly hunter with a lethal hatpin. Stoker is brooding, mysterious, and sometimes wears an eye patch. Together they solve crimes with plenty of witty banter. Also they have exceedingly frustrating sexual tension.

As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s atmospheric new novel.

Maggie Hope has come a long way since serving as a typist for Winston Churchill. Now she’s working undercover for the Special Operations Executive in the elegant but eerily silent city of Paris. Maggie must risk her life to penetrate powerful circles and employ all her talents for deception and spycraft to solve a series of baffling murders among a group of imprisoned agents.

Lena Aldridge wonders if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. She’s feeling utterly hopeless until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better, and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. But death follows her onboard when an obscenely wealthy family draws her into their fold just as one among them is killed in a chillingly familiar way.

Mary Russell is used to dark secrets—her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. The last thing Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, need is to help an old friend with her mad, missing aunt. Lady Vivian Beaconsfield has spent most of her adult life in one asylum after another, since the loss of her brother and father in the Great War. Although her mental state seemed to be improving, she’s now disappeared after an outing from Bethlem Royal Hospital . . . better known as Bedlam.

Harlem, 1926.  Louise Lloyd is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. When a girl turns up dead in front of the café, Louise is forced to confront something she’s been trying to ignore. After an altercation with a police officer gets her arrested, Louise is given an ultimatum: She can either help solve the case or wind up in a jail cell. Louise has no choice but to investigate and soon finds herself toe-to-toe with a murderous mastermind hell-bent on taking more lives, maybe even her own …

Follow the historical mystery series featuring Elizabeth Miles, a young con woman who finds herself embroiled in intrigue in turn of the century New York.

Scotland, 1906. A mysterious object discovered inside an ancient castle calls Maximilian Haywood, the new Duke of Olympia, and his fellow researcher Emmeline Truelove north to the remote Orkney Islands. When their mutual friend Lord Silverton vanishes in the night from an Edinburgh street, their quest takes a dangerous turn through time, which puts Haywood’s extraordinary talents—and Truelove’s courage—to their most breathtaking test yet.

Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Forced to leave behind their life in California, they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Officials rule Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth.  

Flavia de Luce is not your normal twelve-year-old girl. An expert in the chemical nature of poisons, she has solved many mysteries, sharpening her considerable detection skills to the point where she had little choice but to turn professional. So Flavia and dependable Dogger, estate gardener and sounding board extraordinaire, set up shop at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw. Little does she know that their first case will be extremely close to home, beginning with an unwelcome discovery in Ophelia’s wedding cake: a human finger.

Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer, is investigating a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in full purdah when the case takes a turn toward the murderous. Inspired in part by the woman who made history as India’s first female attorney, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp new sleuth.

Lady Darby returns to London with her new husband, Sebastian Gage, but newlywed bliss won’t last for long when her past comes back to haunt her.

Paris, 1989:  Alone in her luminous apartment on Île Saint-Louis, Sylvie discovers a mysterious letter among her late lover Julien’s possessions, launching her into a decades-old search for a child who vanished in the turbulence of the Second World War. She is unaware that she is watched over by Julien’s ghost, his love for her powerful enough to draw him back to this world, though doomed now to remain a silent observer.  Sylvie’s quest leads her deep into the secrets of Julien’s past, shedding new light on the dark days of Nazi-occupied Paris.

The author of A Gilded Grave returns to Newport, Rhode Island, at the close of the nineteenth century, where headstrong heiress Deanna Randolph must solve another murder among the social elite.

Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…

The Rosalind Thorne Mysteries—inspired by the novels of Jane Austen—continue as the audacious Rosalind strives to aid those in need while navigating the halls of high society. She has slowly but assuredly gained a reputation as “a useful woman”—by helping respectable women out of some less-than-respectable predicaments. Her latest endeavor is a tragedy waiting to happen…

It’s the summer of 1894, and an infidelity case has brought PI Mary Handley to a far corner of Brooklyn: Coney Island. In the midst of her investigation, Mary is contacted by a convicted man’s brother to reopen a murder case. A prostitute was killed by a Jack the Ripper copycat years ago in her New York hotel room, but her true killer was never found. Once again it’s up to Mary to make right the city’s wrongs.

Free from the clutches of her con artist father, Ruby Proulx is starting to settle in at the Belden, her aunt Honoria’s seaside hotel. When one of the guests, renowned Spiritualist and outspoken suffragist Sophronia Foster Eldridge, checks into the hotel for a monthlong stay, Ruby finds her sense of purpose expands outside the confines of home and family. When a dangerous act of sabotage is carried out and a body is found floating in the pool of a local bathhouse, Ruby takes it upon herself to find answers…