Join author Cindy Anstey as she explores how the concept of a full-time police force evolved from the informal truncheon-swinging “Peelers” and “Bobbies.” The Hummingbird Dagger—Cindy’s new YA novel set in a turbulent 1800’s London as the police force is transforming—blends romance, danger, and mystery. Research is the lifeblood of a historical writer. Not only…
Betrayal in Time is the fourth book in Julie McElwain’s Kendra Donovan series. Donovan’s adventures in nineteenth-century England continue when she is called upon to investigate the murder of a spymaster. My only regret in picking up this novel is that I hadn’t been able to read the three others in the series first. And…
In stark contrast to her husband, Mary Todd Lincoln has a bad reputation.
From New York Times Notable mystery author Lawrence Goldstone, Assassin of Shadows plunges readers into the dramatic events surrounding the assassination of President William McKinley. President William McKinley Jr. was the 25th president of the United States. On November 6th, 1901, “six months into his second term,” he was shot by “twenty-eight year old anarchist…
For a writer, obsessions are more useful than ideas. One of mine is true crime. I’m a sucker for it. As a teen, my copy of Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s account of prosecuting the Manson murderers, was thumbed to the point of disintegration, and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara’s exploration of her…
The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a debut novel from Sara Collins. A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London. I’m forced to trot to keep up with the turnkeys so…
In The Malta Exchange by Steve Berry, the pope is dead. A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the fourth century and Constantine the Great. The election of…
Craig Russell’s new historical thriller The Devil Aspect centers around an asylum for the criminally insane in Prague, 1935. As a new serial killer emerges in the city, a young psychiatrist works with the asylum’s serial killer-patients to research whether they exhibit an archetype of evil called “The Devil Aspect.” Dread hangs heavy over the Hrad Orlů…
Part history, part mystery, Nicola Cornick’s The Woman in the Lake features a beautiful, golden gown with a deadly secret and a dark past—one that threatens to possess the troubled Fen and destroy her sanity. Nicola Cornick is known for her fluid time-slip plots, which blur boundaries of time and space. The Woman in the Lake is…
Stacey Halls’s The Familiars is set against the backdrop of the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612. After three previous miscarriages and with a baby on the way, Fleetwood Shuttleworth leaps on the opportunity for assistance from a midwife, Alice. But when Alice is accused of practicing witchcraft, Fleetwood must decide whether she can trust her…
