Showing results by publisher "Boldwood Books" in Historical

Harriet White is settling into life in the post room of the Baker Street building society. Until she discovers a letter in The Times challenging Sherlock Holmes to prove his status as the world’s greatest detective by solving an impossible mystery. The letter, signed Professor James Moriarty, advises Holmes that the crime will be committed within the next seven days. Holmes himself must deduce which crime is the correct one to investigate. Dismissing the letter as a prank – after all, Sherlock Holmes isn't real – Harry goes about her business.

The girls of Dressmakers Alley are happy in their new jobs. Business is thriving and yet a new shadow looms. Women are being attacked and robbed whilst several businesses have been burgled. Are these two circumstances linked or is this just a coincidence? As the attacks escalate, and the police seem unmoved to intervene, the men of Dressmakers Alley decide to take the law into their own hands and patrol the streets to keep them and their women safe.

Westleham Village, May 1948 The villagers of Westleham are excited for the first village cricket match since the end of the war. But Martha Miller has more pressing concerns - namely, the sudden reappearance of her husband, Stan, missing for two years and acting as though nothing has happened. Martha doesn’t know what to feel, especially now that his return threatens her growing fondness for the kind-hearted village vicar, Luke. Yet she’s not the only one unsettled by Stan’s return…

Even though its famous opera house has shuttered its doors for the war, Covent Garden remains one of the most exciting, bustling areas of London. It’s where Hannah Merrill and Aunt Violet have their bookshop and, in spite of the recent spate of burglaries in the area, it’s generally thought to be a good neighbourhood. So Hannah is surprised when she sees a fellow shopkeeper – a jeweller named Jacob Cornelis – having a heated argument with a stranger. Especially when the next day Cornelis is found dead in his shop, apparently the victim of another burglary.

The couple are determined their low-key celebration will go without a hitch, but there can’t be an ‘I do’ while the vicar is missing. And when he’s found dead – a victim of a poisoning – in the crypt behind the church, Hannah knows only she and Aunt Violet can find out who did it.

1915, London: Working in the dusty bookshop that her Aunt Violet mysteriously inherited, Hannah Merrill is accustomed to finding twists in every tale. But discovering her beloved best friend Lily-Anne – with a paperknife through her heart – in the middle of the bookshop, is not a plotline she saw coming. The case is anything but textbook. With the discovery of a coded German message, and Hannah’s instinct that Lily-Anne’s husband is keeping secrets, she determines to get to the bottom of it. She can’t do it alone though.

When Paige returns to her ancestral family home, Woodham Hall, she's nursing an unbearable heartbreak. The man she'd thought she loved has told her the most terrible lie, one she feels she'll never recover from. The only thing that seems to be able to hold her interest is the story of a poisoning that once supposedly happened in the house – depicted in brutal detail in a painting by an unknown artist…

1916, Midwinter Manor: Desperate for a Christmas weekend break from war-torn London, Hannah Merrill and her Aunt Violet take Bartleby the cat and themselves off to visit Hannah’s sister, in her beautiful country estate, deep in the English countryside. The huge house is full of relatives, friends and merrymakers, and everyone’s excited to have a Christmas to remember. But then, when a fellow-guest’s body is found in the library – apparently bludgeoned to death – and a precious ruby is stolen from another guest, it appears that it’s going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.

1594, Bishopsgate Ward, London. Within the walls and without, unease and uncertainty lurk beneath the noise and bustle of a smoky, teeming city. Matthew Cutler, newly widowed and caring for two spirited daughters, takes his position as constable for the parish of Spitalfields very seriously. So when Paulo Brisco, a quiet Venetian perfumer is found brutally murdered in his own shop, Cutler throws himself into his first major crime, and one which threatens to set all Bishopsgate alight.

When Harriet White rebuffs the advances of her boss at the Baker Street building society where she works, she finds herself demoted to a new position… a very unusual position. Deep in the postal department beneath the bank, she is tasked with working her way through a mountain of correspondence addressed to Baker Street’s most famous resident: Mr Sherlock Holmes.

When Trisha receives a mysterious letter to her Liverpool home, it opens a decades’ old mystery, drawing her back into her family’s forgotten past, the horrors of war, and a small island off the coast of Greece… Eighty years earlier, on the island of Milos, Dora is dreaming of a better life, free from the oppression of the occupying army and, closer to home, the brutal rule of her father, an infamous horse breeder. Then a German cargo ship is bombed in the harbour, killing dozens of the men on board.

1926 – Christie is a darling of the literary circuit and the most desired guest in London’s glittering social scene. She can often be found at meetings of the Detection Club – where mystery writers come together to share ideas, swap secrets and drink copiously. But then a fellow author's initiation ceremony takes a gruesome turn, and one of the group ends up dead. Now, Agatha is no longer just the creator of great mystery plots – she’s a player in one.

When Agatha Christie invites fellow members of the Detection Club to witness the famous excavations at the ruins of Ur, Dorothy L. Sayers, her quick-witted assistant Eliza Baker, and Theo Sharp expect ancient wonders – not fresh corpses. But when an archaeologist is found dead in the sand, whispers of a deadly curse sweep through the camp. Eliza suspects something far more dangerous than superstition.

2 April 1911 is census night, when suffragettes hide overnight in parliament to force census takers to record it as their address – the only way women can have a place in government. When a suffragette hiding in Big Ben is poisoned, suspicion falls on the residents of two grand houses in Mayfair. The Kesbys are avant-garde artists, the Ashcourts are aristocrats fallen on hard times. Once again, Fairbanks and Flynn put aside their differences to investigate an astonishing case of deception and murder.

1918 Italy. When a deadly blizzard traps Fiona Figg and Kitty Lane in the Dolomite Mountains, it’s all downhill from here. Their hotel is snowed-in, and no one can get in or out. Then a man is found dead in his locked hotel room – and the killer is still on the premises. But with no murder weapon and too many suspects, their investigation is treading on thin ice.

1605. Bess Throckmorton is well used to cunning plots and intrigues. With her husband Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned in the Tower of London, and she and her family in a constant battle to outwit Robert Cecil, the most powerful man in the country who is determined to ruin her, Bess decides to retreat to her beloved home, Crestwell Hall. But there she is shocked to hear talk of a new plot to murder the king. So, unbeknownst to their menfolk, the wives of the plotters begin to work together to try to stop the impending disaster.

Historian Archie Laverick, scarred mentally and physically by the Great War, travels to Berlin to research a famed Prussian general. His quiet study is shattered when he crosses paths with Esme Carmichael, a spirited young American intent on making her name as a foreign correspondent. When a shooting at a Saxon castle leaves a young Jewish woman accused of murder, Archie and Esme are drawn into a perilous hunt for the truth.

1968, Sicily. Just months after an earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene. 2003. TV showman and true crime aficionado Milo Conti is Italy’s darling, uncovering and solving historic crimes. When he turns his attention to the story of the missing Irene Borgata, accusing her husband of her murder, Enzo’s daughter asks her friend for help to prove her father’s innocence.

Paris, 1928: Agatha Christie and fellow writer Dorothy L Sayers board the Orient Express, bound for Constantinople. Christie in particular is looking forward to a break from recent dispiriting events in both her work and private life – the finalisation of her divorce from her philanderous husband Archie, and the miserly reception of her latest book.

Young governess Flora Maguire is on her way home from America on the maiden voyage of the S.S. Minneapolis with her young charge Eddy, Viscount Trent, when she discovers a dead body. Unconvinced when the death is pronounced an accident, Flora starts asking questions, but following threats, a near drowning and a second murder, the hunt is on for a killer. Time is running out as the Minneapolis approaches the English coast. Will Flora be able to protect Eddy, as well as herself?