Historic Mysteries South

This fascinating third volume in the Britannia's Fist series will have you pondering how easily history could have been swayed differently. What if other countries had become involved in America's Civil War? Historian Peter G. Tsouras presents the third installment in his Britannia's Fist alternate history series.

Returning to London after his honeymoon (For Deader or Worse), Bow Street Runner John Pickett soon discovers wedded bliss is not without its pitfalls, as he finds it galling to be financially dependent on Julia, his aristocratic bride. When he is summoned to the home of Lady Washbourn, Pickett finds he has something in common with the young countess: like himself, Lady Washbourn has married above her station and now finds herself adrift in a world to which she does not truly belong.

Richard Sharpe, asked to help an old friend, meets, at last, the greatest enemy. Five years after the Battle of Waterloo, Sharpe's peaceful retirement in Normandy is shattered. An old friend, Don Blas Vivar, is missing in Chile, reported dead at rebel hands--a report his wife refuses to believe. She appeals to Sharpe to find out the truth. Sharpe, along with Patrick Harper, finds himself bound for Chile via St. Helena, where they have a fateful meeting with the fallen emperor Napoleon.

No one can talk to the dead...can they? Free man of color Benjamin January gets caught up in a strange, spiritual world that might lead to his own demise, as he hunts for a missing teenager in this gripping, atmospheric historical mystery. New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, the last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloë Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can’t say no.

1803. The Napoleonic Wars. A Royal Navy warship is ordered to pursue an enemy frigate to the icy waters far south in the Indian Ocean. There, it must capture the enemy ship and retrieve a mysterious sea chest, contents unknown, failure not permitted. For the determined young captain and his eager crew, this already dangerous mission turns into a battle with a mysterious vessel that appears not in the sea, but unbelievably, impossibly, in the sky above. But nothing could prepare the crew for what lay beyond the 50th latitude of south.

Newly promoted to command of his first ship, Captain Jack Aubrey, along with his crew, and new friend and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, must patrol a Mediterranean fraught with peril but rich with rewards. A glimpse of white sails on the horizon could mean a prize to be taken – or a fight for survival.

Captain Bligh, of Bounty fame, is now governor of New South Wales and facing mutiny anew, having lost the support of local settlers. Jack Aubrey is commissioned to come to his rescue. With a beautiful but dangerous spy on board, along with an unwelcome hold full of convicts, and war with America brewing, can Captain Jack Aubrey reach Australia in one piece?

Following a daring rescue, Jack Aubrey accepts a new command and a new commission to a far-flung destination. Ahead of him and his crew are the new sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and the terrifying hazards of an archipelago of islands in the East Indies, where their French enemies have near overwhelming superiority.

En route to England and his next command, Captain Jack Aubrey, and his friend, ship’s surgeon and secret agent Stephen Maturin, find themselves swept up in the War of 1812. As Aubrey convalesces from his wounds in a Boston hospital, awaiting the next prisoner exchange, Maturin’s past activities as a spy return to haunt him and precipitate both men into new and unexpected dangers.

When a rash of jewel thefts strikes London, magistrate Patrick Colquhoun deploys his Bow Street Runners to put a stop to the crimes. A Russian princess is to attend a production of Handel’s Esther at Drury Lane Theatre, where she will wear a magnificent diamond necklace. The entire Bow Street force will be stationed at various locations around the theatre - including John Pickett, who will occupy a box directly across from the princess.

When Julia, Lady Fieldhurst, returns from Scotland restless and out of sorts, her friend Emily Dunnington plans a select dinner party with half a dozen male guests from whom Julia may choose a lover.

But Emily's dinner ends in disaster when one of her guests, Sir Reginald Montague, is shot dead.

After a modest wedding ceremony, Bow Street Runner John Pickett and his bride, Julia, the former Lady Fieldhurst, set out for a wedding trip to Somersetshire, where Pickett must face his greatest challenge yet: meeting his in-laws. Sir Thaddeus and Lady Runyon are shocked at their daughter’s hasty remarriage - and appalled by her choice of a second husband. Pickett, for his part, is surprised to learn that Julia once had an elder sister: Claudia, Lady Buckleigh, who disappeared 13 years earlier.

The third installment of the John Pickett series of humorous Regency mysteries finds Bow Street Runner Pickett in Scotland investigating a woman found unconscious on the beach - a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the local laird's daughter, a girl missing and presumed dead for the last 15 years. Pickett is surprised to discover that the woman was found by none other than Lady Fieldhurst and her three young nephews - and gratified to learn that her ladyship has registered at the seaside inn as Mrs. Julia Pickett.

Having resigned his position at Bow Street in disgrace (at least in his own mind) and failed in his attempt to establish himself as a private agent, John Pickett toils away at a tedious job as a clerk in the city. When he is approached by a man wishing to hire him to extract a young lady being held against her will at an asylum for opium-eaters, Pickett jumps at the chance to prove himself, and has a very reluctant Julia commit him to the institution as a patient. But nothing at the Larches is exactly as it seems.

Eager to escape London following the scandal of her husband's death, Lady Fieldhurst accepts an invitation to spend the summer in rural Yorkshire as the guest of Sir Gerald and Lady Hollingshead. She soon discovers, however, that country life is not the panacea she had hoped for. Tension reigns and tempers flare at Hollingshead Place, due in large part to Lady Hollingshead's ambitions for her daughter, a lovely young lady destined for a brilliant marriage in spite of her love for a penniless curate.

Estranged from her husband through her failure to produce an heir, Lady Fieldhurst resolves to repay his neglect by taking a lover. Fate takes a hand when she and her would-be lover enter her bedchamber to find Lord Fieldhurst lying on the floor - with her nail scissors protruding from his neck.

London, 1941. After losing her family to a Nazi bomb attack back home in Ireland, Sarah Gillespie joins the British Secret Services to bring them justice. Partnered with American undercover agent Lieutenant Tony Anderson, Sarah embarks on a dangerous mission that takes her from war-torn London into the black mountains of Wales. But when one of her team is revealed to be a German mole and enemies begin to close in, what price will Sarah have to pay to save her country—and herself?

On half-pay and without a command, Captain Jack Aubrey is stranded at home in an over-crowded cottage with his large and frequently bad-tempered family. When Jack has almost given up hope of ever returning to sea, Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor, occasional intelligence agent, and Jack's closest friend, brings secret orders that Jack is to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope under a Commodore's pennant.

Leaving behind them a Europe still taking stock after the definitive battle of Waterloo, Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin set sail for Chile. But even with the newly minted peace, life at sea remains beset with danger and imminent disaster, and the political turmoil of the South American continent is equal to any threat they have yet faced.

South Africa, 1871. Jack Lark no longer walks alone. With the worldly Anna Baker by his side, he travels to the Cape Colony diamond fields determined to seek their fortune—and an adventurous new life together. The journey north soon turns violent as tensions erupt between other hopeful diggers and a gang of Boer men. Everyone has their eye on the same elusive prize—and some will stop at nothing to get it. For Jack and Anna, unearthing a diamond is only half the battle. Getting out of the mines alive will prove far more difficult—and dangerous.