Historical Mystery

Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives by Rick Bleiweiss

In 1910 in a small village in the English countryside, Chief Police Inspector Pignon Scorbion solves cases in a barbershop, aided by the barbers, a shoeshine man, a female bookshop owner, and a young reporter, as witnesses, suspects and victims are interrogated and interviewed by them all in the tonsorial palace.

The cases Scorbion and his deputies solve include a young man claiming to be the illegitimate son of a wealthy merchant, a stolen hatchet and sow tied to a murder, a client who drops dead in his barber’s chair, and the death of a performer in a travelling circus.

Spectral Evidence by Eileen Charbonneau and Jude Pittman

Seventeen year-old Newfoundlander Charlotte Jeddore loves nothing more than learning sacred healing arts from her Mi’kmaq and Beothuk grandmothers. But the year is 1692 and her father needs her help. Their American cousins of Salem, Massachusetts have been accused of witchcraft. Will she help him fight for the lives of Philip and Mary English?

When they arrive Mary has already been imprisoned, charged on the basis of spectral evidence— a claim harming victims from afar as invisible projections.

Can Charlotte get their young childrenyoung Mary, Philip and William to Newfoundland, without infecting her own beloved island with spectral evidence fever?

The Moon Gate by Amanda Geard

On the eve of war, timid English heiress Grace Grey flees to her uncle’s home in remote western Tasmania. Coaxed out of her shell by her Irish neighbour, Daniel, Grace learns to live. But when Australian forces are called to the frontline, Daniel volunteers, leaving two devastating secrets behind.

Years later, Libby Andrews lands in London, determined to find the truth about her father’s death. A faded photograph links him both to Grace Grey and a mysterious house on Tasmania’s west coast, and Libby discovers that her hidden history, and Grace’s, are fiercely and fatefully entwined.

Ash Dark as Night by Gary Phillips

Gary Phillips’ Ash Dark as Night begins during the 1965 Watts riots. Crime photographer and bootleg PI Harry Ingram is capturing those graphic images. One picture in particular documents the death of a firebrand community activist by the police — earning Ingram a trip to the hospital. Recuperating, and the photo published, he’s hired by a family friend of his girlfriend to find a man gone missing during the riots. Ingram follows the leads down a rabbit hole of looted valuables, power brokers, and clandestine agendas – which puts him in the sightlines of the LAPD’s secretive intelligence division.

The London Monster by Donna Scott

In 1788, exactly one hundred years before Jack the Ripper, a sexual miscreant stalks the dark streets of London in search of his next victim.  His method varies little.  First, he offers praise.  Then whispers of sexual invitation.  Finally, he draws his blade.

Thomas Hayes, an underground fighter, and Sophie Carlisle, an aspiring female journalist, team up to catch the elusive villain known as the London Monster. But they must hurry as the attacks increase in severity and frequency.

With the city collapsing into hysteria, no one knows who to trust, and no one is safe—especially those hunting him.

La Belle Epoque and the Terrible Year by Ann Chamberlin

Madame Toussaint leads the drab life of?the concierge?in a fashionable building in the glittering Paris of La Belle Époque in 1895.??On a drizzly January morning, the housemaid of the apartment directly over her head runs down to the loge in terror.??Monsieur d’Ermenville, the building’s owner, has been brutally murdered. 

Madame Toussaint suffers flashbacks to the Terrible Year, the revolt of the Paris Commune which was brutally put down, Frenchman against Frenchman.??Glittering life and indulgence may have returned to the City of Lights, but under the gilding, hatred and violence linger, living cheek by jowl.

Halley and the Mystery of the Lost Girls by Susy Robison

In 1952 fifteen-year-old Halley Pederson is still reeling from her mother’s unexpected death when she and her father arrive in India. On the deck of their ocean liner she meets their servant, Kashif, and the talking macaw on his shoulder.

On their first night Halley discovers that the young woman in the hotel room next to hers is a victim of kidnapping and tries to help her.

When Halley is kidnapped while on a hunting expedition with her father, she uncovers a trafficking ring selling girls into slavery and must find the courage to rescue both herself and the girls.

Devil Knows by David Joseph Kolb

In the dead of night at the height of the 1692 Salem mania, a dying smallpox victim collapses in prison while visiting a witch condemned to hang – Mary Bradbury, the great ancestor of famed writer Ray Bradbury.

A delirious old man, Hopestill Foster, is brought before the Rev. Cotton Mather, the infamous witch-hunter and the most powerful man in ancient Boston, for a very private interrogation. Mather is desperate for answers about Foster’s past because he knows it ties into his own. Better had he not asked. Over the course of the prisoner telling his story to the cleric, 60 years of a terrible history unfolds, at the heart of which is a monstrous secret about Mather’s family that must not be allowed to escape the room where Foster is being held.

Hopestill Foster, the novel’s protagonist, a man inured to a lifetime of suffering and one to whom a great wrong was done by him and to him in his youth, ultimately has to decide. Pass on, leaving the wreckage of his life behind, or accept a final deadly mission to make things right. For Hopestill Foster, there is only one choice.

The Red-hot Blues Chanteuse by Ana Brazil

While performing in vaudeville in 1919 San Francisco, ambitious blues chanteuse Viola Vermillion’s piano player and lover Stu Wiley is murdered in the Pantages Theater balcony. With her own gun! To remain out of jail, Viola is forced to uncover Stu’s secret past and figure out which one of his lies got him killed.

As Viola unravels multiple secrets, lies, and suspicions—and fights her attraction to her new piano player Jimmy—she still holds tight to her dream of reaching the vaudeville Big Time. But to succeed at anything, first she needs to stay alive . . .

A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge by Kate Khavari

England, 1924. Botanistand part-time sleuth Saffron Everleigh returns to Ellington Manor after her grandfather suffers a heart attack. Back in her childhood home for the first time in years, Saffron faces tense family relationships made worse by the presence of the enigmatic Bill Wyatt, hired on as a doctor to the ailing Lord Easting. But the man is no doctor—in reality, he is a mysterious figure involved in the trafficking of dangerous government secrets, and his presence at Ellington can only mean trouble.

When their neighbors, the Hales, invite a spiritual medium into the village who starts angling for Saffron’s mother’s attention, Saffron realizes nothing and no one is as they seem at Ellington. It’s through the perfumed haze of the séance’s smoke that Saffron must search for the truth before it’s too late.