Traditional British category: 5721 books

London, 1816 Cavalry captain Gabriel Lacey returns to Regency London from the Napoleonic wars, burned out, fighting melancholia, his career ended. His interest is piqued when he learns of a missing girl, possibly kidnapped by a prominent member of Parliament. Lacey's search for the young woman leads...

A man is killed five months after his funeral, in a tale by “one of the greatest mid-20th-century practitioners of the detective novel” (Alexander McCall Smith). Private detective Albert Campion is summoned to the village of Kepesake to investigate a particularly distasteful death. The...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) was a Scottish physician and writer known around the world for his stories about detective Sherlock Holmes, which all but created the literary field of crime fiction and made the name Sherlock Holmes synonymous with detectives. Aside from the Sherlock Holmes stories,...

Charlotte Pitt defends her own sister against a murder charge in Victorian England, in a novel “suffused with atmosphere, emotion, and suspense” (Booklist). As Inspector Thomas Pitt works to resolve the case of a dismembered woman, his womanizing brother-in-law, George March, Lord Ashworth,...

“The special qualities of Dorothy Sayers’ writing are seen here at their best” as Lord Peter battles to solve the murder of a war hero (Saturday Review). Even the Bellona Club’s most devoted members would never call it lively. Its atmosphere is that of a morgue—or, at best, a funeral...

Hurtling from present day New York to Victorian London, The Sherlockian weaves the history of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into an inspired and entertaining double mystery that proves to be anything but "elementary." In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners...

When a fellow shamus gets charged with murder, Wolfe comes to his rescue Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every Sunday to hear the sermons of Barnabas Bay. Millions more tune in on television,...

The death of a fiendish nobleman strikes close to home as Sebastian St. Cyr is tasked with finding the killer to save his young cousin from persecution in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Why Kill the Innocent.... When the handsome but dissolute...

Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover at an ad agency to find out who pitched a copywriter down a flight of stairs—“Delightful reading” (The New York Times). The iron staircase at Pym’s Publicity is a deathtrap, and no one in the advertising agency is surprised when Victor Dean tumbles...

Sir Law Kintour has returned from the war in France injured, broke, and in need of a patron. In desperation, he reluctantly accepts a commission to find a nobleman's runaway wife. He enlists the help of a fellow Scot with whom he escaped after their defeat at the Battle of Verneuil. But his friend...

Noah Braddock needs a job. After striking a deal with the district attorney, Noah is settling back in to life in San Diego. But work is hard to come by, so when he's offered a case involving a mysterious girl and some photographs, he accepts the job. What is supposed to be an easy case...

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane investigate a dead body on the beach in this “nearly perfect detective story” by the author of Busman’s Honeymoon (Saturday Review). Harriet Vane has gone on vacation to forget her recent murder trial and, more importantly, to forget the man who cleared...

THE RIMLEY RENDEZOUS was a back-street bistro where a tired businessman could drop in for a pick-up, no questions asked. The cover charge was steep, Blackmail was the major part of the tab. It was a lucrative business—until a murderer cut into the profits...and left his weapon in Donald Lam’s...

EMERALDS ARE FOR EVIL Shirley was sultry, sexy, smashing—a sweet young thing to make a sugar daddy’s mouth water. This luscious lass loved pretty baubles, so no wonder men showered her with jewels. But when a deluge of emeralds turned into a reign of terror, Shirley needed someone to bail...