Showing titles in Historical

Brought to you by Penguin. You’ve heard of the men who kill, but what about the women who loved them? It’s a baking hot summer in 1960s California and three women have formed an unlikely friendship. From the outside, Beverley, Elsie and Margot lead idyllic lives, but behind the false smiles...

Cambridge in 1352 is rife with terrible clashes between the fledgling university and the townspeople. Matthew Bartholomew, physician and teacher at Michaelhouse College, is trying to keep the peace when a student is murdered and the town plunges into chaos. At the same time, a skeleton is discovered that is rumoured to belong to a local martyr, and Bartholomew has his hands full investigating both deaths while the rioting intensifies....

The Ashcombe Ladies’ Society have worked tirelessly to prepare the most anticipated event of the season. Much publicised, the Christmas fair is drawing visitors from neighbouring towns, and for the very first time it will be held in Ashcombe Hall’s grand pavilion. Lady Ellen is determined the day will be nothing short of perfect. But the festivities turn sinister when Mrs Mott, the vicar’s wife, suddenly collapses at the foot of the glittering tree. Only moments earlier she had been making her rounds, sampling delicacies from the stalls.

1564, Lisbon. The Inquisition displays its power and ruthlessly spreads fear. Heretics are tortured and burned. Isabela, daughter of the Falconer at the Royal Court, is about to be caught in the Church’s terrifying schemes. The slaughter of two of the King’s precious white falcons sees her father arrested and imprisoned. He and his family will be killed unless the birds are replaced. Isabela decides only she can save her father. These birds are impossibly rare, and she will have to travel far to strange lands to find them.

January 1954. Mists cover the hills around Selchester. Someone at the research facility known as the Atomic is leaking secrets to Soviet Russia, and when nuclear scientist Bruno Rothesay goes missing, the British Intelligence Services are convinced he's the mole. Hugo Hawksworth isn't so sure. Then a body turns up, and Hugo's instincts are proven correct. But if Rothesay wasn't selling secrets to the Soviets, who is?

Salisbury, 1226. A mysterious poacher claims to be a long-lost heir - to a man found crushed by his own cart wheel. Ela Longespée is determined to find the truth, even though the king has coldly appointed another sheriff in her place. Ela takes pity on the man - an injured knight who once saved her husband’s life - and convinces the sheriff to release him from jail while she investigates. Will it turn out to be a deadly mistake?

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me—well, actually, my true love, Darcy O’Mara, is spending a feliz navidad tramping around South America. Meanwhile, Mummy is holed up in a tiny village called Tiddleton-under-Lovey with that droll Noel Coward! And I’m snowed in at Castle Rannoch with my bumbling brother, Binky, and sourpuss sister-in-law, Fig.

For years, Lady Bancroft’s Valentine’s Ball at Bancroft Hall had been a glittering gathering of high society’s most eligible men and women. Countless happy couples owe their love stories to her matchmaking, their gratitude keeping Lady Bancroft in the genteel comfort of her grand Cotswolds estate. But this year tragedy strikes. A murder threatens to ruin everything. Desperate, Lady Bancroft turns to her neighbour, the dashing Major Heathcliff Lennox. A decorated war hero and now a consultant to Scotland Yard, Lennox would much rather be fishing.

The hilarious follow-up to Murder Most Foul by the multi BAFTA, RTS and Emmy award-winning writer of Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey. Something wicked this way comes... It's 1605 and Will Shakespeare is now a wealthy writer and a respected producer. But when Ann Marlowe arrives at The Globe...

Lucy Cardwell has recently lost her troubled father, Tom. Visiting her father's childhood home, Carlyon Manor, Lucy meets an old woman named Beatrice who has an extraordinary story to tell. Growing up in the 1930s, Beatrice plays with the children of Carlyon Manor. Then, one summer at the age of...

As the thick, autumnal fog chokes the capital, within the fire-lit lounge of London's notorious Brimstone Club a bizarre tale is being spun for Inspector Bencolin and his friend Jeff Marle. A member of the club has been sent a model of a tiny gallows, and the word is that the folkloric hangman Jack Ketch has been stalking the streets for victims by night. The threat of this supposed bogeyman becomes thrillingly real when that same night Bencolin and Marle are almost run down by a limousine with a corpse behind the wheel.

Sussex, November 1959. There’s a chill in the air at the Lewes bonfire celebration. Carnival floats fill the narrow streets, fireworks crackle overhead, and Flora and Jack feel the heat of the burning torches lining the streets. But when Trevor French, chief of the Grove Bonfire Society, tumbles from his parade float, they know something is afoot. Trevor didn’t just fall – and amidst the crowds, his killer slips away through the smoke-filled night.

Selchester Castle in 1953 sits quiet and near-empty, its corridors echoing with glories of the past. Or so it seems to intelligence officer Hugo Hawksworth, wounded on a secret mission and now reluctantly assuming an altogether less perilous role at Selchester.

With the reluctant blessings of their father, the rector of Kurland St. Mary, Lucy Harrington and her sister Anna leave home for a social season in London. At the same time, Lucy's special friend Major Robert Kurland is summoned to the city to accept a baronetcy for his wartime heroism.

From the New York Times Bestselling Author of The Magnolia Palace: A thrilling story about love, sacrifice, and the pursuit of dreams, set amidst the glamour and glitz of Radio City Music Hall in its mid-century heyday. New York City, 1956: Nineteen-year-old Marion Brooks knows she should be...

In war-torn Yugoslavia, a young film maker and photographer and a German officer have been murdered. Assigned to the case is military intelligence officer Captain Gregor Reinhardt. Already haunted by his wartime actions, he soon finds that his investigation may be more than just a murder - and...

May 1941. One of the senior choristers of St Paul's Cathedral choir, Dr Edwin Roberts, is found beaten to death in the crypt of the Cathedral. Coburg and Lampson are called in to investigate, and when they get there, Coburg is pleasantly surprised to be greeted there by Arthur Waterson, now...

The much-feared and hated Eudo - the Lord Bishop of Winchester's clerk - is bludgeoned to death in Pershore Abbey and laid before the altar in the attitude of a penitent. Everyone who had contact with him had reason to dislike him, but who had reason to kill him? The Sheriff of Worcestershire's thief taker, wily Serjeant Catchpoll, and his new and unwanted superior, Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, have to find the answer. And as the walls of the abbey close in on the suspects, the killer strikes again....

Erik and his family are Norse who live on the island of Orkneyjar. Their world is thrown upside down when the King of Norway colludes with their jarl to take over their home. They flee to the land north of Mercia. Hoping for a life free from the tyranny of a king they have to fight Danes and...

Christopher Cynster has finally accepted that to have the life he wants, he needs a wife, but before he can even think of searching for the right lady, he’s drawn into an investigation into the distribution of counterfeit banknotes. London born and bred, Ellen Martingale is battling to preserve the fiction that her much-loved uncle, Christopher’s neighbor, still has his wits about him, but Christopher’s questions regarding nearby Goffard Hall trigger her suspicions. As her younger brother attends card parties at the Hall, she feels compelled to investigate.