It is the summer of 1905. Owen Townsend, a young Ivy League-educated doctor related to a prominent family in New York City, is at a park with his fiancée, Maude, when he has a psychotic episode, wreaks havoc, and blacks out. Having recently been discharged...

In Judith Kendall’s The Tangled Web, railway payroll officer James McConnolly leaves Adelaide in December 1912 carrying the Christmas wages for the South Australian Railways, but never reaches his first delivery stop. His disappearance leaves his wife, Lizbeth, to rebuild her life in New Zealand...

Murder Under A Bitter Moon by Abigail Keam follows Mona Moon during what should be the busiest and most exciting week of her year—Kentucky Derby season. She’s organizing events at Moon Manor, welcoming guests, and enjoying the spotlight that comes with her social standing. Among...

Confucius said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,” which is a sentiment one character does not consider in The Reckoning by Ann Nolder Heinz. It opens in 1873 with a mysterious man standing outside a quiet residence, wrestling with a...

Kerry Blaisdell’s A Lamentation of Swans: Wicked Portland #1 is a terrifying and suspenseful murder mystery. The story is set in turn-of-the-20th-century Portland, Oregon. The story was inspired by real historical figures, like the American Lola Greene Baldwin (1860 – 1957), who was one of...

Pirates and smugglers threaten a summer gathering in the exciting romance novel, Windvale (Regency Love Stories: Book 5) by Karen Thornell. Sir Henry is a spy like his father, and when a mission goes wrong, he quits the world of espionage. Now he is floundering...

A passenger on the Victoriana, a luxury ocean liner travelling between England and America in the late 1920s, is missing. In The Silent Film Star Murders by Melodie Campbell, the main characters, Lady Lucy Revelstoke and her maid and companion, Elfreda, start asking questions about...

In Winter’s Season, R.J. Koreto takes us to early nineteenth-century London. Two years after the legendary Battle of Waterloo, Captain Edmund Winter has ditched the battlefield for his new assignment: special emissary from the Home Office. In practice, he’s a high constable of sorts, doing...

I wasn't totally sure what I was getting into when I picked up The Romanov Episode by Clive Radford, but I’m glad I did. It’s one of those books where you realize pretty quickly that you're holding something special. It isn't just another mystery; it’s...

In Pictures of My Desire by Caroline Goldberg Igra, art historian Emily Wolf pursues her career in the high-stakes New York art world. She catalogues a collection from a reclusive sultan. Then she meets Nate Fried, an employee in an auction house, who is looking...