Showing results for "Brilliance" in Historical

London, 1905: Law student and military veteran Balvinder dev Singh has found an extralegal way to fund his studies. As friend and accomplice to the infamous gentleman thief AJ Raffles, he rubs shoulders with the upper crust—and steals their valuables. That is, until their next mark, an imperialist general, is grotesquely murdered in the library of his Mayfair mansion. Bal and Raffles find themselves implicated in a series of killings that soon attracts the attention of Scotland Yard—and the aging Sherlock Holmes himself.

South Carolina, 1853. Lillian Carmichael, privileged daughter of a disgraced Charleston family, is due to be hanged for the murder of her sister when fate gives her a second chance at life. After a catatonic episode on the long walk to the gallows, Lillian is declared dead and entombed in the family mausoleum. She awakens days later, buried alive, and flees to the Lowcountry marshes to survive on her wits and reinvent herself. All the while, a series of exsanguination murders holds the terrorized city in thrall.

While America struggles to define its destiny, beautiful and ambitious Caroline Sanford fights to control her own fate. One of Vidal’s most inspired creations, she is an embodiment of the complex, vigorous young nation. From the back offices of her Washington newspaper, Caroline confronts the two men who threaten to thwart her ambition: William Randolph Hearst and his protégé, Blaise Sanford, Caroline’s half brother.

In the tightly knit world of Boston medicine, the Randall family reigns supreme. When heart surgeon J. D. Randall’s teenage daughter dies during a botched abortion, the medical community threatens to explode. Was it malpractice? A violation of the Hippocratic Oath? Or was Karen Randall murdered in cold blood? The natural suspect is Arthur Lee, a brilliant surgeon and known abortionist, who has been carrying out the illegal procedure with the help of pathologist John Berry.

Just beyond the Gilded Age, in the mist-covered streets of New York, the deadly Spanish influenza ripples through the city. But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned - and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note.

In 1912, John Wade and his brother, William - children of the American consul - were kidnapped off the street in Chungking, China, and raised in the house of Eunuch Chang, the city's master criminal. Twenty-five years later, John is the eunuch's most valuable ward, a trained assassin and swindler, and William has become a talented forger. On the brink of World War II, China is in chaos. When William betrays Eunuch Chang and escapes to central China, a place of ferocious warlords and bandits, John begins a desperate search to save his brother.

A disgraced noble. A scandalous widow. A poisoned prince. When a foreign prince collapses at an English court function, suspicion falls on Lord Peregrine Fitzroy—the estranged son of a notorious traitor, and the man who knows all too well the effects of henbane especially since it's the same poison his mother once used in a crime that nearly cost Lady Charity Cresswell everything. Now a widow and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, Charity has clawed her way back from scandal to reclaim her place among the ton.

Alex Ivanov is a brilliant young innovator, designing cutting-edge train engines. But Alex has a secret—he isn’t really Alex Ivanov. As a boy, he was pulled from the Thames, presumed drowned, with no memory of who he was. Rescued and raised by the formidable Ryder Sherbrooke, Alex has built a new life, but his past is catching up with him.

In the glittering world of 1920s New York, the seven Ridley heirs seem to have it all: wealth, status, and protection as the city’s most powerful family. But when notorious gossip columnist Dale Caimen is found dead during their family’s renowned summer soiree, their carefully constructed world begins to crack. Behind the champagne and jazz, each adopted Ridley sibling harbors secrets that could destroy them.

Northumberland, 1809: A beautiful young heiress disappears from her locked bedchamber at Linn Hagh. The local constables are baffled and the townsfolk cry "witchcraft". The heiress' uncle summons help from Detective Lavender and his assistant, Constable Woods, who face one of their most challenging cases.

This is the story of the Bigelow and Hilyard clans, from their first years on America’s shores, through the fury of her wars and the glory of her triumphs, to our own time when young Geoff Hilyard must fight to save both his marriage to a Bigelow heir and the windswept coast he loves. It is a struggle that will take him deep into the past, to a centuries-old feud that never died...and on a dangerous quest for a priceless relic of American history that has lain hidden in the Cape for over two hundred years.

Meet the Pratt clan. Driven men. Determined women. Through six turbulent generations, they would pursue a lost Paul Revere treasure. And turn a family secret into an obsession that could destroy them. Here is the novel that launched William Martin’s astonishing literary career and became an instant bestseller. From the grit and romance of old Boston to exclusive - and dangerous - Back Bay today, this sweeping saga paints an unforgettable portrait of a powerful dynasty beset by the forces of history...and a heritage of greed, lust, murder and betrayal.

Peter Fallon, the hero of William Martin's bestselling novel Back Bay, has found evidence that a priceless treasure - an undiscovered Shakespeare play - is hidden somewhere in the venerable halls of Harvard University. An antiquarian who knows many of the school’s carefully guarded secrets, Fallon understands the powerful implications of the discovery. But as he delves into the school’s past - from witch hangings to the fires of the Civil War to the riotous 1960s - he learns that men and women have risked death, disgrace, and banishment in pursuit of this invaluable relic.

It is 1670 and Simon Fronwieser is in the town of Oberammergau to bring his seven-year-old son to boarding school. As he bids his boy a tearful farewell, news comes of a shocking murder: the man who was to play the part of Christ in the town's Passion play has been found dead, nailed to the set's cross. As there is no doctor in town, Simon is brought in to examine the body. The opportunities to spend more time with his son and to investigate the murder quickly convince him to stay.

March 1932. After the recently incarcerated Al Capone offers to negotiate the return of the kidnapped son of Charles Lindbergh, Nathan Heller of the Chicago P.D. is sent to Hopewell, New Jersey, as a police liaison. As a part of Lindbergh’s inner circle, Heller investigates crooks, cranks, socialites, and psychics in a frustrating, fruitless attempt to solve the case. Max Allan Collins makes the crime that captivated a nation the focal point of yet another fascinating and thoroughly spellbinding foray into his world of historical crime fiction.

1662: Jakob Kuisl, the hangman of a village in the Alps, receives a letter from his sister calling him to the imperial city of Regensburg, where a gruesome sight awaits him: her throat has been slit. When the city constable discovers Kuisl alongside the corpse, he locks him in a dungeon, where Kuisl will experience firsthand the torture he’s administered himself for years.

The Lindsay family has come west hoping to help the father, John, recover from an illness. When they arrive, they are induced to purchase Spanish Peaks Ranch, an abandoned United States military post surrounded by mountains. It seems like a perfect place to settle into their new life as ranchers. As they soon find out, though, this deserted fort is equally suited for both protection and imprisonment.

Hot-blooded Georgiana Stockwell will break a man's heart while he's eating out of her hand. Moving from the East to join her schoolteacher sister in the rugged wilds of Tonto Basin, Arizona, Georgiana makes quite an impression. Despite her sister's best efforts, Georgiana creates a culture clash as her modern, free-spirited personality comes up against the code of the West, the unwritten law of the range that everyone is expected to follow.

They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.

Anna Cavanaugh is a restless young widow and brilliant French teacher at an all-girls school in Washington, DC. Everything changes when she’s recruited into the Office of Strategic Services by family friend and legendary WWI hero Major General William Donovan. Donovan has faith in her - and in all his “glorious amateurs” who are becoming Anna’s fast friends: Maggie, Anna’s down-to-earth mentor; Irene, who’s struggling to find support from her husband for her clandestine life; and Julia, a cheerful OSS liaison.