Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Historical

1920. Poppy Denby, an aspiring journalist, arrives in London to look after her ailing Aunt. She encourages Poppy to apply for a job at The Daily Globe, but on her first day, a senior reporter is killed and Poppy is tasked with finishing his story. It involves the mysterious death of a suffragette seven years earlier - an event some powerful people would prefer forgotten....

It's 1593, Elizabeth I is Queen and everyone is terrified of the worst outbreak of plague in a generation. Shakespeare has only written six plays and is lagging behind his friend Christopher Marlowe, London's leading playwright. When Marlowe is stabbed to death in mysterious circumstances, rumours abound—but the one that won’t go away is that Shakespeare did it to remove his greatest rival. Will is determined to clear his name, and teams up with his old flame, Marlowe’s sister Ann, who has plenty of secrets of her own.

Reporter sleuth Poppy Denby is asked to investigate the mysterious death of an up-and-coming female scientist in an Oxford laboratory known as the Crystal Crypt. The official verdict is that Dr June Leighton died in a tragic accident, but Dr Leighton's lab assistant believes it was murder. However, when Poppy discovers that the colleague has spent time in a mental institution and has an unresolved murder in her own past, Poppy wonders if she is being misled. Then, another female academic is attacked, and Poppy herself becomes a target.

Poppy Denby is furious with Rollo, who has gambled away his position at the Daily Globe and is being banished to New York. That is, until she discovers he plans to take her with him to work at the New York Times! Poppy can’t wait, but her hopes are crushed when she is allocated The Death Beat - writing obituaries. But Poppy has a nose for a story, and when a body is found in a luxury penthouse apartment she starts to investigate. She unravels a trail of illegal immigrants, forced labour, sex scandals and an unexpected ghost from her past.

Poppy Denby, Arts and Entertainment Editor at The Daily Globe, covers an exhibition of Russian art, hosted by White Russian refugees, including members of the surviving exiled Romanov royal family. There is an armed robbery, a guard is shot and the largest Faberge egg in the collection is stolen. The egg itself is valuable, but more so are the secrets it contains within - secrets that could threaten major political powers. Suspects are aplenty, including the former keeper of the Faberge egg, a Russian Princess called Selena Romanova Yusopova.

It's September in Brighton, and the city is playing host to weeks of endless rain and lashings of villainy. A trusted member of a local gang has disappeared part way through planning a huge heist, a violent criminal obsessed with boiling the heads of policemen has escaped Broadmoor and is rumoured to be headed towards the city, while at Gosling's department store, an American researcher has been found dead in the music section.

Poppy Denby is intrigued when she is invited to attend the auction for the death mask of Nefertiti. Held on the country estate of Sir James Maddox, a famous explorer, the auction promises to be a controversial and newsworthy affair. Representatives from the world's leading museums are gathering to bid on the mask, which was discovered in Egypt. Poppy quickly sniffs out that the mask was not the only thing found that night: the underground chamber also contained a dead body.

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There's the elderly Mr Fern, who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin's 13th birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.

A new killer is stalking the streets of London’s East End. Though newspapers have dubbed him 'the Torso Killer’, this murderer’s work is overshadowed by the hysteria surrounding Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel crimes. The victims are women too, but their dismembered bodies, wrapped in rags and tied up with string, are pulled out of the Thames - and the heads are missing….

April, 1867. A train departs King's Cross station bound for Lincoln. Among the passengers is a man attired in the garb of one in high ecclesiastical office.

In 1885, Abigail Wilson participated in an archaeological excavation at Rome's Colosseum. Fifteen years later, now a distinguished archaeologist and one half of the Museum Detectives with her husband, Daniel, she returns to Rome as a speaker at the Conference on Ancient Roman Civilization. Their visit takes a perilous turn when a fellow archaeologist and his wife are discovered murdered within the Colosseum, propelling the Wilsons into a complex investigation amidst the Eternal City's historic backdrop.

The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men, trapped together in the dusty palace on Venice's Grand Canal. Awkward 15-year-old Nico. His distant, business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather, Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes, he has secrets he's waited his whole life to share.

In post-war Britain, Avonby estate is a crumbling relic hiding deadly secrets. Lady Melinda 'Mel' Greenway, a former army mechanic and the family’s poor relation, seeks solace in its overgrown gardens—until she unearths a body beneath the roses. The discovery drags Mel into a tangled web of lies, resentments, and buried truths, forcing her to clash with Inspector Derrin Bradley, her wartime lover turned investigator.

Antarctica, June 6th 1998. 23-year-old Matt Lewis has just started his dream job: an observer aboard a deep sea fishing boat. As the crew haul in their lines for the day, the waves seem bigger than usual - they are casting shadows on the deck. A storm is brewing. What follows is an astonishing story of courage and tragedy. Lewis leads the escape onto three life rafts, where the battle for survival begins.

The August bank holiday is approaching, and after two extremely high-profile murder cases, Constable Twitten is eagerly anticipating a quiet spell at work. But then they find the bodies - and the milk bottles. Three seemingly unconnected victims - a hard-working AA patrolman, a would-be beauty queen, a catty BBC radio personality - have all been killed with the same highly unusual murder weapon.

Fall, 1947. New York City. Private Investigator Ida Davis has been called to New York by her old partner, Michael Talbot, to investigate a brutal killing spree in a Harlem flophouse that has left four people dead. But as they delve deeper into the case, Ida and Michael realize the murders are part of a larger conspiracy that stretches further than they ever could have imagined. Meanwhile, Ida’s childhood friend, Louis Armstrong, is at his lowest ebb.

Venice, 1954. Rosy Gilchrist thinks luck may be on her side. Her boss at the British Museum has chosen her to travel to Venice to track down a rare edition of Horace's Odes for their collection. Things soon take a drastic downward spiral. A wealthy recluse offers a million-pound reward for anyone who can find the treasure. Soon Rosy finds herself in a race against time as her rivals will do anything for money. Even murder.

When a celebrated music impresario is found dead in Venice—his body slumped in the hot house of a remote palazzo, a cryptic musical interval in his hand—rumours swirl around a rediscovered manuscript: the original score for The Four Seasons, penned in Vivaldi's own hand. But is it a masterpiece lost to time or a masterful forgery? Arnold Clover, a reclusive British archivist seeking peace in the city on the lagoon, is reluctantly drawn into the mystery. Hired to authenticate the deadly manuscript, Arnold finds himself at the centre of a chilling conspiracy.

London, 1954. Eva Georgiou has just returned from her shift at the glamorous Café de Paris, when she's summoned to her second job: Greek interpreter for the Metropolitan Police. There, she is tasked with representing Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot woman who has been accused of the brutal murder of her daughter-in-law.

Dreaded more than the Devil himself, cholera - the 'blue death' - spares no one. As fear grows across the city, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered, and with his throat torn out, in the back room of a brothel. When an innocent man is taken to Newgate, Jem and Will have until execution day to save him. The search for the identity of the corpse, and the killer, takes them to the gates of Blackwater Hall, home to the secretive, and corrupt Mortmain family.