Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in Mystery

A short story from the British Library Crime Classic collection Final Acts. This unusual tale by Roy Vickers follows Scotland Yard as they investigate the mysterious death of the wife of a famous clown.

Philadelphia, 1844. As violent tensions escalate between 'nativists' and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe’s fears for the safety of his wife, Virginia, and mother-in-law, Muddy, are compounded when he receives a parcel of mummified bird parts. Could his nemesis have returned to settle an old score? Just as odd is the arrival of Helena Loddiges, a young heiress who demands Poe’s help to discover why her lover died at the city’s docks on his return from an expedition to Peru.

A serial killer is on the loose in Hamburg, targeting dancers from The Acapulco, a club in the city's red-light district, removing their scalp as a gruesome trophy and replacing their hair with plastic wigs. Chastity Riley is the state prosecutor responsible for crimes in the district, and she's working alongside the police as they investigate. Can she get inside the mind of the killer?

A short story from the British Library Crime Classic collection Final Acts. Actor, journalist and writer Ernest Dudley’s BBC Radio detective Doctor Morelle is in the process of developing a cure for the common cold when he is approached by ventriloquist Voxio, whose doll has been stolen.

Helmand, 2004: Afghanistan’s most lawless province, where nearly 90 per cent of the world’s opium is grown. Gangsters and warlords battle for supremacy in the lucrative trade, territories well-known, and fiercely contested. Well Diggers, an Anglo-Dutch NGO helping the farming community, comes under attack. One man is dead and another man is missing – suspected kidnapped, so head of security Ginger Jameson calls in his old friend Alasdair ‘Mac’ MacKenzie to help.

I'm not saying the entire magical population of North Yorkshire want us dead. Just the majority. Which is why we fled Leeds to hide out in the dubious safety of the seaside town of Whitby. But lying low isn't really in our skillset, and when one of our few remaining friends is taken by the sea, we can't just walk away. We've got to get her back. Especially as her partner is a reaper with a scythe that can slice through reality, and the whole situation might be a teeny, tiny bit our fault. We're not going after Emma alone, though.

Danish journalist Heloise Kaldan is in the middle of a nightmare when she receives the first in a series of cryptic letters from a woman named Anna Kiel. Wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of a young lawyer three years earlier, Anna hasn't been seen since. The police think she's fled the country, until the reporter who originally wrote about the case is found murdered. Has Anna Kiel struck again, or is there more than one killer at large? And why does every clue point directly to Heloise Kaldan?

While building a pipeline near the Okavango Delta, a contractor unearths the remains of a long-dead Bushman. Rookie Detective David 'Kubu' Bengu of Botswana CID and Scottish pathologist, Ian MacGregor, are sent to investigate, and MacGregor discovers the skeletons of eight more men. Shortly after the gruesome discoveries, the elder of a nearby village is murdered in his home. The local police are convinced it was a robbery, but Kubu isn't so sure...and neither is the strange woman who claims that an angry river spirit caused the elder's death.

In the village of Spire, murder is afoot. Wealthy landowner Alexander, Earl of Greengrass, is caught with his trousers down in the village graveyard before meeting a gruesome end. Luckily Susie Mahl happens to be on hand. With her artist’s eye for detail and her curious nature, she is soon on the scent of the murderer....

Edgar Allan Poe arrives in London to meet his friend C. Auguste Dupin, in the hope that the great detective will help him solve a family mystery. For Poe has inherited a mahogany box containing sheathes of letters that implicate his grandparents in some of London’s most heinous crimes - those committed by the so-called London Monster who, for two years, terrorised the city’s streets.

February 1665. With winter passing, Mercia Blakewood is at last headed back to England from America, hoping to leave behind the shadow that death and heartache have cast. She expects a welcome from the King, considering her earlier, mostly successful mission on his behalf, but the reception is not exactly warm. Mercia faces more manipulation and must accept a clandestine and uncomfortable role at the heart of the royal court, posing as a mistress to find a spy and traitor.

Home again at CEANN MARA Station on the banks of the Darling River, where she spent a happy childhood with her four sisters, Cat O'Byrne feels safe. Scarred by a harrowing attack at university, she falls into the familiar, nursing both her body and her trust in all that she once believed in. Logan Wainwright—a detective on leave and the new property owner across the river—has his own demons. Together with Cat, he begins to heal as he assists her with her family history research, and their attraction to each other grows.

It was Mrs Croyden who had been taken by the idea of digging up the history of the family. It seemed to be the kind of thing that everyone was doing nowadays. And once started she became more and more enchanted by the project. Even her husband, George, having seen the ancient photograph of a most attractive girl, long since dead, was taken by the project. The snag was that even Great Aunt Maud, the owner of the photograph, had no idea what had happened to the beautiful girl named Isabella. Apparently she had completely vanished and to the rest of the family had simply become “The Unknown”. Would the mystery ever be solved?

Adam and Colin are aboard The Elysian, cruising towards Italy to see Adam get hitched, and are determined to stay out of trouble. On the first night, a priceless piece of art is stolen from an eccentric old lady. Adam and Colin offer to help recover it, and are convince the thief was one of their fellow dinner guests from earlier in the evening. Can the amateur sleuths reunite the painting with its owner before they dock in Venice? And, with danger lurking around every porthole, will Adam even make it to the altar?

The world is struggling in the face of a relentless virus. When Hayden Prentice develops symptoms during a stay in his native Portsmouth, Enora Andressen and her son, Malo, must do their best to save his life. Because H, already in deep financial jeopardy, trusts no one. Except his kith and kin. But survival comes at a savage price. Not just the fortune that Enora must somehow raise to pay for his home nursing, but the murderous attentions of a stalker from H's past, determined to pay him one last visit and exact vengeance for a long-ago debt of blood....

With the help of Hayden Prentice, Malo's natural father and himself a onetime drug baron, Enora embarks on a hunt for the truth behind the kidnapping. The journey takes her deep into the exploding world of county lines, the new business model that delivers Class A drugs into every corner of the kingdom. The sums of money at stake are dizzying, and a human life counts for nothing. As Enora Andressen is about to discover....

Actress Enora Andressen is facing the perfect storm. Her favourite French director, Remy Despret, has lost his touch and is keeping dangerous company. Her agent, Rosa, has been seduced by a kiss-and-tell novel of doubtful provenance. While H, sicker by the day at home at Flixcombe Manor, is battling both Long Covid and something far darker. Devoting herself to H, Enora needs good news, and it arrives in the shape of a fascinating Remy idea based on Flixcombe's role during the Second World War.

If Professor Maxie Reddick is honest with herself, there’s a very personal reason she pursued a career in criminology: the unsolved murder of her sister, Susan, nearly 30 years before, and her belief that the local police force let her family down. Now Maxie has been drafted in to help investigate a murder – nothing particularly unusual about that, except when a fingerprint at the scene provides a shocking and unexpected link to her sister’s suspicious death.

A boy’s body is found in bogland along the Irish border: a case as cold as the earth that has hidden it for so long. DI Owen Sheen has sworn to get justice for the unnamed boy and digs up links to a covert British Army unit that was tasked with creating Satanic panic in the 1970s. But when a vicious murderer begins to stalk Belfast’s streets, it’s clear that someone refuses to let the past remain buried.

One thousand years ago: an Icelandic warrior returns from battle, bearing a ring cut from the right hand of his foe. Seventy years ago: an Oxford professor, working from a secret source, creates the 20th century’s most pervasive legend. The professor’s name? John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Six hours ago: an expert on Old Icelandic literature, Agnar Haraldsson, is murdered. Everything is connected, but to discover how, Detective Magnus Jonson must venture where the shadows lie....