Showing results by publisher "Boldwood Books" in Historical

After a bloody and expensive war, the British Army can’t afford to keep the lake and build a convalescent home on its shores yet they still battle with Walden Council and a railway company for ownership. But an old mansion used as an officer training academy stands where the railway company plans to build a lakeside hotel. It belongs to General Cheverton – and he won’t leave his home.

1915, London: Working in the dusty bookshop that her Aunt Violet mysteriously inherited, Hannah Merrill is accustomed to finding twists in every tale. But discovering her beloved best friend Lily-Anne – with a paperknife through her heart – in the middle of the bookshop, is not a plotline she saw coming. The case is anything but textbook. With the discovery of a coded German message, and Hannah’s instinct that Lily-Anne’s husband is keeping secrets, she determines to get to the bottom of it. She can’t do it alone though.

Liverpool 1950. When Evie Kilgaren takes over the running of the back office at Skinner and Son's haulage yard, she has no idea she is walking into a hive of blackmail, secrets and lies. Her fellow co-worker and childhood nemesis, Susie Blackthorn, is outraged at being demoted and is hell-bent on securing the affections of local heartthrob Danny Harris. Grace Harris, a singer on the D’Angelo transatlantic ocean liners, is returning home, engaged to be married. But Grace is harbouring her own shocking secrets and something valuable her fiancé very desperately wants back.

1940: When twenty-one-year-old Nita Bineham is offered the chance of independence, away from the high walls of her family’s Surrey estate, she grasps it with both hands. But her new role at a local newspaper coincides with the emergence of a sinister rumour in their quiet village: that there is a traitor in their midst. Nita is determined to prove herself by uncovering the truth, but is she prepared for revelations that could change her life forever?

A month ago, Amy Wood had her perfect home, perfect boyfriend and perfect job in London. Now she’s broken-hearted, living in her parents’ tiny bungalow, and working in an estate agents in Bath. But Amy gets a new lease on life when she undertakes to sell Rosemont Hall, a crumbling Georgian mansion riddled with woodworm, dry rot – and secrets.

As a thank you for her previous brilliant crime solving, amateur sleuth, Martha Miller is guest of honour at the Winteringham Country Fair. However, this time she is looking forward to simply judging dog shows and eating cream teas rather than apprehending a killer! And Martha is just beginning to enjoy spending quality time with Vicar Luke Walker away from the prying eyes and gossips of her own village, when disaster strikes, and the local teenage femme fatale is found stabbed to death behind the tea tent by Martha’s trusted red setter Lizzie!

1605. Bess Throckmorton is well used to cunning plots and intrigues. With her husband Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned in the Tower of London, and she and her family in a constant battle to outwit Robert Cecil, the most powerful man in the country who is determined to ruin her, Bess decides to retreat to her beloved home, Crestwell Hall. But there she is shocked to hear talk of a new plot to murder the king. So, unbeknownst to their menfolk, the wives of the plotters begin to work together to try to stop the impending disaster.

Harriet White is no stranger to odd correspondence. Ensconced in the basement of the Baker Street building society, her job is to reply to the mail they receive on behalf of Sherlock Holmes. But while letters to the fictional sleuth may be plentiful, telegrams are rare, and so when she receives one describing the grave situation of celebrated author Philip St John, her interest is piqued. The writer describes St John as being consumed by terror, seeing ghostly apparitions on the fens, and only at ease in the company of his loyal wolfhound.

Young governess Flora Maguire is on her way home from America on the maiden voyage of the S.S. Minneapolis with her young charge Eddy, Viscount Trent, when she discovers a dead body. Unconvinced when the death is pronounced an accident, Flora starts asking questions, but following threats, a near drowning and a second murder, the hunt is on for a killer. Time is running out as the Minneapolis approaches the English coast. Will Flora be able to protect Eddy, as well as herself?

1926 – Christie is a darling of the literary circuit and the most desired guest in London’s glittering social scene. She can often be found at meetings of the Detection Club – where mystery writers come together to share ideas, swap secrets and drink copiously. But then a fellow author's initiation ceremony takes a gruesome turn, and one of the group ends up dead. Now, Agatha is no longer just the creator of great mystery plots – she’s a player in one.

1916, Midwinter Manor: Desperate for a Christmas weekend break from war-torn London, Hannah Merrill and her Aunt Violet take Bartleby the cat and themselves off to visit Hannah’s sister, in her beautiful country estate, deep in the English countryside. The huge house is full of relatives, friends and merrymakers, and everyone’s excited to have a Christmas to remember. But then, when a fellow-guest’s body is found in the library – apparently bludgeoned to death – and a precious ruby is stolen from another guest, it appears that it’s going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.

The girls of Dressmakers Alley are happy in their new jobs. Business is thriving and yet a new shadow looms. Women are being attacked and robbed whilst several businesses have been burgled. Are these two circumstances linked or is this just a coincidence? As the attacks escalate, and the police seem unmoved to intervene, the men of Dressmakers Alley decide to take the law into their own hands and patrol the streets to keep them and their women safe.

1968, Sicily. Just months after an earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene. 2003. TV showman and true crime aficionado Milo Conti is Italy’s darling, uncovering and solving historic crimes. When he turns his attention to the story of the missing Irene Borgata, accusing her husband of her murder, Enzo’s daughter asks her friend for help to prove her father’s innocence.

When Kate goes to look after her estranged sister’s children in their creepy old house, she takes a photo of what seems to be a ghost. Frightened yet intrigued, Kate undertakes to uncover the secrets of the house and the two mysterious sisters who lived there over a hundred years before. But like the illusions of light and shadow in the sisters’ strange and disturbing Victorian post-mortem photography, Kate discovers that all is not what it seems. Someone – or something – has their own plans for Rookswood House – and for Kate.

When Harriet White rebuffs the advances of her boss at the Baker Street building society where she works, she finds herself demoted to a new position… a very unusual position. Deep in the postal department beneath the bank, she is tasked with working her way through a mountain of correspondence addressed to Baker Street’s most famous resident: Mr Sherlock Holmes.

Alex Hart loves her job as manager of Mallow Court, an historic Elizabethan house. But the discovery of a antique jewelled locket and a long-buried secret changes everything... From an old diary to a charismatic barrister, a mysterious clockmaker and the darkest hours of the London Blitz, Alex must follow a trail of clues to uncover the truth about her family and their wartime history. But there is someone who is determined to stop her... Who can she really trust?

Will following her heart mean losing her head? It could mean losing her job. Fiona Figg trails her nemesis Fredrick Fredricks to Moscow. But when she arrives at the grand Metropol Hotel, the bounder has vanished. After Fiona doesn’t show up for work at the War Office, Kitty Lane raises a red flag and tracks her to Russia. Seeking haven at the British Embassy, Kitty and Fiona become embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Bolshevik government. But the plot turns deadly when Fiona goes undercover as a governess in the household of Iron Viktor, the Bolsheviks’ Head of Secret Police.

Amy Alardyce's once-perfect life is in tatters. Her eldest son, Robert, has come of age, become the master of his own home, and married his childhood love Jane. But with maturity has come a terrible legacy, and the dark desires Robert inherited from his evil father Matthew, are fighting to get loose. Whilst Jane is working hard to get her and Robert accepted into fashionable society, poor women are being hunted on the streets of Edinburgh, and Amy fears her son is to blame.

In 1916, Sister Helen Hopgood was sent with a team of nurses to care for wounded soldiers at Merewood Farm, a temporary military hospital in Hampshire. Now the war is over, only five patients remain – and she is the only nurse. The last ward must close, and Helen is doing all she can to find new homes for the injured servicemen. Joseph Wintringham has to sell the farm to keep Merewood Manor. But since the murder of Nurse Taplin, locals believe the place is cursed - perhaps by the doomed nurse or by the patients who perished from their war wounds.

July 1923 - Iris Woodmore travels to Devon with her friends Percy Baverstock and Millicent Nightingale for her father’s wedding to Katherine Keats. But when Millicent uncovers skeletal remains hidden on the private beach of Katherine’s former home, Iris begins to suspect her future stepmother is not what she seems. The police reveal the dead man is a smuggler who went missing in 1918, and when a new murder occurs, they realise a killer is in their midst. The link between both murders is Katherine. Could Iris’s own father be in danger?