#hardcover #fiction #mystery #historicalfiction #paraicodonnel #19thcentury #london #SALE

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

London, 1893: high up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O'Donnell's Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: why does the seamstress choose to jump out of that window? Why is there a cryptic message sewn into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances?On the case is Gideon Bliss, a young Cambridge dropout who is in love with one of the missing girls, and his partner Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious. There's also Octavia Hillingdon, a young reporter determined to tell stories that feel important despite her employer's preference that she write a women's society column. By turns clever, surprising, and impossible to put down, The House on Vesper Sands peels back the mystery layer by layer, offering in the strange undertow of late 19th century London a startling glimpse at the secrets we all hold inside us.

The House on Vesper Sands

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#love #romance #london #napoleon #historical 

Virginia

Once A Spy

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#hardcover #london #inspectormonk #fiction

New York

"A richly textured and timeless novel of suspense. Her Victorian England pulsates with life and is peopled with wonderfully memorable characters." Faye Kellerman Although esteemed General Thaddeus Carlyon meets his death in a freak accident at home, his beautiful wife, Alexandra, confesses that she killed him. Investigator William Monk, nurse Hester Latterly, and the brilliant Oliver Rathbone, counsel for the defense, work feverishly to break down the wall of silence raised by the accused and her husband's proud family. With the trial only days away, they inch toward the dark and appalling heart of the mystery. The final act is a courtroom masterpiece, through which we dare not breathe too deeply, lest the precarious balance of a woman's life be lost. From the Paperback edition.

Defend and Betray

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#hardcover #fiction #london #missinghusband

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Cain His Brother

Murder in Grub Street

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#hardcover #london #suspenseful #intriguing #hypnotic

California

Set in England during World War I, this haunting love story by the author of the bestselling The Fig Eater makes unforgettably real the ravages of love and war.

The Crimson Portrait

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#hardcover #fiction #mystery #historicalfiction #paraicodonnel #thehouseofvespersands #london

#hardcover #nualaofaolian #london #ireland #historicalfiction

Michigan

"My Dream Of You" is a contemporary love story wrapped around an historical love story, both equally gripping and full of relevant truths about love, passion, adversity, and human nature. The historical tale is set during the latter years of the Famine and is based on the true story of a British landlord who divorced his wife on the grounds that she conducted a three-year affair with a lowly Irish groom. The contemporary narrative tells the story of Kathleen de Burca, a woman in midlife coming to terms with loss and her unconsummated yearning for the salvation she imagines only passionate love can deliver. On the eve of turning 50, and after a series of disappointments, Kathleen decides to return to Ireland for the first time in 30 years. She's taken a leave from her glamorous yet unfulfilling job as a travel writer to investigate the story of the Talbot divorce -- an account she's known of since her student days that dramatically captured the Famine era and the clashes between the native Irish and the English gentry. What really draws her to the Talbot story, however, is its romantic core -- how passion between two unlikely parties could have flowered and thrived in such desperate times, and ultimately at a tragic cost -- and the hope that somehow the Talbot story will yield truths about love and desire that will help her to make sense of her own heart's journey. Kathleen's return to Ireland also forces her to reconsider the country and the family she fled as a young woman of twenty, running for her very life, and to make peace with the ghosts who were never far behind.

My Dream of You

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#historicalfiction #fiction #dearmrsbird #hardcover #ww2 #london

A Novel

This charming, irresistible debut novel set in London during World War II about a young woman who longs to be a war correspondent and inadvertantly becomes a secret advice columnist is “a jaunty, heartbreaking winner” (People)—for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Lilac Girls. Emmeline Lake and her best friend Bunty are doing their bit for the war effort and trying to stay cheerful, despite the German planes making their nightly raids. Emmy dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent, and when she spots a job advertisement in the newspaper she seizes her chance; but after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding, she finds herself typing letters for the formidable Henrietta Bird, renowned advice columnist of Woman’s Friend magazine. Mrs. Bird is very clear: letters containing any Unpleasantness must go straight into the bin. But as Emmy reads the desperate pleas from women who many have Gone Too Far with the wrong man, or can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she begins to secretly write back to the readers who have poured out their troubles. “Fans of Jojo Moyes will enjoy AJ Pearce’s debut, with its plucky female characters and fresh portrait of women’s lives in wartime Britain” (Library Journal)—a love letter to the enduring power of friendship, the kindness of strangers, and the courage of ordinary people in extraordinary times. “Headlined by its winning lead character, who always keeps carrying on, Pearce's novel is a delight” (Publishers Weekly). Irrepressibly funny and enormously moving, Dear Mrs. Bird is “funny and poignant…about the strength of women and the importance of friendship” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).

Dear Mrs. Bird

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#hardcover #london #fantasy #djinn #fiction #magic #middlegrade 

Idaho

Dangerous adventures continue for the djinni Bartimaeus and his master, seventeen-year-old Nathaniel, a powerful magician who is serving as England's minister of information.

Ptolemy's Gate

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#hardcover #fiction #contemporary #emotional #hunting #lighthearted #maureenjohnson #london 

Arkansas

Ginny Blackstone thought that the biggest adventure of her life was behind her. She spent last summer traveling around Europe, following the tasks her aunt Peg laid out in a series of letters before she died. When someone stole Ginny's backpack—and the last little blue envelope inside—she resigned herself to never knowing how it was supposed to end. Months later, a mysterious boy contacts Ginny from London, saying he's found her bag. Finally, Ginny can finish what she started. But instead of ending her journey, the last letter starts a new adventure—one filled with old friends, new loves, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Ginny finds she must hold on to her wits . . . and her heart. This time, there are no instructions.

The Last Little Blue Envelope

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#hardcover #fiction #murder #thriller #suspense

Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team investigate the murder of a trustee of the Dupayne, a small private London museum locked in a battle over its future, and find their probe complicated by a second corpse.

The Murder Room

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#paperback #serialkiller #nonfiction #suspense #london #truestory #documentary

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut Death in the Air is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. London was still recovering from the devastation of World War II when another disaster hit: for five long days in December 1952, a killer smog held the city firmly in its grip and refused to let go. Day became night, mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and some 12,000 people died from the poisonous air. But in the chaotic aftermath, another killer was stalking the streets, using the fog as a cloak for his crimes. All across London, women were going missing--poor women, forgotten women. Their disappearances caused little alarm, but each of them had one thing in common: they had the misfortune of meeting a quiet, unassuming man, John Reginald Christie, who invited them back to his decrepit Notting Hill flat during that dark winter. They never left. The eventual arrest of the "Beast of Rillington Place" caused a media frenzy: were there more bodies buried in the walls, under the floorboards, in the back garden of this house of horrors? Was it the fog that had caused Christie to suddenly snap? And what role had he played in the notorious double murder that had happened in that same apartment building not three years before--a murder for which another, possibly innocent, man was sent to the gallows? The Great Smog of 1952 remains the deadliest air pollution disaster in world history, and John Reginald Christie is still one of the most unfathomable serial killers of modern times. Journalist Kate Winkler Dawson braids these strands together into a taut, compulsively readable true crime thriller about a man who changed the fate of the death penalty in the UK, and an environmental catastrophe with implications that still echo today.

Death in the Air

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Some slight shelf wear to dust jacket. #history #hospitalityindustry #19thcentury #savoyhotel #London #20thcentury #luxelife #hotelritz #hardcover 

Ohio

The Hotelier, the Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class

In early August 1889, Cesar Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes. The result was a hotel and restaurant like no one had ever experienced, run in often mysterious and always extravagant ways--which created quite a scandal once exposed.
Barr deftly re-creates the thrilling Belle Epoque era just before World War I, when British aristocracy was at its peak, women began dining out unaccompanied by men, and American nouveaux riches and gauche industrialists convened in London to show off their wealth. In their collaboration at the still celebrated Savoy Hotel, where they welcomed loyal and sometimes salacious clients, such as Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt, Escoffier created the modern kitchen brigade and codified French cuisine for the ages in his seminal Le Guide culinaire, which remains in print today, and Ritz, whose name continues to grace the finest hotels across the world, created the world's first luxury hotel. The pair also ruffled more than a few feathers in the process. Fine dining would never be the same--or more intriguing.

Ritz and Escoffier

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"First published in Great Britain by Canongate Books Ltd"--Copyright page.

How to Stop Time

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#paperback #mystery #detective #series #london

Illinois

Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner Sergeant Gemma James return in another spellbinding novel of mysteries--one contemporary, one ancient--an investigation that will challenge them personally and professionally as no case ever has. From the award-winning author of the acclaimed Kissed a Sad Goodbye...

A FINER END

When Duncan Kincaid’s cousin Jack calls from Glastonbury to ask for his help on a rather unusual matter, Duncan welcomes the chance to spend a relaxing weekend outside of London with Gemma--but relaxation isn’t on the agenda. Glastonbury is revered as the site of an ancient abbey, the mythical burial place of King Arthur and Guinevere, and a source of strong druid power. Jack has no more than a passing interest in its history--until he comes across an extraordinary chronicle almost a thousand years old. The record reveals something terrible and bloody shattered the abbey’s peace long ago--knowledge that will spark violence that reaches into the present. Soon it is up to Duncan and Gemma to find the truth the local police cannot see. But no one envisions the peril that lies ahead--or that there is more at stake than they ever dreamed possible.

A Finer End

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Perhaps it is a blessing when Jasmine Dent dies in her sleep. At long last an end has come to the suffering of a body horribly ravaged by disease. It may well have been suicide; she had certainly expressed her willingness to speed the inevitable. But small inconsistencies lead her neighbor, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid of Scotland Yard, to a startling conclusion: Jasmine Dent was murdered. But if not for mercy, why would someone destroy a life already so fragile and doomed? As Kincaid and his capable and appealing assistant Sergeant Gemma James sift through the dead woman's strange history, a troubling puzzle begins to take shape -- a bizarre amalgam of good and evil, of charity and crime . . . and of the blinding passions that can drive the human animal to perform cruel and inhuman acts.

All Shall Be Well

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Award-winning author Deborah Crombie has elevated the modern mystery novel to new heights of human drama and multilayered suspense with her critically acclaimed tales of intrigue featuring Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James. In their latest outing, Kincaid and his former partner--and soon-to-be roommate--follow a twisting trail of rage and retribution whose buried roots are about to exact a deadly toll on the living.

And Justice There is None

Gemma James is adjusting to professional and personal changes that include her eagerly sought promotion to the rank of inspector--and a future now intricately entwined with Duncan Kincaid. But her new responsibilities are put to the test when she is placed in charge of a particularly brutal homicide: The lovely young wife of a wealthy antiques dealer has been found murdered on fashionable Notting Hill.

Dawn Arrowood was six weeks pregnant. Her lover, Alex Dunn, a porcelain dealer in London's bustling Portobello Market, appears absolutely devastated by her death, but Gemma's the main focus of investigation is soon Karl Arrowood, who had the most powerful motive for killing his unfaithful wife. But this case sets off warning bells for Duncan: it's far too similar to an unsolved murder in which an antiques dealer was killed in precisely the same way and when the escalating violence claims yet another victim, he and Gemma find themselves at increasing odds with each other--as two separate investigations become linked in the most startling of ways. Their hunt for a killer will traverse the teeming stalls of the city's antiques markets to a decades-in-the-making vendetta of history and hatred that has been honed to a flawless, deadly point. To solve this case, Gemma and Duncan must walk a merciless razor's edge through a place where true justice will be a long time coming.

And Justice There Is None

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A Charles Lenox Mystery

“Fiction readers who crush on blue-blooded British detectives will fall hard for Victorian-era sleuth Charles Lenox." —The Washington Post From the critically acclaimed and USA Today bestselling author Charles Finch comes The Vanishing Man, a prequel to his Charles Lenox Victorian series, in which the theft of an antique painting sends Detective Lenox on a hunt for a criminal mastermind. London, 1853: Having earned some renown by solving a case that baffled Scotland Yard, young Charles Lenox is called upon by the Duke of Dorset, one of England’s most revered noblemen, for help. A painting of the Duke’s great-grandfather has been stolen from his private study. But the Duke’s concern is not for his ancestor’s portrait; hiding in plain sight nearby is another painting of infinitely more value, one that holds the key to one of the country’s most famous and best-kept secrets. Dorset believes the thieves took the wrong painting and may return when they realize their error—and when his fears result in murder, Lenox must act quickly to unravel the mystery behind both paintings before tragedy can strike again. As the Dorset family closes ranks to protect its reputation, Lenox uncovers a dark secret that could expose them to unimaginable scandal—and reveals the existence of an artifact, priceless beyond measure, for which the family is willing to risk anything to keep hidden. In this intricately plotted prequel to the Charles Lenox mysteries, the young detective risks his potential career—and his reputation in high society—as he hunts for a criminal mastermind.

The Vanishing Man

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The English Roses is a story of rivalry and friendship among schoolgirls in contemporary London. Four little girls—Nicole, Amy, Charlotte, and Grace—are eleven years old and the very best of friends.

This beautifully illustrated, hard cover book is in like new condition with the exception of a ripple across the top front jacket cover, as well as the prior owner’s name written on the 2nd page. The name is written in pencil and most likely can be erased. I did not try to erase it. 

The English Roses

#hardcover #contemporary #emotional #london #maureenjohnson 

Vermont

In 1718, sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally, takes a job in London as an apothecary's maid, only to find herself working for a mysterious apothecary who refuses to let her see his face or enter the study where he pursues his experiments.

The Nature of Monsters

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A Time to Love

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#hardcover #fiction #juvenile #magic #fantasy #london

Wisconsin

From award-winning author Julie Berry comes a brand new middle-grade fantasy adventure full of humor and heart. Maeve Merritt chafes at the rigid rules at her London boarding school for "Upright Young Ladies." When punishment forces her to sort through the trash, she finds a sardine tin that houses a foul-tempered djinni with no intention of submitting to a schoolgirl as his master. Soon an orphan boy from the charitable home next door, a mysterious tall man in ginger whiskers, a disgruntled school worker, and a take-no-prisoners business tycoon are in hot pursuit of Maeve and her magical discovery. It'll take all of her quick thinking and sass to set matters right. Maeve Merritt is one feisty heroine you won't soon forget. First published as an Audible Original in 2018.

Paraic O'Donnell

The House on Vesper Sands

Mary Jo Putney

Once A Spy

Anne Perry

Defend and Betray

Anne Perry

Cain His Brother

Bruce Alexander

Murder in Grub Street

Jody Shields

The Crimson Portrait

Paraic O'Donnell

The House on Vesper Sands

Nuala O’Faolain

My Dream of You

A. J. Pearce

Dear Mrs. Bird

Jonathan Stroud

Ptolemy's Gate

Maureen Johnson

The Last Little Blue Envelope

P. D. James

The Murder Room

Kate Winkler Dawson

Death in the Air

Luke Barr

Ritz and Escoffier

Matt Haig

How to Stop Time

Deborah Crombie

A Finer End

Deborah Crombie

All Shall Be Well

Deborah Crombie

And Justice There Is None

Charles Finch

The Vanishing Man

Madonna

The English Roses

Maureen Johnson

The Last Little Blue Envelope

Clare Clark

The Nature of Monsters

Beryl Kingston

A Time to Love

Julie Berry

Wishes and Wellingtons