45 results for "Historical Fiction"

Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Daniel Silva
In a spellbinding new masterpiece by #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva, Gabriel Allon undertakes a high-stakes search for the greatest art forger who ever lived Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems. Gabriel soon discovers that the work in question, a portrait of an unidentified woman attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck, is almost certainly a fiendishly clever fake. To find the mysterious figure who painted it--and uncover a multibillion-dollar fraud at the pinnacle of the art world--Gabriel conceives one of the most elaborate deceptions of his career. If it is to succeed, he must become the very mirror image of the man he seeks: the greatest art forger the world has ever known. Stylish, sophisticated, and ingeniously plotted, Portrait of an Unknown Woman is a wildly entertaining journey through the dark side of the art world--a place where unscrupulous dealers routinely deceive their customers and deep-pocketed investors treat great paintings as though they were just another asset class to be bought and sold at a profit. From its elegant opening to the shocking twists of its climax, the novel is a tour de force of storytelling and one of the finest pieces of heist fiction ever written. And it is still more proof that, when it comes to international intrigue and suspense, Daniel Silva has no equal.
HarperCollins Publishers 2023-02-14 464 pages

The House of Secrets

Brad Meltzer,Tod Goldberg
A secret worth killing for. A woman with no past. An act of treason that changed America. #1 bestselling author Brad Meltzer returns with THE HOUSE OF SECRETS When Hazel Nash was six years old, her father taught her: mysteries need to be solved. He should know. Hazel's father is Jack Nash, the host of America's favorite conspiracy TV show, The House of Secrets. Even as a child, she loved hearing her dad's tall tales, especially the one about a leather book belonging to Benedict Arnold that was hidden in a corpse. Now, years later, Hazel wakes up in the hospital and remembers nothing, not even her own name. She's told she's been in a car accident that killed her father and injured her brother. But she can't remember any of it, because of her own traumatic brain injury. Then a man from the FBI shows up, asking questions about her dad-and about his connection to the corpse of a man found with an object stuffed into his chest: a priceless book that belonged to Benedict Arnold. Back at her house, Hazel finds guns that she doesn't remember owning. On her forehead, she sees scars from fights she can't recall. Most important, the more Hazel digs, the less she likes the person she seems to have been. Trying to put together the puzzle pieces of her past and present, Hazel Nash needs to figure out who killed this man-and how the book wound up in his chest. The answer will tell her the truth about her father, what he was really doing for the government-and who Hazel really is. Mysteries need to be solved. Especially the ones about yourself.
Grand Central Publishing 2017-01-31 416 pages

The Postcard

Anne Berest
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR TIME Magazine・NPR・Library Journal・The Globe and Mail・Lilith・Forward Magazine・Toronto Star・The New Yorker "A testament to the power of imagination and an investigation of empathy."--Vogue "Stunning."--Leslie Camhi, The New Yorker "A can't-miss novel."--Chicago Review of Books "Compelling."--The Washington Examiner Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. It is at once a gripping investigation into family trauma, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life. January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest's maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques--all killed at Auschwitz. Years after the postcard is delivered, the heroine of this novel is moved to discover who sent it and why. What emerges is a moving saga of a family devastated by the travails of the twentieth century and partly restored through the power of storytelling.
Europa Editions 2024-05-07 480 pages

The Twist of a Knife

Horowitz, Anthony
In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz's ingenious fourth literary whodunit following The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, and A Line to Kill, Horowitz becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation--and only one man can prove his innocence: his newly estranged partner in solving crime, Detective Hawthorne. "I'm sorry but the answer's no." Reluctant author, Anthony Horowitz, has had enough. He tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne that after three books he's splitting and their deal is over. The truth is that Anthony has other things on his mind. His new play, a thriller called Mindgame, is about to open at the Vaudeville Theater in London's West End. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne declines a ticket to the opening night. The play is panned by the critics. In particular, Sunday Times critic Margaret Throsby gives it a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next day, Throsby is stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which turns out to belong to Anthony, and has his fingerprints all over it. Anthony is arrested by an old enemy . . . Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. She still carries a grudge from her failure to solve the case described in the second Hawthorne adventure, The Sentence is Death, and blames Anthony. Now she's out for revenge. Thrown into prison and fearing for both his personal future and his writing career, Anthony is the prime suspect in Throsby's murder and when a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him. But will Hawthorne take the call?
HARPER PERENNIAL 2023-11-14 384 pages

The House of Silk A Sherlock Holmes Novel

Anthony Horowitz
"Horowitz truly pulls off the wonderful illusion that Arthur Conan Doyle left us one last tale."-- San Diego Union Tribune London, 1890. 221B Baker St. A fine art dealer named Edmund Carstairs visits Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson to beg for their help. He is being menaced by a strange man in a flat cap - a wanted criminal who seems to have followed him all the way from America. In the days that follow, his home is robbed, his family is threatened. And then the first murder takes place. THE HOUSE OF SILK bring Sherlock Holmes back with all the nuance, pacing, and almost superhuman powers of analysis and deduction that made him the world's greatest detective, in a case depicting events too shocking, too monstrous to ever appear in print....until now.
Little, Brown 2012-10-02 304 pages

The Sherlockian

Graham Moore
Hurtling from present day New York to Victorian London, The Sherlockian weaves the history of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into an inspired and entertaining double mystery that proves to be anything but "elementary." In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners eagerly opened their Strand magazines, anticipating the detective's next adventure, only to find the unthinkable: his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning-crowds sported black armbands in grief-and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin. Then in 1901, just as abruptly as Conan Doyle had "murdered" Holmes in "The Final Problem," he resurrected him. Though the writer kept detailed diaries of his days and work, Conan Doyle never explained this sudden change of heart. After his death, one of his journals from the interim period was discovered to be missing, and in the decades since, has never been found.... Or has it? When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he's about to be thrust onto the hunt for the holy grail of Holmes-ophiles: the missing diary. But when the world's leading Doylean scholar is found murdered in his hotel room, it is Harold-using wisdom and methods gleaned from countless detective stories-who takes up the search, both for the diary and for the killer.
Grand Central Publishing 2011-11-21 368 pages

Moriarty A Novel

Anthony Horowitz
The game is once again afoot in this thrilling mystery from the bestselling author of The House of Silk, sanctioned by the Conan Doyle estate, which explores what really happened when Sherlock Holmes and his arch nemesis Professor Moriarty tumbled to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls. Internationally bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s nail-biting new novel plunges us back into the dark and complex world of detective Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty—dubbed the Napoleon of crime” by Holmes—in the aftermath of their fateful struggle at the Reichenbach Falls. Days after the encounter at the Swiss waterfall, Pinkerton detective agent Frederick Chase arrives in Europe from New York. Moriarty’s death has left an immediate, poisonous vacuum in the criminal underworld, and there is no shortage of candidates to take his place—including one particularly fiendish criminal mastermind. Chase and Scotland Yard Inspector Athelney Jones, a devoted student of Holmes’s methods of investigation and deduction originally introduced by Conan Doyle in “The Sign of Four”, must forge a path through the darkest corners of England’s capital—from the elegant squares of Mayfair to the shadowy wharfs and alleyways of the London Docks—in pursuit of this sinister figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty’s successor. A riveting, deeply atmospheric tale of murder and menace from one of the only writers to earn the seal of approval from Conan Doyle’s estate, Moriarty breathes life into Holmes’s dark and fascinating world.
HarperCollins 2015-09-01 384 pages

Property of a noblewoman

Steel, Danielle
An abandoned safe deposit box in a New York City bank is opened to reveal a bundle of old letters, photographs and priceless jewellery. Court clerk Jane Willoughby is charged with discovering more about the mystery of the box's owner, the late Marguerite Wallace Pearson di San Pignelli. Why did Marguerite never claim these most precious possessions? Who are her heirs? Are they still alive? After arranging for the jewellery to be valued, Jane and Christie's auctioneer Phillip Lawton are thrown together in a quest to find out more about Marguerite's story. But neither of them could imagine where the contents of the box could lead them . . . or how it will change their lives forever. An extraordinary, sweeping story from master storyteller Danielle Steel.
Corgi Books 2016-11-28 400 pages

The Lightning Rod A Zig and Nola Novel

Brad Meltzer
New York Times Bestseller "Nola is the most accomplished kicker of ass since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." --A. J. Finn Zig and Nola are back--in the hugely entertaining, highly anticipated follow-up to Brad Meltzer's #1 New York Times bestselling thriller The Escape Artist. What's the one secret no one knows about you? Archie Mint has a secret. He's led a charmed life--he's got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he's killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered--and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint's been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined. While working on Mint's body before his funeral, mortician "Zig" Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Mint's former top secret military unit and his connection to artist Nola Brown. Two years ago, Nola saved Zig's life--so he knows better than most that she's as volatile and dangerous as a bolt of lightning. Following Nola's trail, he uncovers one of the U.S. government's most intensely guarded secrets--an undisclosed military facility that dates back to the Cold War and holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself. Trouble always finds her... She's the lightning rod.
HarperCollins 2023-04-04 432 pages

Overboard

Paretsky, Sara
"Readers can find comfort in the dedication V.I. gives the cries for help she hears from friends, neighbors, and strangers... Very few series authors deliver as masterfully as Sara Paretsky.” — San Francisco Book Review Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a nefarious conspiracy preying on Chicago’s weak and vulnerable, in this thrilling novel from New York Ti[Bokinfo]
HarperCollins UK Publishers 2023-05-16 400 pages

The Mystery of Three Quarters The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

Sophie Hannah
The world’s most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot—the legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and most recently The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket—returns in a stylish, diabolically clever mystery set in the London of 1930. “We Agatha Christie fans read her stories--and particularly her Poirot novels--because the mysteries are invariably equal parts charming and ingenious, dark and quirky and utterly engaging. Sophie Hannah had a massive challenge in reviving the beloved Poirot, and she met it with heart and no small amount of little grey cells. I was thrilled to see the Belgian detective in such very, very good hands. Reading The Monogram Murders was like returning to a favorite room of a long-lost home.” — Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl Hercule Poirot returns home after an agreeable luncheon to find an angry woman waiting to berate him outside his front door. Her name is Sylvia Rule, and she demands to know why Poirot has accused her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, a man she has neither heard of nor ever met. She is furious to be so accused, and deeply shocked. Poirot is equally shocked, because he too has never heard of any Barnabas Pandy, and he certainly did not send the letter in question. He cannot convince Sylvia Rule of his innocence, however, and she marches away in a rage. Shaken, Poirot goes inside, only to find that he has a visitor waiting for him — a man called John McCrodden who also claims also to have received a letter from Poirot that morning, accusing him of the murder of Barnabas Pandy... Poirot wonders how many more letters of this sort have been sent in his name. Who sent them, and why? More importantly, who is Barnabas Pandy, is he dead, and, if so, was he murdered? And can Poirot find out the answers without putting more lives in danger?
HarperCollins 2019-08-06 368 pages

The killings at Kingfisher Hill

Hannah, Sophie,Christie, Agatha
"Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but there is one strange condition attached: he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family. The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot's curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached... Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the true culprit in time to save her from the gallows?"--
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2020 272 pages

The Inner Circle

Brad Meltzer
There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living. Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. He has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself... Until now. When Clementine Kaye, Beecher's first childhood crush, shows up at the National Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Beecher tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. After they accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact - a 200 hundred-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington, hidden underneath a desk chair, Beecher and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder. Soon a man is dead, and Beecher is on the run as he races to learn the truth behind this mysterious national treasure. His search will lead him to discover a coded and ingenious puzzle that conceals a disturbing secret from the founding of our nation. It is a secret, Beecher soon discovers, that some believe is worth killing for. Gripping, fast-paced, and filled with the fascinating historical detail for which he is famous, THE INNER CIRCLE is a thrilling novel that showcases a brilliant author writing at the height of his craft.
Grand Central Publishing 2015-04-28 640 pages

Swann's War

Michael Oren
A thrilling literary fiction whodunit for fans of Delia Owens and Jacqueline Winspear World War II is raging overseas, but life remains painfully quiet on the rugged New England fishing island of Fourth Cliff. With most of its able-bodied male inhabitants away in the service, the island is now home only to aged fishermen, concerned women and children, and second-rate soldiers guarding a low-priority military emplacement and camp for Italian POWs. With her husband Archie, Fourth Cliff's beloved police captain, off fighting in the Marines, Mary Beth Swann steps into his role. Though a cop herself, she has to fight for the respect of Fourth Cliff's hardscrabble residents. And that's before a murdered POW surfaces in a fisherman's net, followed by more bodies. Determined to find the killer, Swann must rely only on the help of a simple-minded deputy, a disgraced doctor, and a mob-connected mainlander to prove her worth to Fourth Cliff--and to herself. In the tradition of Where the Crawdads Sing and the BBC's Foyle's War, Michael Oren's novel seizes the reader and doesn't let go until the very last page.
Dzanc Books 2022-10-25 256 pages

A Conspiracy of Paper

David Liss
Benjamin Weaver is an outsider in eighteenth-century London: a Jew among Christians; a ruffian among aristocrats; a retired pugilist who, hired by London's gentry, travels through the criminal underworld in pursuit of debtors and thieves. Now he is investigating a crime of the most personal sort: the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stockjobber. Between him the answers is a network of secrecy, deception and violence. Relying on brains and brawn, Weaver uncovers the beginnings of a strange new economic order based on stock speculation ...
Thorndike Press 2000 781 pages

City of Light

Lauren Belfer
NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “Breathtaking . . . a remarkable blend of murder mystery, love story, political intrigue, and tragedy of manners.”— USA Today The year is 1901. Buffalo, New York, is poised for glory. With its booming industry and newly electrified streets, Buffalo is a model for the century just beginning. Louisa Barrett has made this dazzling city her home. Headmistress of Buffalo’s most prestigious school, Louisa is at ease in a world of men, protected by the titans of her city. But nothing prepares her for a startling discovery: evidence of a murder tied to the city’s cathedral-like power plant at nearby Niagara Falls. This shocking crime—followed by another mysterious death—will ignite an explosive chain of events. For in this city of seething intrigue and dazzling progress, a battle rages among politicians, power brokers, and industrialists for control of Niagara. And one extraordinary woman in their midst must protect a dark secret that implicates them all. . . .
Random House Publishing Group 2003-08-26 512 pages

The First Casualty

Ben Elton
From Ben Elton, author of the hugely successful Past Mortem, a gut-wrenching historical drama which forces us to handle the truth. Flanders, June 1917: a British officer and celebrated poet is shot dead, killed not by German fire, but while he was recuperating from shell shock well behind the lines. A young English soldier is arrested and, although he protests his innocence, is charged with his murder. Douglas Konig is a conscientious objector, previously a detective with the London police, now imprisoned for his beliefs. He is released and sent to France in order to secure a conviction in the case. Forced to conduct his investigations amid the hell of the third Battle of Ypres, Konig soon discovers that both the evidence and the witnesses he needs are quite literally disappearing into the mud that surrounds him. Ben Elton s tenth novel is a gut-wrenching historical drama that explores some fundamental questions. What is murder? What is justice in the face of unimaginable daily slaughter? And where is the honour in saving a man from the gallows if he is only to be returned to die in a suicidal battle? As the gap between legally sanctioned and illegal murder becomes ever more blurred, Konig quickly learns that the first casualty of war is Truth. "From the Trade Paperback edition.""
Black Swan 2006 443 pages

The Devil's Company

David Liss
From the acclaimed author of The Whiskey Rebels and A Conspiracy of Paper comes a superb new historical thriller set in the splendor and squalor of eighteenth-century London. In Benjamin Weaver, David Liss has created one of fiction's most enthralling characters. The year is 1722. Ruffian for hire, ex-boxer, and master of disguise, Weaver finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, pitted against Jerome Cobb, a wealthy and mysterious schemer who needs Weaver's strength and guile for his own treacherous plans. Weaver is blackmailed into stealing documents from England's most heavily guarded estate, the headquarters of the ruthless British East India Company, but the theft of corporate secrets is only the first move in a daring conspiracy within the eighteenth century's most powerful corporation. To save his friends and family from Cobb's reach, Weaver must infiltrate the Company, navigate its warring factions, and uncover a secret plot of corporate rivals, foreign spies, and government operatives. With millions of pounds and the security of the nation at stake, Weaver will find himself in a labyrinth of hidden agendas, daring enemies, and unexpected allies. With the explosive action and scrupulous period research that are David Liss's trademarks, The Devil's Company, depicting the birth of the modern corporation, is the most impressive achievement yet from an author who continues to set ever higher standards for historical suspense.
Thorndike Press 2009 703 pages

The Big Bow Mystery

Israel Zangwill
Regarded as the first full-length locked room mystery, The Big Bow Mystery focuses on a murder that has occurred inside a locked room, with no clear indication as to the weapon used, the perpetrator of the horrendous crime, or a possible escape route. Scotland Yard is stumped. Yet the seemingly unsolvable case has, as Inspector Grodman says, "one sublimely simple solution" that is revealed in a final chapter full of revelations and a shocking denouement. The Big Bow Mystery has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2015-07-31 106 pages