Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, sets out to solve the murder of a beloved puppeteer. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve--without Flavia's help.

A chance meeting with a Sussex beekeeper turns into a pivotal, personal transformation when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell discovers that the beekeeper is the reclusive, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, who soon takes on the role of mentor and teacher.

The self-interested disregard of a dying woman's bequest, an impulsive girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage between an idealist and a materialist — all intersect at a Hertfordshire estate called Howards End. The fate of this beloved country home symbolizes the future of England itself in E. M. Forster's exploration of social, economic, and philosophical trends, as exemplified by three families: the Schlegels, symbolizing...

Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in artistic London, and finally making a trip to Greece, but this is no orthodox Bildungsroman. Jacob is presented in glimpses, in fragments,...

The daughter of a distinguished soldier, Bess Crawford follows in his footsteps and signs up to go overseas as a nurse during the Great War, helping to deal with the many wounded. There, serving on a hospital ship, she makes a promise to a dying young lieutenant to take a message to his brother, Jonathan Graham: "Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother's sake. But it has to be set right." Later, when her ship is sunk by a mine and she's sidelined...

The Morel family, who live on the Nottinghamshire coalfields, are beset with conflict. Gertrude has become disillusioned with her inarticulate working-class husband and devotes her energies to her sons. Son Paul falls in love and seeks to escape his family ties.

Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë, is a poignant exploration of industrial and social upheaval in early 19th-century England, interwoven with personal and political struggles that resonate deeply with today's audience. Set during the industrial depression of the 1811-1812 Luddite uprisings, the novel delves into the lives of two contrasting heroines: the strong-willed, independent Shirley Keeldar and the gentle, introspective Caroline Helstone. Brontë's...

Natalka and Edwin are perfect if improbable partners in a detective agency. At eighty-four, Edwin regularly claims that he's the oldest detective in England. He is a master at surveillance, deploying his age as a cloak of invisibility. Natalka, Ukrainian-born and more than fifty years his junior, is a math whizz, who takes any cases concerning fraud or deception. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated. She loves a murder, as...

Maisie Dobbs' first assignment for the British Secret Service takes her undercover to Cambridge as a professor, and leads to the investigation of a murderous web of activities being conducted by the up-and-coming Nazi party.

"A lonely woman vanishes while out on her morning run. The police aren't alarmed. But when a 22-year-old girl never returns from a walk, an old man disappears too, no one can deny that something terrifying is happening in the quiet cathedral town of Lafferton. When fresh-faced policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case--alongside the enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler--she must unravel the mystery before events turn too gruesome"--Page...