Search

Sixteen short stories that chart the meaning of time, and explore what it can do to us, and for us. Broken hearts, lives lived on fastforward, missed chances, and catastrophic meetings on the road. Time stolen, time wasted, time captured and time lost. A warning from the past, a second that changes a life, a failed glimpse into the future and a study of funeral rites. Ready-made families, weekly liaisons, and an all-night radio show. From the First ever Solstice Shorts Festival originally read live in 2014 on the Greenwich Meridian, on the shortest day of the year, from sunrise to sunset.

“[With] murderous plots, shady Parisian undersides, upper-class dealings.... this novel is rich in historical detail and robust with personality.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewMaud Heighton came to Lafond's famous Academie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris, she quickly realizes, is no place for a light purse. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling decadence of the Belle Epoque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, she stumbles upon an opportunity when Christian Morel engages her as a live-in companion to his beautiful young sister, Sylvie.Maud is overjoyed by her good fortune. With a clean room, hot meals, and an umbrella to keep her dry, she is able to hold her head high as she strolls the streets of Montmartre. No longer hostage to poverty and hunger, Maud can at last devote herself to her art. But all is not as it seems. Christian and Sylvie, Maud soon discovers, are not quite the darlings they pretend to be. Sylvie has a secret addiction to opium and Christian has an ominous air of intrigue. As this dark and powerful tale progresses, Maud is drawn further into the Morels'world of elegant deception. Their secrets become hers, and soon she is caught in a scheme of betrayal and revenge that will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light.“Dramatic and teeming with intrigue, The Paris Winter is a richly detailed historical novel that both thrills and satisfies.” —Shelf Awareness

“The best yet in [Robertson's] late-18th-century historical series.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)In the fourth installment of Imogen Robertson's acclaimed historical suspense series, Mrs. Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther depart England for the Duchy of Maulberg on a desperate mission to save a man accused of murder.Shrove Tuesday, 1784. As Germany's elite dance at a masked ball, the beautiful Lady Martesen is murdered. Daniel Clode, Mrs. Westerman's brother-in-law, is found near the body, his wrists cut, his memories nightmarish. Is Daniel a killer? As he awaits execution, Westerman enlists Crowther, the increasingly reclusive anatomist, to help prove Daniel's innocence. After another ruthless death, the investigative duo find themselves racing to solve the mystery behind the killings—but no one will talk, and the clock is ticking for Daniel.

The third novel in the critically acclaimed Westerman and Crowther historical mystery series reveals the dark secrets of Crowther's pastEngland, 1783. For years, reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther has pursued his forensic studies—and the occasional murder investigation—far from his family estate. But an ancient tomb there will reveal a wealth of secrets. When laborers discover an extra body inside the tomb, the lure of the mystery brings Crowther home at last, accompanied by his partner in crime, the forthright Mrs. Harriet Westerman. What Crowther learns will rewrite his family's past—and spill new blood in a land torn between old magic and modern justice.The next installment in a series described as “CSI: Georgian England” (The New York Times Book Review), Island of Bones is a riveting tale that will captivate fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Finch.

The second historical suspense novel in Imogen Robertson's critically acclaimed Westerman and Crowther mystery seriesLondon, 1781. Harriet Westerman anxiously awaits news of her husband, a ship's captain who has been gravely injured in the king's naval battles with France. As London's streets seethe with rumor, a body is dragged from the murky waters of the Thames.Having gained a measure of fame as amateur detectives for unraveling the mysteries of Thornleigh Hall, the indomitable Mrs. Westerman and her reclusive sidekick, anatomist Gabriel Crowther, are once again called on to investigate. In this intricate novel, Harriet and Crowther will discover that this is no ordinary drowning—the victim is part of a plot to betray England's most precious secrets.

The first novel in the Westerman and Crowther historical crime series that The New York Times Book Review called “CSI: Georgian England” and Tess Gerritsen called “chillingly memorable”Debut novelist Imogen Robertson won the London Telegraph's First Thousand Words of a Novel competition in 2007 with the opening of Instruments of Darkness. The finished work is a fast-paced historical mystery starring a pair of amateur eighteenth-century sleuths with razor-sharp minds. When Harriet Westerman, the unconventional mistress of a Sussex manor, finds a dead man on her grounds, she enlists reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer. Moving from drawing room to dissecting room, from dark London streets to the gentrified countryside, Instruments of Darkness is a gripping tale of the forbidding Thornleigh Hall and an unlikely forensic duo determined to uncover its deadly secrets.