This anthology includes: The Bishop's Lady (an Émilie d’Armand mystery), A Soupçon of Poison (a Kat Holloway Below-Stairs mystery), and A Matter of Honor (a Regency mystery with a touch of paranormal). Three historical mysteries span time from the court of Louis XIV to Victorian London. Meet Émilie d’Armand, a young woman who witnesses corruption and murder in seventeenth-century France (The Bishop’s Lady), and Katherine Holloway, an English cook sought after by the wealthy, who finds herself embroiled in murder, assisted only by the mysterious Daniel McAdam (A Soupçon of Poison). Finally, explore the darker side of Regency London in an alternate look at that period. Robert Archer, an army soldier whose family faces ruin, searches in desperation for a way to heal his family, assisted by an unlikely ally (A Matter of Honor).

The treatment of formal features is historical."--Jacket.

Spies, secrets and suspicious circumstances: Friar-sleuth Brother Athelstan races against time to solve impossible crimes and uncover a traitor in this gripping historical mystery set in medieval London. London. March, 1382. Deep in the shadows, a clandestine organization known as the Secret Chancery operates under the sinister leadership of John of Gaunt's Master of Secrets. When two clerks from this covert group meet their demise in suspicious circumstances, friar-sleuth Brother Athelstan is urgently summoned to unravel the truth behind their deaths. A puzzling question lies at the heart of the investigation: how did the killer manage to navigate a labyrinth of locked doors, leaving no trace behind? As Brother Athelstan delves deeper into the mystery, a terrifying threat also emerges: the possibility of treason. King Richard's spies in France are also dying, almost as if someone's discovered exactly who they are . . . Brother Athelstan must race against the clock to uncover the truth before he and his companions get tangled up in the hunt for the traitor, with fatal consequences for them all.

The “villainous homosexual” has long stalked America’s cultural imagination, most explicitly in the figure of the queer murderer, a character in dozens of plays. But as society’s understanding of homosexuality has changed, so has the significance of these controversial characters, especially when employed by LGBT theater artists themselves to explore darker fears and desires. Murder Most Queer examines the shifting meanings of murderous LGBT characters in American theater over a century, showing how these representations wrestle with and ultimately subvert notions of gay villainy. Murder Most Queer works to expose the forces that create the homophobic paradigm that imagines sexual and gender nonconformity as dangerous and destructive and to show how theater artists—and for the most part LGBT theater artists—have rewritten and radically altered the significance of the homicidal homosexual. Jordan Schildcrout argues that these figures, far from being simple reiterations of a homophobic archetype, are complex and challenging characters who enact trenchant fantasies of empowerment, replacing the shame and stigma of the abject with the defiance and freedom of the outlaw, giving voice to rage and resistance. These bold characters also probe the darker anxieties and fears that can affect queer lives and relationships. Instead of sentencing them to the prison of negative representations, this book analyzes the meanings in their acts of murder, confronting the real fears and desires condensed in those dramatic acts.

The Malice Domestic cozy anthology series returns with a new take on mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition -- 30 original tales with historical settings! Included are: The Blackness Before Me, by Mindy Quigley Honest John Finds a Way, by Michael Dell Spirited Death, by Carole Nelson Douglas Home Front Homicide, by Liz Milliron The Unseen Opponent, by P. A. De Voe The Black Hand, by Peter W. J. Hayes The Trial of Madame Pelletier, by Susanna Calkins Eating Crow, by Carla Coupe Mr. Nakamura's Garden, by Valerie O. Patterson A Butler is Born, by Catriona McPherson Night and Fog, by Marcia Talley The Seven, by Elaine Viets The Lady's Maid Vanishes, by Susan Daly You Always Hurt the One You Love, by Shawn Reilly Simmons The Hand of an Angry God, by K. B. Inglee The Cottage, by Charles Todd The Measured Chest, by Mark Thielman He Done Her Wrong, by Kathryn O'Sullivan The Corpse Candle, by Martin Edwards Death on the Dueling Grounds, by Verena Rose The Barter, by Su Kopil Mistress Threadneedle's Quest, by Kathy Lynn Emerson A One-Pipe Problem, by John Gregory Betancourt The Killing Game, by Victoria Thompson The Tredegar Murders, by Vivian Lawry Summons for a Dead Girl, by K. B. Owen The Velvet Slippers, by Keenan Powell The Tragic Death of Mrs. Edna Fogg, by Edith Maxwell Crim Con, by Nancy Herriman Strong Enough, by Georgia Ruth

How a society defines crimes and prosecutes criminals illuminates its cultural values, social norms, and political expectations. In Murder Most Russian, Louise McReynolds draws on a fascinating series of murders and subsequent trials that took place in the wake of the 1864 legal reforms enacted by Tsar Alexander II. For the first time in Russian history, the accused were placed in the hands of juries of common citizens in courtrooms that were open to the press. Drawing on a wide array of sources, McReynolds reconstructs murders that gripped Russian society, from the case of Andrei Gilevich, who advertised for a personal secretary and beheaded the respondent as a way of perpetrating insurance fraud, to the beating death of Marianna Time at the hands of two young aristocrats who hoped to steal her diamond earrings. As McReynolds shows, newspapers covered such trials extensively, transforming the courtroom into the most public site in Russia for deliberation about legality and justice. To understand the cultural and social consequences of murder in late imperial Russia, she analyzes the discussions that arose among the emergent professional criminologists, defense attorneys, and expert forensic witnesses about what made a defendant’s behavior "criminal." She also deftly connects real criminal trials to the burgeoning literary genre of crime fiction and fruitfully compares the Russian case to examples of crimes both from Western Europe and the United States in this period. Murder Most Russian will appeal not only to readers interested in Russian culture and true crime but also to historians who study criminology, urbanization, the role of the social sciences in forging the modern state, evolving notions of the self and the psyche, the instability of gender norms, and sensationalism in the modern media.