Most read Historical Mystery books

A murder inside the Louvre pulls symbologist Robert Langdon into an overnight chase across Paris and London, chasing a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

• mystery box

Newly returned from war and short on funds, Dr. Watson shares rooms with the eccentric Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. When a man is found dead with the word "RACHE" scrawled in blood, Holmes's uncanny deductive method makes its debut — in the case that started it all.

• mystery box
• dual timeline

In the year 1327, a remote Italian abbey becomes the scene of a series of baffling deaths. A learned Franciscan monk, Brother William of Baskerville, arrives to investigate, but soon finds himself entangled in a dangerous mystery. The abbey's vast library holds secrets that could expose heresy and power struggles, and William must race against time to uncover the truth before more lives are lost.

• quest
• locked room
• mentor figure

In 1896 New York, alienist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and reporter John Moore are recruited by police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to hunt a killer preying on boy prostitutes, using the radical new method of psychological profiling. A richly atmospheric Gilded Age thriller and early landmark of the criminal-profiling genre.

England, 1887. When her elderly guardian dies, the fiercely independent Veronica Speedwell — a lepidopterist who funds her travels by hunting butterflies and answers to no one — prepares to set off on her next adventure. Instead she is nearly abducted, then rescued by an enigmatic German baron who claims to know a dangerous secret about her origins. The baron entrusts her to the care of Stoker, a gruff, brilliant natural historian with a scandalous past and secrets of his own. But when the baron is murdered before he can explain, Veronica and Stoker are thrown together and forced to go on the run, chasing a mystery that leads back to the truth of Veronica's own unknown parentage. Deanna Raybourn launches the Veronica Speedwell mysteries with a witty, adventurous Victorian heroine, a crackling partnership, and a puzzle that blends history, danger, and romance.

• witty banter

"A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who found herself at the center of a murder trial"--

In 1506 Joseon, seventeen-year-old Iseul goes to the capital to bring her sister home from the tyrant king's palace. To get inside, she hunts an assassin, and her search draws her toward a prince plotting treason.

• court intrigue
• multiple povs

In 1758 Joseon, palace nurse Hyeon just wants her father's approval. Then four women are murdered in one night and her mentor is the prime suspect. With Inspector Seo Eojin, she hunts the real killer inside the royal court.

• court intrigue
• mentor figure

New York, 1897. Sara Howard, now running her own detective agency, asks Dr. Laszlo Kreizler for help finding a kidnapped infant, the daughter of a Spanish diplomat, at a moment when the United States and Spain are edging toward war. The team's inquiry turns toward a nurse with a history that does not add up, and the case builds into a courtroom battle over a defendant few believe capable of what she's accused of. Narrated by Kreizler's former ward Stevie Taggert, the novel follows the same investigators from The Alienist through a case as much about the law's blind spots as the crime itself.

In 1171 Cambridge, children are being murdered and the Jews are blamed. King Henry II summons Adelia Aguilar, a woman trained in Salerno to read the dead, to find the real killer. Forced to hide her expertise in a land that would name her a witch, she races to stop a monster. The first Adelia Aguilar historical mystery.

When a professor's wife dies of poison at a dinner party, suspicion lands on Saffron Everleigh's mentor. A new botany research assistant in 1923 London, she must trace a rare plant to the killer before another victim falls.

• slow burn
• workplace romance
• mentor figure

In 1972, a sixteen-year-old girl finds an old book and a bundle of letters hidden in her diplomat father's study, and slowly draws out the story he has kept from her: as a young graduate student in the 1950s, he searched for his own missing mentor, a historian who had spent years convinced that Vlad Tepes -- the fifteenth-century Wallachian prince history remembers as Dracula -- never really died. The novel moves between three generations of scholars, each drawn deeper into the same hunt across Oxford, Istanbul, Budapest and the mountains of Eastern Europe, as documents, letters and old maps lead them toward the vampire's hidden tomb.

• dual timeline
• epistolary
• multiple povs
• quest

Veronica Speedwell, a butterfly hunter in 1887 London, has one week to prove a condemned man innocent of murdering his mistress. With the scarred aristocrat Stoker beside her, she follows the trail toward scandal at the top of society.

• slow burn
• secret identity
• court intrigue

In the East is a land ruled by an emperor, whose consorts and serving women live in a sprawling complex known as the hougong, the rear palace. Maomao, an unassuming girl raised in an unassuming town by her apothecary father, never imagined the rear palace would have anything to do with her—until she was kidnapped and sold into service there. Though she looks ordinary, Maomao has a quick wit, a sharp mind, and an extensive knowledge of medicine. That’s her secret, until she encounters a resident of the palace at least as perceptive as she is: the head eunuch, Jinshi. He sees through Maomao’s façade and makes her a lady-in-waiting to none other than the Emperor’s favorite consort… so she can taste the lady’s food for poison! At her lady’s side, Maomao starts to learn about everything that goes on in the rear palace—not all of it seemly. Can she ever lead a quiet life, or will her powers of deduction and insatiable curiosity bring her ever more adventures, and ever more dangers?

1426, Joseon Korea: years after Hwani and her younger sister vanished into a forest and were found near a gruesome crime scene, thirteen more girls disappear from those same woods. When her detective father goes missing while investigating, Hwani returns to her estranged family's home on Jeju to find him — and to confront the buried memories of what really happened to her all those years ago.

• mystery box
• coming of age

Will Darling, a London bookseller and former soldier, thought he was done with Kim Secretan. Then a face from the past appears in a seedy nightclub, Kim is right behind it, and the danger hits close to home.

• morally grey
• slow burn
• secret identity

Maisie Dobbs began life as a housemaid, but her intelligence and the generosity of her employers allowed her to attend Cambridge. Her studies were cut short by World War I, where her experiences as a nurse exposed her to the harsh realities of life and death. Now a private investigator, Maisie takes on a case that seems simple but soon plunges her into a complex mystery tied to the war's lingering trauma and a past love.

Audrey Rose has never fully solved Thomas Cresswell. This novella shows his side of their Atlantic voyage and its aftermath, up to the moment he asks for her hand, in scenes told from his point of view.

After her grandmother Nell dies, grieving Cassandra inherits a book of dark fairy tales by Eliza Makepeace, a Victorian authoress who vanished. Following Nell's old trail, she searches for the truth about her family's hidden past.

• family saga
• dual timeline
• secret identity
• quest

In 1920s England, temp worker Sarah Piper is sent to help a ghost hunter investigate the angry spirit of a dead maid. Sarah and a scarred war veteran must uncover Maddy Clare's past before her vengeance destroys them.

When a mutilated corpse is discovered in a local swamp, watchman Mikel Cardell and lawyer Cecil Winge comb the underworld of eighteenth-century Stockholm to unmask a murderer before a young workhouse laborer becomes the next victim.

Retired operative Cotton Malone is happily selling rare books in Copenhagen when his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, is attacked while hunting the lost Templar treasure. A zealot with assassins wants it too, and what it hides could reshape the world.

• quest
• mystery box

Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit relationship with Kim Secretan, disgraced aristocrat, ex-spy and amateur book-dealer. Then a brutal murder in a gentleman's club plunges them back into the shadow world of crime, deception and the power of privilege, and brings them up against Kim's noble, hostile family. With old and new enemies against them and secrets on every side, Will and Kim have to fight for each other harder than ever, or be torn apart for good.