Recommendations based on "The Book of Lamps and Banners"

Scarlet and Ivy return to creepy Rookwood School for a third mystery adventure!Perfect for fans of MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE.With their evil headmaster, Mr Bartholomew, safely out of the picture and kindly Mrs Knight in charge, it looks like life at Rookwood School is looking up. There's a ballet recital Scarlet is desperate to star in, and more clues to uncover about the twins' mother.But after their beloved ballet teacher Miss Finch suddenly disappears and strange Madame Zelda takes her place, freakish things start happening. Poison letters are circulating the school, and 'accidents' are plaguing the students. It seems that the girls are in danger once more…Is someone out for the ultimate revenge?

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

Calling upon his former governess, William Jones, gentleman, is startled when his knock is answered by an uncommonly beautiful servant, the soft-spoken Emma. Throughout his visit, William's eyes drift to the maid whenever she enters the room, and he contrives to meet Emma socially as she goes about her errands. But London society is a web of strict codes and divisions. For the son of a wealthy merchant, seeking out a working-class girl is simply not done! William's father plans for his son to marry into the peerage and elevate the Jones family to greater heights, but although William says and does what is expected of him, he longs only for Emma's company...

The Start Of A Thrilling New Second World War Mystery Series From The Number-one-bestselling And Multi-award-winning Author Of Murder Most Unladylike. 1940. Britain Is At War, And A Secret Arm Of The British Government Called The Ministry Of Unladylike Activity Is Training Up Spies. Enter May Wong: Courageous, Stubborn, And Desperate To Help End The War So That She Can Go Home To Hong Kong (and Leave Her Annoying School, Deepdean, Behind Forever). May Knows That She Would Make The Perfect Spy. After All, Grown-ups Always Underestimate Children Like Her. When May And Her Friend Eric Are Turned Away By The Ministry, They Take Matters Into Their Own Hands. Masquerading As Evacuees, They Travel To Elysium Hall, Home To The Wealthy Verey Family - Including Snobby, Dramatic Nuala. They Suspect That One Of The Vereys Is Passing Information To Germany. If They Can Prove It, The Ministry Will Have To Take Them On. But There Are More Secrets At Elysium Hall Than May Or Eric Could Ever Have Imagined. And Then Someone Is Murdered...

With this latest entry in a bestselling series that evokes all the passion and heroism of history’s most heartbreaking conflict–the war that was meant to end all wars–Anne Perry adds new luster to her worldwide reputation. Angels in the Gloom is an intense saga of love, hate, obsession, and murder that features an honorable English family–brothers Joseph and Matthew Reavley and their sisters, Judith and Hannah. In March 1916, Joseph, a chaplain at the front, and Judith, an ambulance driver, are fighting not only the Germans but the bitter cold and the appalling casualties at Ypres. Scarcely less at risk, Matthew, an officer in England’s Secret Intelligence Service, fights the war covertly from London. Only Hannah, living with her children in the family home in tranquil Cambridgeshire, seems safe. Appearances, however, are deceiving. By the time Joseph returns home to Cambridgeshire, rumors of spies and traitors are rampant. And when the savagely brutalized body of a weapons scientist is discovered in a village byway, the fear that haunts the battlefields settles over the town–along with the shadow of the obsessed ideologue who murdered the Reavleys’ parents on the eve of the war. Once again, this icy, anonymous powerbroker, the Peacemaker, is plotting to kill. Perry’s kaleidoscopic new novel illuminates an entire world, from the hell of the trenches to the London nightclub where a beautiful Irish spy plies her trade; from the sequestered laboratory where a weapon that can end the war is being perfected to the matchless glory of the English countryside in spring. Steeped in history and radiant with truth, Angels in the Gloom is a masterpiece that warms the heart even as it chills the blood.

Wire in the blood: "Young girls are disappearing around the country. Everyone assumes they are teenage runaways, headed for the city and bright lights. They vanish without trace - society's disposable children. There is nothing to connect them to each other, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind. Nobody moves around inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr. Tony Hill. Now heading up the recently founded National Profiling Task Force, he sets his team an exercise: they are given the details of thirty missing teenagers and ask to use their new techniques to discover whether there is a sinister link between any of the cases. Only one officer, Shaz Bowman, comes up with a concrete theory, but it is ridiculed by the rest of her group...until a killer murders and mutilates one of their number. Could Bowman's outrageous suspicion possibly be true?"

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As Europe buckles under Nazi occupation, Maisie Dobbs investigates a possible murder that threatens devastating repercussions for Britain's war efforts in this latest installment in the New York Times bestselling mystery series. October 1941. While on a delivery, young Freddie Hackett, a message runner for a government office, witnesses an argument that ends in murder. Crouching in the doorway of a bombed-out house, Freddie waits until the coast is clear. But when he arrives at the delivery address, he's shocked to come face to face with the killer. Dismissed by the police when he attempts to report the crime, Freddie goes in search of a woman he once met when delivering a message: Maisie Dobbs. While Maisie believes the boy and wants to help, she must maintain extreme caution: she's working secretly for the Special Operations Executive, assessing candidates for crucial work with the French resistance. Her two worlds collide when she spots the killer in a place she least expects. She soon realizes she's been pulled into the orbit of a man who has his own reasons to kill--reasons that go back to the last war. As Maisie becomes entangled in a power struggle between Britain's intelligence efforts in France and the work of Free French agents operating across Europe, she must also contend with the lingering question of Freddie Hackett's state of mind. What she uncovers could hold disastrous consequences for all involved in this compelling chapter of the "series that seems to get better with every entry" (Wall Street Journal).

'A beguiling author who interweaves past and present' The Times When Darren Hatman first reports his daughter missing, DI Wesley Peterson isn't too concerned. Leanne Hatman is an aspiring model, keen to leave Devon for the bright lights of London. But Wesley realises something very sinister is going on when Darren is found murdered in the grounds of Eyecliffe Castle, the hotel where Leanne works. Could Leanne have met a similar fate to her father? But, if so, where is her body? Wesley begins to suspect a connection between recent events and the disappearance of two girls in the 1950s, at a mysterious ruin called the House of Eyes. As he tries to solve the puzzle, Wesley must face alarming revelations rooted in centuries of evil - as well as deal with a nightmare of his own . . . Whether you've read the whole series, or are discovering Kate Ellis's DI Wesley Peterson novels for the first time, this is the perfect page-turner if you love reading Elly Griffiths and Ann Cleeves. PRAISE FOR KATE ELLIS: 'I loved this novel . . . a powerful story of loss, malice and deception' Ann Cleeves 'Haunting' Independent 'Unputdownable' Bookseller 'The chilling plot will keep you spooked and thrilled to the end' Closer 'A gripping read' Best 'A fine storyteller, weaving the past and present in a way that makes you want to read on' Peterborough Evening Telegraph

'One of the finest murder mystery series out there'When archaeologist Neil Watson unearths a long-buried mechanical figure in a Dartmoor field, he is determined to discover the truth behind the bizarre find.Soon, however, the sleepy village becomes the focus of press attention for another reason when two people with no apparent connection to each other are found shot dead in nearby Manor Field, seemingly victims of an execution-style double murder.DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate, but the two murders aren't his only problem. The daughter of a local MP has gone missing and the pressure is on to find her, especially when it's revealed that she has a connection to one of the murder victims. And Wesley's own life is thrown into turmoil when a woman he helped on a previous investigation finds herself subjected to a campaign of terror . . .Is there a link between the double murder and the accidental death of a young history student in Manor Field twenty years ago? And just what is the true identity of the Mechanical Devil?