When the wife of a well-respected financier turns up dead, and the young, troubled daughter of a Portuguese ambassador commits suicide in the middle of a party, both deaths point to the disturbing trauma of rape....

It is January, 1897. The local police have found evidence of what appears to be an ugly crime at the home of Dudley Kynaston, an important member of the Ministry of Defense....

Claudine Burroughs--who works with William Monk\"s wife Hester at the women\"s clinic--expects nothing but an unbearably boring several hours from a Christmas party she attends with her husband....

The thirteenth Anne Perry holiday mystery follows James Latterly, Hester Monk\"s brother, as he travels to a lovely, remote island off the north coast of Sicily in the attempt to escape the numbing grief and overwhelming sense of loneliness that has overtaken him since his wife\"s recent death....

When William Monk\"s wife, Hester, is kidnapped from the hospital where she volunteers, Monk is desperate to rescue her. But when his investigation leads him to the remote home of the wealthy and enigmatic Bryson Radnor--and to several bodies buried on his grounds--Monk realizes there is far more to Hester\"s kidnapping than meets the eye....

When Thomas Pitt is tasked with playing bodyguard to Sofia Delacruz, a young and controversial British preacher who has been living in Spain and has returned to England on a mysterious errand, he thinks it\"s a waste of Special Branch\"s time and resources....

One summer afternoon, Monk witnesses the horrifying explosion of the pleasure boat Princess Mary, which sends to their deaths nearly two hundred merrymakers.The tragedy is no accident, and as commander of the River Police, Monk should handle the case. But instead, the investigation is turned over to the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police....

As commander of the powerful Special Branch, Thomas Pitt has the job of keeping Britain safe from spies and traitors. So there\"s no obvious reason why he is suddenly ordered to investigate two minor incidents: evidence of a scuffle discovered outside the home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston, and the simultaneous disappearance of Mrs....

At a glittering yuletide gala, Claudine Burroughs meets the charming poet Dai Tregarron and finds her holiday spirits--dampened by her empty home life and her husband\"s disapproval of her work at a clinic for underprivileged women--lifted....