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Morality Play

Barry Unsworth · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Sacrilege

S.J. Parris · 423 pages

Summer, 1584. Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth, has long suspected an undercurrent of Catholic resistance in the city that was once England's greatest centre of pilgrimage. He calls Giordano Bruno, his maverick secret agent, away from his post at the French Embassy to investigate. But when Bruno arrives in Canterbury, he has no idea of the dark secrets he's about to uncover. He

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A Rising Man

Abir Mukherjee · 386 pages

Calcutta, 1919. Captain Sam Wyndham, former Scotland Yard detective, is a new arrival to Calcutta. Desperately seeking a fresh start after his experiences during the Great War, Wyndham has been recruited to head up a new post in the police force. He is immediately overwhelmed by the heady vibrancy of the tropical city, but with barely a moment to acclimatize or to deal with the ghosts that still h

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The Unquiet Bones

Melvin R. Starr · 254 pages

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, he feels no real calling—despite his lively faith—and he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris, and then hanging his sign in Oxford. Soon after, a local lord asks Hugh de Singleton to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the

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A Plague on Both Your Houses

Susanna Gregory · 406 pages

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The Devil in the Marshalsea

Antonia Hodgson · 400 pages

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The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton · 834 pages

This novel is a murder mystery set in a remote gold-mining frontier town in 19th-century New Zealand. Arriving in New Zealand in 1866 a weary Englishman, Walter Moody, lands in a gold-mining frontier town on the coast of New Zealand to make his fortune and forever leave behind his family's shame. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to investi

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Bleak House

Charles Dickens · 815 pages

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, t

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The Bones of Avalon

Phil Rickman · 440 pages

Dr John Dee, astrologer and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, discovers a body on his doorstep and so begins an investigation that will change his life.

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The Nightingale Gallery

Paul Doherty · 256 pages

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The Novice's Tale

Margaret Frazer · 229 pages

The arrival of lusty, blaspheming dowager Lady Ermentrude at St. Frideswide convent in 1431 causes quite a stir, but before the obnoxious woman can get what she came for--her niece, the novice Thomasine--she is murdered. Sister Frevisse - Book 01

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The American Boy

Andrew Taylor

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The Butcher Bird

S.D. Sykes · 342 pages

Oswald de Lacey is growing up fast in his new position as Lord of Somershill Manor. The Black Death changed many things, and just as it took away his father and elder brothers, leaving Oswald to be recalled from the monastery where he expected to spend his life, so it has taken many of his villagers and servants. However, there is still the same amount of work to be done in the farms and fields, a

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Revelation

C.J. Sansom · 655 pages

The first three Shardlake mysteries have won over critics and readers alike. In Revelation, Sansom's newest book in the series, the year is 1543 and King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, a woman sympathetic to reform, whom he wants for his sixth wife- much to the dismay of Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court. Meanwhile, Matthew Shardlake is working to defend a

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Seven for a Secret

Lyndsay Faye · 470 pages

Timothy and Valentine Wilde must once again delve into the darkest underbelly of old New York. When the beautiful and terrified Mrs Lucy Adams stumbles into the Tombs, headquarters of New York's newly formed police force, it's the beginning of a dense, thorny maze of crime for copper star Timothy Wilde. He's hardened to the injustices of life in the unforgiving city he's grown up in, but that does

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The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

Richard Zimler · 318 pages

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Critique of Criminal Reason

Michael Gregorio · 400 pages

A young magistrate works with his mentor, Immanuel Kant, to find a serial murder who is terrorizing the city of Königsberg.

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Last Seen in Massilia

Steven Saylor · 289 pages

Analyse : Roman policier (énigme). Roman historique.

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The Devil's Novice

Ellis Peters · 276 pages

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The Lady Julia Grey Bundle

Deanna Raybourn

"To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching on the floor."Starting with her husband's sudden death, Lady Julia Grey is swept into a world of mystery and deceit. It is also the world of the enigmatic and maddeningly attractive private investigator Nicholas Brisbane...From the extravagant world of Victoria

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Even the Dead

Benjamin Black · 287 pages

"Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Irish pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause is a brain tumor. A specialist diagnoses an old head injury caused by a savage beating; all that's needed, the doctor declares, is an extended rest. But Quirke, ever intent on finding his place among the living, is not about to retire. One night duri

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A Vigil of Spies

Candace Robb · 360 pages

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Fatal Enquiry

Will Thomas · 354 pages

"Brimming with wit, atmosphere, and unforgettable characters, FATAL ENQUIRY reintroduces private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewellyn, and their unforgettable world of Victorian London. Some years ago, Cyrus Barker matched wits with Sebastian Nightwine, an aristocrat and sociopath, and in exposing his evil, sent Nightwine fleeing to hide from justice somewhere in the far

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Things Half in Shadow

Alan Finn · 448 pages

"Postbellum America makes for a haunting backdrop in this historical and supernatural tale of moonlit cemeteries, masked balls, cunning mediums, and terrifying secrets waiting to be unearthed by an intrepid crime reporter. The year is 1869, and the Civil War haunts the city of Philadelphia like a stubborn ghost. Mothers in black continue to mourn their lost sons. Photographs of the dead adorn dim

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The Gentle Axe: A Novel

R.N. Morris · 312 pages

Fresh off the case of a deranged student who murdered his landlady, noted police investigator Porfiry Petrovich barely takes a breath before a bizarre and very grisly double murder lands him back on the streets of the tsarist St. Petersburg he knows all too well. The sardonic sleuth follows a trail from the drinking dens of the Haymarket district to an altogether more genteel stratum of society—a

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