Rachel Atkins

It's 1920, and Louisa Cannon dreams of escaping her life of poverty in London, and most of all her oppressive and dangerous uncle. Louisa's salvation is a position within the Mitford household at Asthall Manor, in the Oxfordshire countryside. There she will become nursery maid, chaperone and confidante to the Mitford sisters, especially sixteen-year-old Nancy - an acerbic, bright young woman in love with stories. But then a nurse - Florence Nightingale...

" It's lady's maid Louisa Cannon's wedding day, but the fantasy is shattered shortly after when she is approached by a secretive man asking her to spy on Diana Mitford - who is having an affair with the infamous Oswald Mosley - and her sister Unity. Soon, as summer 1933 dawns, Louisa finds herself accompanying the Mitfords on a glitzy cruise in the Mediterranean, full of the brightest stars of society. But the waters run red when a man is found attacked....

"In the third book in the Mitford Murders series, lady's maid Louisa Cannon accompanies Diana Mitford into a turbulent late 1920s Europe. The year is 1928, and after the death of a maid at a glamorous society party, fortune heir Bryan Guinness seizes life and proposes to eighteen-year-old Diana, most beautiful of the six Mitford sisters. The maid's death is ruled an accident, and the newlyweds put it behind them to begin a whirlwind life zipping between...

"A timeless story of strife and hope set during the conflict in the Balkans in the early '90s--a searing debut novel about a woman who faces the war on her doorstep with courage, fierceness, and an unshakable belief in the power of art. Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect makeshift barricades, splitting the city into ethnic enclaves. Each morning, the people who live there--whether Muslim, Croat, or Serb--push the barriers aside....

Amidst the ambition and competition at the elite Morton Academy, Liz, Taylor, Kat, Marcus, and Cole join forces to investigate a string of mysterious deaths and race to uncover the truth before more of the school's best and brightest fall victim.

"Alison lives her life under the radar. She has no ties, no home, and she spends her days at a backroom publishing job. Which is how she wants it. Because Alison used to be a teenager named Esme, who lived in a dilapidated house by a bleak estuary with her parents and three siblings. One night, something unspeakable happened in the house, and Alison emerged the only survivor. In order to escape from the horror she witnessed, she moved away from her...

Armadale (1866) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century semi-epistolary novel. Some chapters consist of letters between the various characters, while other chapters record the events as the characters perceive them.

The novel has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by

...

Magdalen Vanstone and her sister Norah learn the true meaning of social stigma in Victorian England only after the traumatic discovery that their dearly loved parents, whose sudden deaths have left them orphans, were not married at the time of their birth. Disinherited by law and brutally ousted from Combe-Raven, the idyllic country estate which has been their peaceful home since childhood, the two young women are left to fend for themselves. While...

After uncovering six tiny coffins at St. Saviour's Infirmary, apprentice apothecary Jem Flockhart seeks answers, following a trail that leads from the dissecting room to Newgate prison and the gallows. London. As St. Saviour's Infirmary awaits demolition, the doctors bicker and backstab. When six tiny coffins are uncovered, inside each a handful of dried flowers and a bundle of moldering rags, it opens a long-forgotten past that will have fatal...

"After rising up against gangland's queen, Alice Diamond, formerly downtrodden Nell is living the perfect life of crime. Far from the East End slums where she was raised, she's now an accomplished professional thief by day-lifting luxury goods from high-end department stores-and a glamorous nightclub owner after dark. Dressed in stolen silks and furs, Nell cuts a dazzling figure in the dimly lit clubs where she calls the shots. But a betrayal and...