Nadia May

"Of all the books in the Alleyn series, Scales of Justice is most powerfully reminiscent of Agatha Christie, with its setting in an almost unspeakably charming little English village, and its cast of inbred aristocrats. When one of the aristos turns up dead next to the local trout-stream --with, in fact, a trout at his side--everyone is dreadfully upset, of course, but really, just a tad irritated as well: Murder is so awfully messy. Thank gawd that...

A British police detective looks into sinister doings in the South of France in a crime thriller with “more than a little excitement” (Kirkus Reviews).
Inspector Roderick Alleyn has decamped for the South of France on a family vacation—though for him, the vacation will involve some official poking around. Unfortunately, the object of his poking—the cultish denizens of a sinister and luxurious chateau—are...

A mystery with "atmosphere, humor . . .and a group of characters, English, Maori, and New Zealander, who are fascinating and completely credible." —The New York Times
During World War II, Colonel Claire—a tremendously nice fellow and a disastrously bad businessman—runs a mud-baths resort in rural New Zealand. But the place is on the brink of being taken over by a local blowhard who may be a Nazi spy. Inspector Alleyn has...

I imagined him in his beloved Brooklyn, strolling in Prospect Park and preaching to chance comers about his gospel of good books.
"When you sell a man a book," says Roger Mifflin, the sprite-like book peddler at the center of this classic novella, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life." In this beguiling but little-known prequel to Christopher Morley's belovedHaunted Bookshop,...

The celebrated Victorian author of Middlemarch explores the turbulent world of Florence during the Italian Renaissance in this sweeping historical novel.
Florence, 1492. Lorenzo de Medici has just died, leaving governance of the Florentine Republic to his son Piero, an unskilled ruler. Meanwhile, Tito Melema, a shipwrecked stranger, finds love with a young woman named Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar. Though her...

Small-town rivals engage in a ruthless battle of wits in the first novel of this beloved satirical series about the Edwardian upper class.

The small English village of Riseholme may only have one street, but it contains many paths for the committed social climber. In this this eccentric enclave of the idle rich, Emmeline Lucas—known as Lucia—is the reigning social queen. And together with her husband Peppino and her best

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Rickie Elliot, a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent, sets out from Cambridge full of hopes to become a writer. But when his stories are not successful, he decides instead to marry the beautiful but shallow Agnes, agreeing to abandon his writing and become a schoolmaster. "Studying at Cambridge as an undergraduate, the sensitive and lonely Rickie Elliot quickly becomes immersed in...

Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard, is a dramatic allegory telling the journey we each must take before having the ability to live on high places. Throughout the story, the emotions and struggles of our nature are personified. It is a story of endurance, persistence, and reliance on God, which has inspired millions of people to become sure-footed in their faith even when facing the rockiest of life's terrain. Much-Afraid had been in the service...

A soldier returns home transformed by World War I, sending shock waves through the lives of three women, in Rebecca West’s groundbreaking debut novel
 
Jenny has been waiting for the return of her cousin, Lieutenant Chris Baldry, from the faraway front lines of the war in France. She has kept vigil alongside Chris’s wife, Kitty, who has also been mourning the death of their first child. However, when Chris returns to...

The life of a beautiful, ambitious Englishwoman becomes intertwined with the fate of an American banking family.