Pericles dispatches his protégé Nicolaos to investigate a suspicious suicide in this “lively” historical mystery set in Ancient Greece (Kirkus Reviews). Athens, 460 B.C. Life’s tough for Nicolaos, the only investigating agent in ancient Athens. His girlfriend has left him, and his boss wants to fire him. But when an Athenian official is murdered, the brilliant statesman Pericles has no choice but to put Nico on the job. The case takes Nico, in the company of a beautiful slave girl, to the land of Ionia within the Persian Empire. The Persians will execute him on the spot if they think he’s a spy. Beyond that, there are only a few minor problems. He’s being chased by brigands who are only waiting for the right price before they kill him. Somehow he has to placate his girlfriend, who is very angry about that slave girl. He must meet Themistocles, the military genius who saved Greece during the Persian Wars, and then defected to the hated enemy. And to solve the crime, Nico must uncover a secret that could not only destroy Athens, but will force him to choose between love, and ambition, and his own life. Praise for The Ionia Sanction “The action is solidly paced and engaging throughout, while Nico’s noir-ish patter makes the history highly accessible. . . . Corby weaves in most of these historical nuggets skillfully. . . . [Nico’s] worth reading.” —Historical Novel Society

'A rollicking romp through ancient Athens, with captivating characters and engrossing, suspense-filled turns . . . Gary Corby has not only made Greek history accessible – he's made it first-rate entertainment.' Kelli Stanley, award-winning author of Nox Dormienda and City of Dragons Athens, 461BC. A dead man falls from the sky, landing at the feet of a surprised Nicolaos. It doesn't normally rain corpses. This one is the politician Ephialtes, who only days before had turned Athens into a democracy. Rising young statesman Pericles commissions Nicolaos to find the assassin. Nico walks the mean streets of Classical Athens in search of a killer, but what's really on his mind is how to get closer - much closer - to Diotima, an intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess, and how to shake off his irritating twelve year old brother, Socrates . . . ' . . . a highly enjoyable, fast-paced murder mystery which also provides an informative and interesting picture of the political intrigue and day-to-day life in ancient Athens.' Canberra Times 'Classical Athens, a time of bustling rivalry, artistic genius and dramatic events, are all superbly captured in this exciting saga of flesh and blood characters who jostle and fight, love and hate as they approach the climax of murderous intrigue.' PC Doherty, bestselling author of The Ancient Roman Mysteries

​In the seventh in Gary Corby's Athenian Mystery series, Nico and Diotima must solve a murder case while also preparing to have a baby. Set on the sacred island of Delos in 5th century BC, Death on Delos is full of humor and historical intrigue. ​ Greece, 454 BC: The sacred isle of Delos, the birthplace of the divine twins Apollo and Artemis, has been a most holy pilgrimage site for centuries. Delos is also home to the military fund kept by the Delian League, the alliance of city-states that defended Greece against the Persians, and that vast treasury is protected only by the priests and priestesses of the tiny isle and a scant armed guard. Then one day the charismatic Athenian statesman Pericles arrives at the head of a small army to forcibly take the treasury back to the safety of Athens. With him are Nico, the only private agent in ancient Athens, and his heavily pregnant wife and partner in sleuthing, the priestess Diotima. She has been selected to give this year’s annual offering to holy Artemis. In the face of righteous resistance from the priests, Pericles assigns Nico to bribe their leader. But before he can get very far with this dubiously unholy task, Nico ends up with a murder on his hands. It is a crime against the gods to die or be born on the sacred island. Thanks to the violence over the treasury, the first blasphemy has already been committed. Can Nico solve the murder and get Diotima off the island before they accidentally commit the second?

Struggling to support her family in mid-19th-century New York, writer Frances Osgood makes an unexpected connection with literary master Edgar Allan Poe and finds her survival complicated by her intense attraction to the writer and the scheming manipulations of his wife.

The rollicking fourth book in the Nicolaos and Diotima mystery series set in Classical Athens. Nicolaos, Classical Athens’s favorite sleuth, and his partner in investigation, the clever priestess Diotima, have taken time off to come home and get married. But hoping to get hitched without a hitch proves overly optimistic: A skull discovered in a cave near the Sanctuary of Artemis, the ancient world’s most famous school for girls, is revealed to be the remains of the Hippias, the reviled last tyrant to rule Athens. The Athenians fought the Battle of Marathon to keep this man out of power; he was supposed to have died thirty years ago, in faraway Persia. What are his remains doing outside the city walls? Nico’s boss, the great Athenian statesman Pericles, wants answers, and he orders Nico to find them. Worst of all, one of the two Sanctuary students who discovered the skull has been killed, and the other is missing. Can the sleuths solve the interlocked crimes before their wedding?

Jane Austen turns sleuth in this delightful murder mystery set over the twelve days of a Regency-Era Christmas party. Christmas Eve, 1814: Jane Austen has been invited to spend the holiday with family and friends at The Vyne, the gorgeous ancestral home of the wealthy and politically prominent Chute family. As the year fades and friends begin to gather beneath the mistletoe for the twelve days of Christmas festivities, Jane and her circle are in a celebratory mood: Mansfield Park is selling nicely; Napoleon has been banished to Elba; British forces have seized Washington, DC; and on Christmas Eve, John Quincy Adams signs the Treaty of Ghent, which will end a war nobody in England really wanted. Jane, however, discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide revelers dies in a tragic accident, which Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane’s fellow snow-bound guests. With clues scattered amidst cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?

Fresh from her first murder case, Nantucket detective Merry Folger is unwillingly sucked into her second. When Joe Duarte, a fishing boat captain with decades of experience on the wild seas off Nantucket, is swept overboard during a spring storm, his death is pronounced accidental. But his estranged daughter, Del, is convinced it’s murder. She moves back to Nantucket to get closer to the truth, and enlists her old friend, detective Merry Folger, to help. But Del is also hiding secrets of her own, and the police are not inclined to help her with what they see as a wild goose chase. Merry has to defy her boss—her father—in order to investigate.

In this seventh installment of James R. Benn’s hit WWII-era mystery series, Lieutenant Billy Boyle goes undercover in the Vatican. Lieutenant Billy Boyle could have used a rest after his last case, but when his girlfriend, Diana Seaton, a British spy, goes missing in the Vatican, where she was working undercover, he insists on being assigned to a murder investigation there so he can try to help her. An American monsignor is found murdered at the foot of Death's Door, one of the five entrances to Saint Peter's Basilica. Wild Bill Donovan, head of the OSS, wants the killing investigated. The fact that the Vatican is neutral territory in German-occupied Rome is only one of the obstacles Billy must overcome. First is a harrowing journey, smuggled into Rome while avoiding the Gestapo and Allied bombs. Then he must navigate Vatican politics and personalities—some are pro-Allied, others pro-Nazi, and the rest steadfastly neutral—to learn the truth about the murdered monsignor. But that's not his only concern; just a short walk from the Vatican border is the infamous Regina Coeli prison, where Diana is being held. Can he dare a rescue, or will a failed attempt alert the Germans to his mission and risk an open violation of Vatican neutrality?

P.I. Cecil Younger returns for another “thoroughly enjoyable and slightly wacko” mystery as he connects the dots between a modern-day murder and an Armistice Day tragedy (Boston Globe). In the Alaskan town of Sitka, the living is tough and the crimes are aplenty—and plenty personal. When 97-year-old William Flynn is accused of killing his neighbor, Angela Ramirez, he turns to private investigator Cecil Younger with an odd—and, frankly, rather incriminating—request. He wants Cecil to track down a man he believes witnessed Ramirez’s murder: her estranged husband, Simon Delaney. The only problem? Flynn doesn’t just want Cecil to find Delaney. He wants him to kill the man. Cecil knows that kind of thing would be bad for business, but he takes the job, hoping he can both convince Flynn to call off the manhunt and discover what really happened to his neighbor. But the old man isn’t making the job easy. He keeps confusing two different crimes: Angela Ramirez’s recent murder and an 80-year-old tragedy in which four American Legionnaires were killed during an Armistice Day Parade. Cecil struggles to sort through the old man’s befuddled memories and dives into the search for Delaney, which takes him on a journey through Alaska history and all over the Pacific Northwest, from the Aleutian Islands to Centralia, Washington.

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