When wealthy banker Sir Gerald Mariner posts a handsome reward for finding his missing infant, all of London joins in, hoping to win that money for themselves. Usually discouraged by a saturated market, photographer and private detective Sarah Bain is instead curiously allured as she realizes the case hits much closer to home than she first thought. As she dives in, she discovers a photograph of baby Robin Mariner and his mother that eerily resembles the post-mortem photographs Sarah, herself, takes of deceased children posed to look as if they were alive. Now it’s unclear whether the kidnapping is a cover-up to hide the reality of his disappearance or if it’s truly a cry for help. The clock is ticking, and Sarah must uncover the truth before her past catches up to her in this gripping follow-up to The Ripper’s Shadow.

London, November 1890. Crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett faces a perfect storm of events. She and her husband Detective Sergeant Barrett are riding on a train that crashes. While rescuing other passengers, they find a woman who’s been strangled to death. Their search for her identity and her killer lead them to Cremorne Gardens, a seedy riverside pleasure park that’s a combination carnival, theater, freak show, and museum of oddities. It’s among the most challenging cases that Sarah, Barrett, and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O’Reilly have ever undertaken. The suspects include a dwarf, a female acrobat, and a member of the Royal Family. Due to the royal connection, the police commissioner declares the case top-secret. Sarah and company must investigate quietly, keeping the suspects, the press, and the public in the dark. That’s easier said than done. The investigation is complicated by the injury Hugh sustained during their last case, Mick’s romance with a woman who has psychic powers, and Barrett’s old flame. Meanwhile, Sarah’s father goes on trial for a rape and murder that happened more than two decades ago. The victim was a teenage girl named Ellen Casey. Is he as innocent as he claims? The trial is the scandal of the year, a media blitz. The outcome–and the truth about the murder on the train–are beyond Sarah’s wildest imaginings. What dangerous secrets are hidden behind the tawdry glamor of Cremorne Gardens? Is her father wrongly accused or a guilty sinner who deserves to be hanged?

London, October 1890. Crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain is overjoyed to marry her beloved Detective Sergeant Barrett–but the wedding takes a sinister turn when the body of a stabbing victim is discovered in the crypt of the church. Not every newlywed couple begins their marriage with a murder investigation, but Sarah and Barrett, along with their friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O’Reilly, take the case. The dead man is Charles Firth, whose profession is “spirit photography,” photographing the ghosts of the deceased. When Sarah develops the photographs he took in the church, she discovers one with a pale, blurred figure attacking the victim. The city’s spiritualist community believes the church is haunted and the figure is a ghost. But Sarah is a skeptic, and she and her friends soon learn that the victim had plenty of enemies in the human world–including a scientist who studies supernatural phenomena, his psychic daughter, and an heiress on a campaign to debunk spiritualism and expose fraudulent mediums. In the tunnels beneath a demolished jail, a ghost-hunting expedition ends with a new murder and new suspects. While Sarah searches for the truth about both crimes, she travels a dark, twisted path into her own family’s sordid history. Her long lost father is the prime suspect in a cold-case murder, and her reunion with him proves that even the most determined skeptic can be haunted by ghosts from the past.

London, April 1891. When the severed torso of a woman washes up on the bank of the river Thames, London believes a serial killer from the past has struck again. Crime photographer and investigator Sarah Bain Barrett is on the scene with her friends Mick O’Reilly and Lord Hugh Staunton. This is their chance to solve a grisly cold case and deliver a monster to belated justice, with help from Sarah’s husband Detective Sergeant Thomas Barrett; her sister Sally Albert, an intrepid newspaper reporter; and Hugh’s psychologist, Dr. Joshua Lewes, who’s a pioneer in the new science of criminal profiling. But the opportunity brings troubles galore. Sarah and her husband can’t agree on what direction their inquiries should take, and their discord threatens not only the investigation but also their marriage. To complicate matters, Sarah’s bitter enemy, Inspector Reid, is leading the police’s hunt for the killer they’re calling the Torso Murderer. Obsessed with the Ripper case and his own failure to solve it, he thinks the Ripper and the Torso Murderer are one and the same person–a notion that could steer the police investigation disastrously off course. Hot in pursuit of the killer, Reid is also hell-bent on discovering what Sarah and company have been hiding about the Ripper. The Torso Murder case threatens to expose a dangerous truth, tear apart Sarah’s close-knit band of comrades, and send them to the gallows before they can put the killer out of action.

Japan, 1701. A woman is brutally attacked within a bamboo prison as clouds swirl around her head. Meanwhile, at Edo Castle, samurai detective turned chamberlain Sano Ichiro is suspicious of his old rival, Yanagisawa, who has been oddly cooperative since returning from exile. But just as Yanagisawa’s true motives begin to emerge, Sano’s estranged uncle comes to him for help. His daughter has disappeared, and he begs Sano and his wife–who once suffered through the kidnapping of their own son–to find her before it is too late.

Japan, March 1700. The strife between Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to power in the shogun’s court, and his enemies has escalated to the brink of war. Called away from the crisis by the shogun’s orders to investigate a mysterious skeleton, Sano and his wife, Reiko, must confront dangerous, long-buried secrets. What was Sano’s own mother doing on the night when a burning kimono ignited a blaze that nearly destroyed the city? The shogun gives Sano and Reiko just three days to find out–or risk losing not only their position at court but their families’ lives as well.

Crime-scene photographers Sarah, Hugh, and Mick are summoned to the goriest crime scene they’ve ever encountered. A pub owner named Harry Warbrick has been found hanged. His murder becomes a sensation because he was England’s top hangman. Sir Gerald, owner of the Daily World, announces that they–meaning Sarah and her friends–will investigate and solve Warbrick’s murder before the police do. She and her friends discover a connection between Warbrick’s murder and the most notorious criminal he ever executed: Amelia Carlisle. Something happened at Amelia’s execution. The Official Secrets Act forbids the seven witnesses present to divulge any information about it. But Harry had a bad habit of leaking tips to the press. What is the secret, and who hanged the hangman?

In the wake of a terrifying earthquake, Sano Ichiro races to solve a crime that could bring down the shogun’s regime. When a massive earthquake devestates Japan in 1703, even the shogun’s carefully regulated court is left teetering on the brink of chaos. This is no time for a murder investigation – except when a nobleman’s daughters are found dead from incense poisoning and their father threatens to topple the regime unless Sano Ichiro tracks down the killer. As Sano and his wife strive to solve the case in a world that is crumbling around them, Laura Joh Rowland – author of one of the ‘five best historical mystery novels’ (The Wall Street Journal) – brings us her most powerful and evocative thriller yet.

Japan, 1709. Amid the ever-treacherous intrigue in the court, Sano Ichiro has been demoted from chamberlain to a lowly patrol guard. His relationship with his wife Reiko is in tatters, and a bizarre new alliance between his two enemies Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu has left him puzzled and wary. Then a harrowing, almost inconceivable crime takes place. In his own palace, the shogun is stabbed with a fan made of painted silk with sharp-pointed iron ribs. Sano is restored to the rank of chief investigator to find the culprit. This is the most significant, and most dangerous, investigation of his career. If the shogun’s heir is displeased, he will have Sano and his family put to death without waiting for the shogun’s permission.

London, 1888: Jack the Ripper begins his reign of terror. Miss Sarah Bain, a photographer, supplements her meager income by taking illicit boudoir photographs of the town’s local ladies of the night. But when two of her models are found gruesomely murdered within weeks of one another, Sarah begins to suspect it’s more than mere coincidence. Teamed with a motley crew of friends–including a street urchin, a gay aristocrat, a Jewish butcher and his wife, and a beautiful young actress–Sarah delves into the crime of the century. But just as she starts unlocking the Ripper’s secrets, she catches the attention of the local police, who believe she knows more than she’s revealing, and the Ripper himself, who’s bent on silencing her for good.

Japan, 1703. On a snowy night, forty-seven warriors murder a man who stood at the center of the scandal that turned them from samurai into masterless ronin two years before. Clearly this was an act of revenge–but why did they wait so long? And is there any reason they should not immediately be ordered to commit ritual suicide? Sano Ichiro, demoted from Chamberlain to his old post as Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People, has mere days to solve the greatest mystery of samurai legend–while his own fortunes hang in the balance.

Charlotte Brontë, the beloved author of Jane Eyre, lived a quiet and private life in her father’s Yorkshire parish. Or did she? What if a diary was uncovered that revealed her secret involvement in one of the most thrilling adventures of the 19th century?

Upon learning that she has been falsely accused of breaching her publishing contract, the normally mild-mannered Charlotte sets off for London to clear her name. But when she unintentionally witnesses a murder, Charlotte finds herself embroiled in a dangerous chain of events. With the aid of her sisters, Emily and Anne, and of the suspiciously well-informed but irresistibly attractive brother of the victim, Charlotte works to unravel a deadly web of intrigue that threatens not only her own safety but the very fabric of the British Empire. Charlotte is plunged into a perilous adventure and a passionate romance that leads her from the peaceful Yorkshire moors to the crime-infested streets of London, across the sea to the Continent, to the ports of Cornwall, the wilds of Scotland, and the palaces of Queen Victoria herself. Will Charlotte be able to stop a devious invisible villain whose schemes threaten her life, her family, and her country?

Japan, 1704. In an elegant mansion a young woman named Tsuruhime lies on her deathbed. The death of the Shogun’s daughter has immediate consequences on his regime. Faced with his own mortality and beset by troubles, he names as his heir Yoshisato, the seventeen-year-old son he only recently discovered was his. Until five months ago, Yoshisato was raised as the illegitimate son of Yanagisawa, the shogun’s favorite advisor. Yanagisawa is also the longtime enemy of Sano Ichiro. When Sano learns that Tsuruhime’s death may have been a murder, he sets off on a dangerous investigation as he struggles to keep his pregnant wife and his son safe. Instead, he and his family become the accused. And this time, they may not survive the day.

Chosen by Publishers Weekly as a Best Book of 2007, The Snow Empress showcases author Laura Joh Rowland’s deep understanding of 17th-century Japan and her impeccable gift of storytelling. This thrilling novel finds samurai detective Sano IchirO working to gain freedom for his son by investigating the murder of a lord’s beloved mistress.