James Langton

In the first installment of a new series, a band of magicians who served together in World War II track a killer who's performing their deadly tricks. Brighton 1950. The body of a girl is found cut into three pieces. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick - the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old war friend of Edgar's. They served together in a shadowy unit called the...

If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son. Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes. Your mother... she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital. Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother...

"From bestselling author Charles Finch comes the third and final in a prequel trilogy to his lauded Charles Lenox series. London, 1855: A young and eager Charles Lenox faces his toughest case yet: a murder without a single clue. Slumped in a first-class car at Paddington Station is the body of a young, handsome gentleman. He has no luggage, empty pockets, and no sign of violence upon his person - yet Lenox knows instantly that it's not a natural death....

Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater-vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden. But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam's death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam's possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he's never seen before. What follows...

Charles Lenox, a Victorian gentleman, helps his lifelong friend Lady Jane determine who murdered one of her servants.

Detective Charles Lenox is called to Oxford. A young student is missing and his mother, Lady Annabelle, is frantic with worry. Charles visits Oxford and the boy's room searching for clues. Remnants left behind are very odd, including a dead cat. And what about the card with a notation of "September Society" with a strange pink and black marking on the back?

"In what promises to be a breakout in Charles Finch's bestselling series, Charles Lenox travels to the New York and Newport of the dawning Gilded Age to investigate the death of a beautiful socialite. London, 1878. With faith in Scotland Yard shattered after a damning corruption investigation, Charles Lenox's detective agency is rapidly expanding. The gentleman sleuth has all the work he can handle, two children, and an intriguing new murder case....

Celebrating the 1866 holiday season at the side of his fiancâee, amateur sleuth Charles Lenox is drawn into the double-homicide case of two reporters, an investigation that is complicated by a police ruling that the killings are unrelated.

A grouping of short stories about a trainer who coaxes his beloved elephant onto a steamer carrying him to a life of fame, A mother searching for her baby girl sent away on a train headed west, and a teenage soldier far away from home.

A leading authority on British portraiture and expert for the BBC's Antiques Roadshow shares favorite stories from his career while imparting professional insights into detecting and restoring valuable art