Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman, by Tessa Arlen

Lady Monfort's summer ball is even more memorable than usual when her unpleasant (and Dishonorable) nephew is murdered. When her son comes under suspicion, she enlists the help of her housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, to conduct an upstairs/downstairs investigation and clear him.  The two woman are so uncomfortable in this nontraditional relationship, it feels quite possible. Very enjoyable.

Gilded Hour, by Sara Donati

The year is 1883, the place New York City, and Dr. Anna Savard and her cousin Dr. Sophie Savard probably don't belong in either.  To a certain extent, this book sets the stage for the next two books in the trilogy and ends with a bushel of lose ends.  Even the mystery of who is killing the well-to-do women who show up in Anna's emergency room isn't 100% resolved, and the real villain, real life Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock doesn't get his just desserts.  But the romances are nailed down, Anna with police detective Jack Mezzanote and Sophie with childhood friend and terminally ill Cap Verhoeven.

The Devil's Workshop, by Alex Grecian

Grecian can be kind of tough going, but here he goes completely over the top.  Five horrific killers are set lose on Victorian London, each introducing his own form of bloody and sadistic mayhem.  Walter Day and Neville Hammersmith are off trying to catch them, and blunder about rather badly.  The police procedural gets second billing to romping around in the minds of pyschopaths.  Claire's pregnancy is another fairly frustrating thread that ultimately makes you wonder how mothers and babies survived in the new modern era.  Walter and Neville are going to have to finish the story in the next book, but I'm not sure I'll go there with them.

China Dolls, by Lisa See

I found this book fascinating; a history of West Coast Chinese American performers, before and after the second World War, as they seek fame and fortune in night clubs, carnival side shows, movies, television, and the Chop Suey circuit. Three young women are central to the story:  Grace Lee, from Plainstown, Ohio; Helen Fong, from San Francisco; and Ruby Tom, from Hawaii.  Applying for jobs as dancers at San Francisco's Forbidden City nightclub, they become friends. Ambition, love, secrets, and betrayals keep their friendships rocky.

The Phryne Fisher Series, by Kerry Greenwood

Greenwood seems to have a very good time with the adventures of the Honorable Phryne (pronounced Fry-Knee) Fisher and Australia of the late 1920s.  She sets up most of the mysteries in the series within a particular historical context that she researches quite extensively.  The settings include a goldfield, luxury liner, theater, publishing house, bar, university and circus, and the social issues include the aftermath of WWI, child labor, racism, sexual differences, communism, and drug use and abuse.  The books in order are:

Cocaine Blues (1989)
Flying to High (1990)
Murder on the Ballarat Train (1991)
Death at Victoria Dock (1992)
The Green Mill Murder (1993)
Blood and Circuses (1994)
Ruddy Gore (1995)
Urn Burial (1996)
Raisins and Almonds (1997)
Death before Wicket (1999)
Away with the Fairies (2001)
Murder in Monparnasse (2002)
The Castlemaine Murders (2003)
Queen of the Flowers (2004)
Death by Water (2005)
Murder in the Dark (2006)
Murder on a Midsummer Night (2008)
Dead Man's Chest (2010)
Unnatural Habits (2012)
Murder in Mendelssohn (2013)

A Question of Death (2012) is a compilation of short stories, some tasty-sounding recipes for cocktails and food, and a description of Kerry Greenwood's research and writing methods.

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Dying in the Wool, by Frances Brody

This book has a lot of words and quite a bit of repetition.  So much so that at times, Brody seems to be belaboring her points.  I think she's careful with her language, mixing modern (for the time) turns of phrase (e.g., "What's eating you?") with old fashioned (for our time) language (e.g., "earwigged" and "derring-do"). I liked her characters, Kate Shackleton and Jim Sykes, and their sibling-like relationship, and the period after the first World War is always interesting.  Kate is asked by a fellow VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) member to help locate her missing father before her wedding day.  She follows the clues doggedly, but not without some nasty consequences.

Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

I liked this book even more than Wolf Hall, though both have equal measures of fine writing and limitless imagination.  Cromwell is becoming a much more interesting and scary character, unwilling to forgive or forget, while maneuvering to keep his own head on his neck.  Henry seems more petulant and childish than regal.  The court of Henry VIII seems to be a very dangerous place to be.

The Book of Madness and Cures, by Regina O'Melveny

The story involves Gabriella Mondini, a 16th century Venetian doctor, who travels throughout Europe looking for her father, who left Venice almost ten years prior and hasn't been heard from at all in the last two years.  His letters give her clues to his route, and  the doctors and apothecaries in the towns who had dealings with her father make Gabriella anxious about her father's state of mind.  On her journey she compiles her own book of diseases and cures.  The diseases are bizarre, and the cures even more so.  If I knew whether this book was entirely an invention or a product of considerable historical research, I'd know better whether I liked the book or not.  Questioning whether people really believed the things O'Melveny writes about and whether the events took place was distracting.  Turns out there were towns in Germany where all but one of the towns' women were burned as witches.*
*O'Melveny stipulates at the end of the book that it is entirely a work of fiction and no persons or events were real.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

This is the story of Thomas Cromwell as he ascends through the civil power hierarchy during the reign of Henry VIII (1500-1535).  To a certain extent the focus is on his battle with Sir Thomas More, though Henry, Anne Boleyn, her father and her sister Mary, Cardinal Wolsey, Norfolk and Suffolk, Jane Seymour, and many other historical figures are depicted in very human detail.  Cromwell's political dealings show him to be eternally pragmatic, but his family life shows a gentle and loving side.  The reading by Simon Slater was masterly, turning Mantel's prose into poetry.   Two sequels are planned, Bring Up the Bodies, which tracks the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and The Mirror And The Light, which traces Cromwell's own downfall.  Wolf Hall makes it clear that downfalls are inevitable in Henry's court, though it wasn't clear to me why the book was called Wolf Hall, residence of the Seymours.

The Blood Royal, by Barbara Cleverly

I thought I would never like any of the Joe Sandilands books as well as I liked the ones set in India and Afghanistan, but Cleverly is pretty skilled at creating exotic worlds within post-World War I English society too.  The addition of the new character, Constable Lily Wentworth, makes the series all that much richer and entertaining.  In this story, a string of assassination of military officers is thought to be the work of Finian terrorists, but not for long.  Far more personal motives are at work, and discerning them requires both Sandilands and Wentworth to hobnob with British and Russian nobility and with the families of the dead.

A Bitter Truth, by Charles Todd

The Bess Crawford series is pretty remarkable.  Todd paints the periods before and during the first World War, with a compelling respect and appreciation for the suffering and sacrifice that was so widespread.  Bess is a nursing sister from a military family serving in France. In this book, almost against her will, she becomes embroiled in a family drama that seems to be central to a series of murders.  The family with all the drama is full of selfish and self-interested characters. Per usual, her friend Simon Brandon is key to uncovering the killer, though the new appealing character, Australian Sargeant Lattimore plays an important role too.

An Evil Eye, by Jason Goodwin

An Evil Eye is wonderful addition to the series, which is set in Turkey during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.  The main character is Yashim, an investigator and fixer, who serves the power elite.  The fact that he is also a eunuch gives him access to both the men's and women's worlds.  In An Evil Eye, Sultan Mahmut II has just died and the political realm is kind of dicey.  Yashim needs to solve the murder of a Russian quickly before an international incident begins, while ensuring that he can keep his freedom outside of the palace.  The Bellini Card was a little dull, but in An Evil Eye, Goodwin is back in form.

Devil-Devil, by Graeme Kent

Set in the 1960's in the Solomon Islands, this book sets Ben Kella, a native of Malaita, and American-born Sister Conchita to solving quite a number of mysteries -- the death more than a decade ago of an Australian beach comber, the deaths of a grand-father and grandson, and the disappearance of an Amercian anthropologist.  The book is populated with bushmen, saltwater men, a headman, and a few more westerners.  Kella was born to be an aofia but raised in Western ways; Sister Conchita has a bit of Sound of Music in her.  Kent spent years working in the Soloman Islands, and I have no reason to mistrust him, but it's not a book that made me feel that I'd learned some true things about the Solomon Islands pre-independence.

India Black, by Carol K. Carr

A guilty pleasure.  Set in Victorian Enland, India Black, Abbess of Lotus House (a brothel); French, an English spy; and Vincent, a street urchin, dash around trying to recover some secret government documents that were stolen when a bureaucrat dies in the arms of a Lotus House working girl.  It's funny and swift moving.

The Anatomy of Ghosts, by Andrew Taylor

An enjoyable book set in a fictitious college in Cambridge during the 18th century.  Academics were pretty much pigs, if they are portrayed in any way correctly by Taylor.  Life is precarious for just about everyone, whether low or high born.  John Holdsworth, who wrote a book condemning mediums after the deaths of his wife and son, is hired to unearth the truth behind the haunting of Frank Oldershaw by the dead wife of a fellow student.  Everyone has secrets and no one is entirely innocent.  The American edition has the nicer cover!  That never happens.

A Small Death in the Great Glen, by A. D. Scott

This book, set in the Highlands of Scotland in the 1950s, has a lot going for it: endearing characters, lovely relationships, interesting social commentary.  But the omipresent sense of pending violence makes it a difficult read.  The main characters are Joanne Ross, an abused wife who works for the local newspaper, and her co-workers on the paper, John McAllister, Rob McLean, and Don McLeod.  The main plotline follows the investigation into the death of a small boy.  But there are lots of secondary characters and twisty subplots.

Devoured, by D. E. Meredith

Set in Victorian London, the book focuses on the beginnings of forensic medicine and its use in police work.  Adolphus Hatton and the French morgue assistant Albert Roumande are called in by Inspector Adams when Lady Bessingham, an amateur collector of fossils and specimens from around the globe, is found murdered.  Ultimately, quite a few people are murdered and many autopsies done.  The reviewers all warned that it was slow moving, but in such kind words that I failed to notice.

Kingdom of Lies, by N. Lee Wood

This is an interesting book with a whole lot going on.  Everybody has their secrets and their sorrows.  And there are a great many characters, both modern and historic.  I kind of liked the fact that there were two detectives trying to solve the mysteries on their own, neither trusting the other completely.  They interview the same set of characters, but are told different things, so their paths continue to diverge.  The crux of the Di Vinci Code-esque historic mystery is whether George III actually married Hannah Lightfoot, and whether they had legitimate children would might have been robbed of the English throne.  Solving the mystery (or seeking to prevent it from being solved), we have historians, a librarian, a drug company exec, a psychic, lots of coppers who aren't necessarily the good guys, and several mothers and their children.

The Crimson Rooms, by Katharine McMahon

An interesting book, set in England shortly after the first world war,  full of fascinating characters.  Evelyn Gifford, a woman lawyer when such a thing was unheard of, deals with two cases:  a mother who has lost her children and is fighting to get them back before they are sent to Canada by the foundling home where she left them, and a former soldier who is accused of having killed his young bride.  Meredith, mother of Edmund, son of Evelyn's brother, is a complicated gal.  Evelyn's mother and aunt are part of a generation hoping the freeze the world pre-war.  The other players in the legal setting are interesting, too:  Breen, who makes me hope for a series, Nicholas Thorne, the love interest, Wolf the lazy bum, and the judges who hate women lawyers.  Sadly, the book was slow moving to a painful extent.

The Holy Thief, by William Ryan

This is a fascinating book, set in Stalinist Russia, in the 1930's.  Moscow is grim; paranoia, suspicion, and betrayal are pervasive.  Who knows if it's historically accurate, but pretty intriguing.  The main character is Alexei Korolev with the CID of the Moscow Militia.  He's an honorable, sweet guy, and a loyal Communist.  Not knowing what Cheka or NKVD or Komsomol means was a hindrance.  Still don't know what "the Holy Thief" refers to.