Helen Plum Library

As Elizabeth II's coronation looms, DI Edgar Stephens is busy investigating the death of a local fortuneteller and his old pal, the magician Max Mephisto, is rehearsing for his television debut, a Coronation Day variety show. Upon hearing that their wartime commander, Colonel Cartwright, has been found dead in his flat, the two men join forces to find out what happened. Edgar finds himself heading to New York, hot on the trail of a mesmerist he's...

"During the mass evacuation from London in September 1939, a little girl vanishes without a trace and Josephine struggles with the chaos and uncertainty of war"--

"Business becomes personal for the Right Sort Marriage Bureau when a new client, a brutal murder, two kidnappings, and the recently returned from Africa Lord Bainbridge threatens everything that one of the principals holds dear ..."--

American heiress Stella Kendrick and her husband, British aristocrat Viscount "Lyndy" Lyndhurst, prepare to celebrate their first Christmas together as newlyweds in Clara McKenna's latest historical mystery set in England's New Forest region at the turn of the 20th century.. Taking on the responsibilities that come with being Lady Lyndhurst, Stella is eager to embrace yuletide traditions in the Edwardian English countryside and use her strong social...

"The fifth book in the Magic Men series, Now You See Them is a wild mystery with detective Edgar Stephens and the magician Max Mephisto, as they investigate a string of presumed kidnappings in the swinging 1960s"-- Edgar Stephens is now a Superintendent and married to former DS Emma Holmes. Magician Max Mephisto is a movie star in Hollywood, while his daughter Ruby has her own TV show. When an investigation into a string of disappearing girls starts,...

"Born into a posh family, ten-year old Lizzie Vogel has lived a charmed life thus far, with a big sister who knows everything, a cute baby brother, and a full-time housekeeper who bakes jam tarts. But when, in 1970, Lizzie's father abandons her mother and packs his ex-family off to the tiny village of Flatstone, life for the Vogels veers catastrophically off-course. The new neighbors disapprove of divorcees and fatherless children, and Lizzie's theatrical...

Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel takes a job as an "auxiliary nurse" at Paradise Lodge, a home for the elderly, and learns that her job entails helping the patients (frequently) to the bathroom. What begins as a way to avoid school and earn some spending money (for the finer things in life, like real coffee and beer shampoo) quickly becomes the education of a lifetime as Lizzy wades through the day-to-day humdrum and drama of this ramshackle refuge for...

V is for Voltaire. Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behaviour and our place in the world. Voltaire tells of the ludicrous adventures and reversals of fortune of the naive Candide, who doggedly believes that "all is for the best" even when faced with injustice, suffering, and despair. A satirical challenge to the empty optimism prevalent in Voltaire's eighteenth-century society is both...

Eva is excited for a visit from her sister Alice, who lives in Suffolk with her husband and three children. But when Alice arrives alone, desiring a break from her family, Eva becomes concerned. Her dismay deepens as Alice starts spending time with a former beau, Keenan Ripley, who owns the nearby pear orchard. At the same time, Phoebe's sister Julia, now a widow and pregnant, is in a fretful state, and Phoebe struggles to be helpful to her. When...

"A young British woman working in a book bindery gets a chance to pursue knowledge and love when World War I upends her life in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese's Book Club pick The Dictionary of Lost Words. "Williams spins an immersive and compelling tale, sweeping us back to the Oxford she painted so expertly in The Dictionary of Lost Words."--Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife It is 1914, and as the war...