Helen Plum Library

"London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion - the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Soon after a demobilized British soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, takes shelter with the group, Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners. Maisie is deeply puzzled by the children's reticence. Their stories are evasive and, more mysteriously,...

"Five kids across centuries recount the history of Cleopatra's Needle, from its construction in ancient Egypt to moving it across the ocean to New York city in the 19th century"--

“Wingate’s stellar latest explores a centuries-long legacy of missing child cases. . . . Her portrayal of the region’s history, culture, and landscape enthralls. Wingate is at the top of her game.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a sweeping novel inspired by the untold history of women pioneers who fought...

"1946: A group of criminals pulls off the heist of the century, stealing a dozen priceless works of art from a Boston museum. Some of the thieves are captured, some are killed -- but the loot is never found. Forty years later, a college student finds himself on the trail of the missing art -- and the multi-million-dollar reward. But three decades after that, the art is still missing, and as his classmates return to Boston's notorious Charlesgate Hotel...

"Los Angeles, 1953. It has been five years since British journalist John Russell struck a deal with a high-ranking Soviet official, relieving Russell of his duty as double-agent for Soviet and American intelligence. Now Russell lives a life of relative comfort in Los Angeles alongside his wife, Effi, a star on an American sitcom, and their adopted daughter, Rosa, a young artist on the cusp of adulthood. He has just begun work on a book investigating...

"In 1486, Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers in Murano, Italy. As a woman, she is not meant to blow glass--but when her father dies, she teaches herself to make beads in secret, and her work becomes the cornerstone of the Rosso family fortunes. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague rearing its head over Venice...

"All will be revealed in the no-holds-barred finale of the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated Maggie Hope series as the intrepid spy teams up with fashion designer - and possible double agent - Coco Chanel to bring down the physicist behind Nazi Germany's nuclear program. Maggie Hope has come a long way since she was Mr. Churchill's secretary. In the face of tremendous danger, she's learned espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance....

John, a former POW in WWII, thinks women are smarter than men. The three women in his life agree, especially when he brags about knowing more Shakespeare than anyone else in Hope Springs, Mississippi. Big John is overly proud of the only seven words of Shakespeare that he knows: "The prince of darkness is a gentleman." When Big John and his wife learn their beloved daughter has been beaten to the point of death by the man Big John pressured her to...

"When a daring Mexican heiress defies Victorian society to protect her country, a British war hero makes it his new mission to protect her... Isabel Luna Valdés has long since resigned herself to being the "forgotten" Luna sister. But thanks to familial connections to the Mexican ambassador in London, wallflower Isabel is poised to unearth any British intelligence hidden by the ton that might aid Mexico during the French Occupation. Though she slips...

"The third book in the Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney Mystery series, which finds the amateur sleuths facing their most daunting challenge yet: preventing the murder of the imperious Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Someone is trying to kill Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Esteemed aunt of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, generous patroness of Mr. William Collins, a woman of rank who rules over the estate of Rosings Park with an unimpeachable sense of propriety-who would dare?...