James Langton

Moonstone for empathy. Azurite for memories. Lapis lazuli for truth… In the quiet village of Noon Sun, Benedict Stone has settled into a complacent and predictable routine. Business at his jewelry shop has dried up; his marriage is on the rocks. His life is in desperate need of a jump start… And then a surprise arrives at his door. Gemma is Benedict’s audacious teenage niece—the daughter of his estranged brother, Charlie. The two Stone brothers...

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...

"In the seventh book of Finch's bestselling series of Victorian mysteries, a case of mistaken identity has Charles Lenox playing for his highest stakes yet: the safety of Queen Victoria herself. On a spring morning in London, 1875, Charles Lenox agrees to take time away from his busy schedule as a Member of Parliament to meet an old protǧe;'s client at Charing Cross. But when their cryptic encounter seems to lead, days later, to the murder of an...

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

"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....

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...

"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....

The year is 1517. The place is the Holy Roman Empire. Meet Dismas, former Swiss mercenary and monk, now a prosperous dealer in holy relics. His clients use the relics to help them sell indulgences, the notorious get-out-of Purgatory passes. But now indulgence sales have become so controversial that Martin Luther is about to nail his famous Ninety-Five Theses to the cathedral door, triggering the protestant Reformation.

Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos, is a luminous work of fiction inspired by the real-life, 37-year friendship between two towering figures of the late 19th century, famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley.Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their...

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.