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Here are two holiday mysteries set in remote, snow-covered regions of Victorian Britain–where the nights are indeed silent but all is not calm, and where some will sleep in eternal peace. A CHRISTMAS BEGINNING While spending Christmas on the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales, Superintendent Runcorn of Scotland Yard, a lonely bachelor, stumbles upon the lifeless body of the vicar’s younger sister in the village churchyard. Everyone insists that only a stranger to the island could have committed the heinous crime, but the evidence proves otherwise. Intending to uncover the identity of the ruthless killer, Runcorn never dreams that the case may also, miraculously, open the door to a new future for himself. A CHRISTMAS GRACE With Christmas just around the corner, Thomas Pitt’s sister-in-law, Emily Radley, is suddenly called from London to be with her dying aunt on the western coast of Ireland. Emily soon discovers that painful memories of an unsolved murder haunt the lonely Irish town and sets out to unmask the culprit. When a lone shipwreck survivor washes up onshore, he brings with him not only the key to solving the terrible crime but the opportunity for the townspeople to make peace with the past–and with one another.

Through Anne Perry’s magnificent Victorian novels, millions of readers have enjoyed the pleasures and intrigue of a bygone age. Now, with the debut of an extraordinary new series, this New York Times bestselling author sweeps us into the golden summer of 1914, a time of brief enchantment when English men and women basked in the security of wealth and power, even as the last weeks of their privileged world were swiftly passing. Theirs was a peace that led to war. On a sunny afternoon in late June, Cambridge professor Joseph Reavley is summoned from a student cricket match to learn that his parents have died in an automobile crash. Joseph’s brother, Matthew, as officer in the Intelligence Service, reveals that their father had been en route to London to turn over to him a mysterious secret document—allegedly with the power to disgrace England forever and destroy the civilized world. A paper so damning that Joseph and Matthew dared mention it only to their restless younger sister. Now it has vanished. What has happened to this explosive document, if indeed it ever existed? How had it fallen into the hands of their father, a quiet countryman? Not even Matthew, with his Intelligence connections, can answer these questions. And Joseph is soon burdened with a second tragedy: the shocking murder of his most gifted student, beautiful Sebastian Allard, loved and admired by everyone. Or so it appeared. Meanwhile, England’s seamless peace is cracking—as the distance between the murder of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian anarchist and the death of a brilliant university student by a bullet to the head of grows shorter by the day. Anne Perry is a sublime master of suspense. In No Graves As Yet, her latest haunting masterpiece, she reminds us that love and hate, cowardice and courage, good and evil are always a part of life, in our own time as well as on the eve of the greatest war the world has ever known.

IN THESE TWO HOLIDAY MYSTERIES SET IN VICTORIAN LONDON, CHRISTMAS COMES WITH A HELPING OF MAGIC AND MURDER. A CHRISTMAS PROMISE Three days before Christmas, in London’s East End, thirteen-year-old Gracie Phipps encounters eight-year-old Minnie Maude Mudway, freezing and alone. Only the day before, someone murdered Minnie Maude’s Uncle Alf and made off with his rag-and-bones cart—as well as with Charlie, the beloved donkey who pulled it. Now, Grace and Minnie Maude set off to rescue Charlie. But the path that Uncle Alf had taken to his death was not his regular route, and in his cart, the children are told, was a dazzling golden casket that could very well be a Pandora’s box of evil or a shining prize of hope. A CHRISTMAS ODYSSEY Ten days before Christmas, James Wentworth feels not joy but grief. His reckless son, Lucien, has been lured into a world of drugs and wild passion. Wentworth’s only hope, he believes, is his old friend Henry Rathbone, who volunteers to search for the wayward young man with the help of two new companions—Squeaky Robinson, a reformed brothel-keeper, and Crow, a mysterious slum doctor. As this odd trio gathers clues about Lucien’s disappearance on London’s dark streets, they find themselves on a mission whose outcome they cannot begin to guess.

Manuscripts: Bethlehem Road (1990), Bluegate Fields (1984), Cardington Crescent (1987), A Dangerous Mourning (1991), Death in the Devil's Acre (1985), Defend and Betray (1993), Highgate Rise (1991), Paragon Walk (1981), Resurrection Row (1981), and Scandal in Belgravia.

Not since the bloody deeds of Jack the Ripper have Londoners felt such terror as that aroused by the gruesome beheadings in Hyde Park. And if newly promoted Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt does not quickly apprehend the perpetrator, he is likely to lose his own head, professionally speaking. Yet even with the help of Charlotte Pitt’s subtle investigation, the sinister violence continues unchecked. And in a shocking turn of events that nearly convinces the pair of sleuths that they have met their match, the case proves to be Pitt’s toughest ever.