On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabitated by several of Huxley's most outlandish characters--from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by "getting in touch" with his "subconscious," to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive history of chrome. Denis's stay proves to be a disaster amid his weak attempts to attract the girl of his dreams and the ridicule he...

Regency sleuths Lavinia Lake and Tobias March stumble into the middle of a deadly mystery as they become caught up in the search for a killer who targets wealthy older men on the brink of marrying beautiful, much younger women.

The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking,...

The tale of five women in three eras, whose lives are tied together by one very special garden.

When Lori Shepherd's husband, Bill, is summoned to the reading of a will at the resplendent country estate of Earl Elstyn, Lori jumps at the chance to come along. She didn't expect, however, to find herself entangled in a messy - and dangerous - family dispute. The aristocratic earl has called together the entire Elstyn family to disclose the beneficiaries of his fortune, and all present will be affected. When Bill and Lori arrive at Hailesham, the...

Five years after working with Ali and Mahmoud Hazr in Palestine, Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell are shocked when they meet the brothers again in England. Instead of Arabs, their friends are really British aristocrats, Alistair and Marsh Hughenfort. The brothers need help finding the heir to their family estate, the stunningly beautiful Justice Hall. This is a search that will eventually take Holmes and Russell thousands of miles from home.

"In early 1923, the young Honourable Daisy Dalrymple has made a decision that shocks her social class-instead of living in the Dower House with her mother and being supported by her relatives, she's decided to make her own living as a writer. Landing an assignment for Town & Country to write a series of articles on country manor houses, Daisy travels to Wentwater Court to research her first piece. There she finds a household in turmoil, filled with...

The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home-Howards End-to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two families is precipitated that takes years to resolve. Written in 1910, Howards End is a symbolic exploration of the social, economic, and intellectual...

It's London in 1876, and the whole city is abuzz with the enigmatic disappearance of a famous foreign pianist. Lenox has an eye on the matter, but then his grieving brother asks him to come down to Sussex, and Lenox leaves the metropolis behind for the quieter country life of his boyhood. Or so he thinks. In fact, something strange is afoot in Markethouse: small thefts, books, blankets, animals, and more alarmingly a break-in at the house of a local...

A student of Isaac Newton, John Selden believes he can turn his daughter into a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist. Secluded in their ancient house, with only two servants for company, he fills Emilie with knowledge and records her progress obsessively. In the spring of 1725, their work is interrupted by the arrival of two strangers: one a researcher, the other a dazzling young merchant. During the course of a sultry August, while her father...