Charles Todd

England, 1916. Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbringing is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. Growing up in India, she learned the importance of responsibility, honor, and duty from her offi�cer father. At the outbreak of World War I, she followed in his footsteps and volunteered for the nursing corps, serving from the battlefields of France to the doomed hospital ship Britannic. On one voyage, Bess...

"It's 1919, and the 'War to End All Wars' has been won. But there is no peace for Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge, recently returned from the battlefields of France shell-shocked and tormented by the ever-present voice of the young Scot he had executed for refusing an order. Escaping into his work to save his sanity, Rutledge investigates the murder of a popular colonel in Warwickshire and his alleged killer, a decorated war hero and close friend...

Tending to the soldiers in the trenches of France during the First World War, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford is sent back to England in the early summer of 1917 with a convoy of severely burned men. One of her patients, a young pilot, has clung to a photograph of his wife since his plane went down, and Bess can't help but notice the photo every time she tends to him. After the patients are transferred to a clinic in Hampshire, Bess is ready for her...

"Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is faced with his most perplexing case yet: a murder with no body, and a killer who can only be a ghost"-- Spring, 1921. Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to the sea-battered village of Walmer on the coast of Essex. At Benton Abbey, a grand manor with a storied past, the lady of the house claims she saw a violent murder-- but there is no body, no blood. She also insists she recognized the killer: Captain Nelson....

A peaceful Welsh village is thrown into turmoil when a terrified boy stumbles on a body in a nearby river. The man appears to have fallen from the canal aqueduct spanning the valley. But there is no identification on the body, he isn’t a local, and no one will admit to having seen him before. With little to go on, the village police turn to Scotland Yard for help. When Inspector Ian Rutledge is sent from London to find answers, he is given few clues—a...

"Highly recommended—well-rounded, believable characters, a multi-layered plot solidly based on human nature, all authentically set in the England of 1917...an outstanding and riveting read."
—New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens

"Bess Crawford is a strong and likable character."
—Washington Times

Already deservedly lauded for the superb historical crime novels featuring shell-shocked Scotland

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An astonishing tip from a grateful ex-convict seems implausible--but Inspector Ian Rutledge is intrigued and brings it to his superior at Scotland Yard. Alan Barrington, who has evaded capture for ten years, is the suspect in an appalling murder during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horserace honoring the late King Edward VII. His disappearance began a manhunt that consumed Britain for a decade. Now it appears that Barrington has returned to England,...

At an aid station in France in October 1918, Bess Crawford, a nurse, encounters an injured, unidentified French lieutenant, who yells in fluent German after being attacked by a fellow patient. Though Bess's matron suggests that the Frenchman is from German-speaking Alsace-Lorraine, Bess isn't so sure. Two weeks later, Bess is shot while in the trenches and is sent to Paris to recuperate, and finds the perfect opportunity to pursue the matter, with...

On a fine summer's day in June, 1914, Ian Rutledge pays little notice to the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo. An Inspector at Scotland Yard, he is planning to propose to the woman whom he deeply loves, despite intimations from friends and family that she may not be the wisest choice. To the north on this warm and gentle day, another man in love - a Scottish Highlander - shows his own dear girl the house he will build for her in September....

"World War I Battlefield nurse Bess Crawford's career is in jeopardy when a murder is committed on her watch, in this absorbing and atmospheric historical mystery from New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd. Home on leave, Bess Crawford is asked to accompany a wounded soldier confined to a wheelchair to Buckingham Palace, where he's to be decorated by the King. The next morning when Bess goes to collect Wilkins, he has vanished. Both the Army...