For February we chose three books featuring woman

The Pickwick Murders (A Dickens of a Crime #4)
by Heather Redmond
Published October 26th 2021 by Kensington Publishing Corporation
In a reimagining of Charles Dickens' classic The Pickwick Papers, Heather Redmond's fourth Victorian-era mystery in the Dickens of a Crime series finds a young Charles tossed into Newgate Prison for a murder he didn't commit, and his fiance Kate Hogarth striving to clear his name...


London, January 1836: Just weeks before the release of his first book, Charles is intrigued by an invitation to join the exclusive Lightning Club. But his initiation in a basement maze takes a wicked turn when he stumbles upon the corpse of Samuel Pickwick, the club's president. With the victim's blood literally on his hands, Charles is locked away in notorious Newgate Prison.

Now it's up to Kate to keep her framed fianc� from the hangman's noose. To solve this labyrinthine mystery, she is forced to puzzle her way through a fiendish series of baffling riddles sent to her in anonymous poison pen letters. With the help of family and friends, she must keep her wits about her to corner the real killer--before time runs out and Charles Dickens meets a dead end...

The Wife Upstairs
by Freida McFadden
Published March 23rd 2020 by Hollywood Upstairs Press
Victoria Barnett has it all.

A great career. A handsome and loving husband. A beautiful home in the suburbs and a plan to fill it with children. Life is perfect—or so it seems.

Then she’s in a terrible accident… and everything falls apart.

Now Victoria is unable to walk. She can’t feed or dress herself. She can’t even speak. She is confined to the top floor of her house with twenty-four-hour care.

Sylvia Robinson is hired by Victoria’s husband to help care for her. But it turns out Victoria isn’t as impaired as Sylvia was led to believe. There’s a story Victoria desperately wants to tell... if only she could get out the words.

Then Sylvia discovers Victoria’s diary hidden away in a drawer.

And what’s inside is shocking.


The Mystery of the Sorrowful Maiden (A Laetitia Rodd Mystery #3)
by Kate Saunders
Published December 7th 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing
From internationally bestselling author Kate Saunders, a delightful new cozy mystery that finds detective Laetitia Rodd entangled in the shocking world of the Victorian theater.



In the spring of 1853, private detective Laetitia Rodd receives a delicate request from a retired actor, whose days on the stage were ended by a theater fire ten years before. His great friend, and the man he rescued from the fire, Thomas Transome, has decided to leave his wife, who now needs assistance in securing a worthy settlement. Though Mrs. Rodd is reluctant to get involved with the scandalous world of the theater, she cannot turn away the woman in need. She agrees to take the case.

But what starts out as a simple matter of negotiation becomes complicated when a body is discovered in the burnt husk of the old theater. Soon Mrs. Rodd finds herself embroiled in family politics, rivalries that put the Capulets and Montagues to shame, and betrayals on a Shakespearean scale. Mrs. Rodd will need all her investigatory powers, not to mention her famous discretion, to solve the case before tragedy strikes once more.

For readers of the Grantchester Mysteries, The Mystery of the Sorrowful Maiden is the charming third mystery in Kate Saunder's series about Laetitia Rodd, the indomitable lady detective.