Mystery & History: a collection of whodunits for cozy winter reading

If you’re a fan of historical fiction and love a good mystery, get excited. Not only do the following books take you back into the past, but you can also follow along as the main characters try to solve a murder or two. Add a little romance and you’ve got a reading trifecta. Each is part of a series, too, leaving you plenty of options to pass the snowy and cold days of winter curled up with a very good book. 

Veronica Speedwell mystery series

First book: A Curious Beginning | Latest book: A Grave Robbery (Book #9 in the series) | Author: Deanna Raybourn

Veronica Speedwell is a young Victorian woman whose behavior seems more in line with today’s women. She’s an orphan with a mysterious origin that involves Queen Victoria’s first-born son. She has traveled the world studying butterflies and moths as a well-known lepidopterist, managing to find herself in adventure after adventure, many of them harrowing. Those experiences, though, are mostly recounted by her as asides from her past. The mystery series instead focuses on the various pickles in which she, and her colleague/cohort/potential lover Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, aka Stoker, find themselves as they are called upon by various members of the royal family and even Scotland Yard to “fix” the latest murder mystery. Each book, written by best-selling mystery writer Deanna Raybourn, who also pens a contemporary mystery series, can stand alone. You could, in theory, read them out of order, but certain key character developments are better when read in order. Example: the budding, smoldering, dear-god-when-will-they-get-together relationship between Speedwell and Stoker. If you love Victorian England and are a fan of the royal family, this is one not to miss. Added bonus? Book 10 in the series is due out later this year.

Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series

First book: What Angels Fear | Latest book: What Cannot Be Said (Book #19 in the series) | Author: C.S. Harris

Regency England — the time of Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Napoleon and more — is the setting for Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. A bit of a bad boy, Devlin is a former British Army officer with a mysterious beginning of his own (he and Speedwell could likely commiserate over a whiskey). Rather than simply live the privileged life into which he has been born, he insists, much to the frustration and horror of his father, the earl of Hendon, on hanging out far too much with so-called riffraff and — heaven forfend! — solving crimes, many of which involve politics and the very people whose parlors he graces. Figuring large in the series is a former Napoleonic War comrade, an Irish doctor with a bit of an opium addiction thanks to constant pain in his phantom leg, as well as an upper-class woman, Hero Jarvis, who, as a journalist penning stories about the inequities of the times (clearly not popular with her father nor those in whose circles she travels), would likely be friends with Veronica Speedwell if they were real-life heroines. C.S. Harris, who also pens romances as Candice Proctor (her real name) and has a Ph.D. in European history, describes Devlin as “Mr. Darcy with a James Bond edge” and she’s not wrong. The series has 19 books with — hooray — a 20th book due out in the spring.

Raven and Fisher mystery series

First book: The Way of All Flesh | Latest book: Voices of the Dead (Book #4 in the series) | Author: Ambrose Parry

This set of mysteries takes us to Edinburgh, Scotland, in the early 19th century. Will Raven is a medical student about to begin an apprenticeship with Dr. Simpson, a daring doctor who is on the forefront of experimenting with anesthesia, a very new and controversial medical development. During his apprenticeship, Raven (who has a troubled past; do you see a theme here?), meets Sarah Fisher, a housemaid who dreams of becoming a doctor. They ultimately team up and during the series of books navigate Edinburgh’s seamier, murderous side, get into all kinds of scrapes, and, yes, have a complicated love relationship. Ambrose Parry is the pen name for the husband-and-wife duo, Marisa Haetzman and Chris Brookmyre. Haetzman is an anesthetist in her “other” job and also has a master’s degree in the history of medicine, making the medical information in these books a primer of sorts for the time period. Brookmyre is an award-winning crime writer when he’s not collaborating with his wife. The authors also released a digital-only short story in 2023 as part of the series, and the final (sniff!) book is due out later this year. What will happen to Raven and Fisher?

On Our Nightstand, Winter 2025

Top image: iStockphoto.com/Moussa81.

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