Recommendations based on "The Three Evangelists"

An alluring literary mystery full of secrets and lies, when an art teacher at a psychiatric hospital in 1960s England finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious patient who has spent decades living in complete isolation with his elderly aunts in a decrepit Victorian house. Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver, and Tessa Hadley.In all failed relationships there is a tipping point. It goes unnoticed at the time but can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park…The London suburb of Croydon,1964: Helen Hansford is unmarried and in her thirties. Something of a disappointment to her middle-class parents, she’s an art therapist at the Westbury Park psychiatric hospital, where she has been having a rebellious love affair with her colleague Gil, a dashing but married doctor.One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance at a derelict, vine-covered Victorian house a few miles up the road. There the police find a mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, his hair and beard down to his waist. It appears he lives in the old house with his elderly, frail aunt, who expires as soon as she’s admitted to the hospital. No one knows why William has been shut away for decades, unseen by neighbors, with only his two now-deceased aunts for company. Westbury Park becomes his refuge.When it emerges that William is not only sane but a talented artist, Helen comes to see him as something of a personal project. But as she tries to solve the puzzle of the Hidden Man’s past, Helen’s own carefully constructed life of secrets begins to unravel...A gorgeously written and life-affirming novel about life’s delicate layers of experience and connection, Shy Creatures reveals all the different ways we can be confined...and liberated.

Dix Steele is back in town, and 'town' is post-war LA. His best friend Brub is on the force of the LAPD, and as the two meet in country clubs and beach bars, they discuss the latest case: a strangler is preying on young women in the dark. Dix listens with interest as Brub describes their top suspect, as yet unnamed. Dix loves the dark and women in equal measure, so he knows enough to watch his step, though when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray, something begins to crack. The American Dream is showing its seamy underside.

Charmed in spite of herself, the English governess is baffled by the occasionally strange behavior of the de Valmys

“Irresistible….Amelia is still a joy.”—New York Times Book ReviewThe intrepid archeologist Amelia Peabody and her fearless family, the Emersons, are back in Egypt, and something very nasty is afoot in Lord of the Silent—New York Times bestselling Grandmaster Elizabeth Peters’s sparkling adventure with more riddles than the Sphinx and more close calls and stunning escapes than an Indiana Jones movie. Reviewers are simply agog over Lord of the Silent, calling it, “Wonderfully entertaining” (Washington Times), “Deeply satisfying” (Entertainment Weekly), and in the words of the Toronto Globe and Mail, “The hype is true. This is Peters’s best book.”

Calling upon his former governess, William Jones, gentleman, is startled when his knock is answered by an uncommonly beautiful servant, the soft-spoken Emma. Throughout his visit, William's eyes drift to the maid whenever she enters the room, and he contrives to meet Emma socially as she goes about her errands. But London society is a web of strict codes and divisions. For the son of a wealthy merchant, seeking out a working-class girl is simply not done! William's father plans for his son to marry into the peerage and elevate the Jones family to greater heights, but although William says and does what is expected of him, he longs only for Emma's company...

Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle mystery series featuring Newark, New Jersey’s number one private investigator are loved for their smart, sexy protagonist who “has a way with a wisecrack that is positively lethal” (Washington Post). Now in Dying in the Dark, Hayle is entrenched in a sinister investigation that will demand her best detective work yet. Tamara Hayle’s past has come back to haunt her–literally. She’s been plagued by terrifying dreams about Celia Jones, an old friend whose walk on the wild side led her to a horrible death. Celia’s teenage son, Cecil, begs Tamara to find his mother’s killer . . . only to end up dead himself, stabbed through the heart. The search for Celia and her son’s killer pulls Tamara deep into her friend’s troubled love life, where everyone adored her but somebody held a murderous  grudge. There’s her bullying thug of an ex-husband; a handsome ex-lover who woos Tamara with charm and lies; and an angry, jealous woman who claims that Celia broke her heart. And those were just the obvious people with axes to grind. Despite her better judgment and the admonitions of the police department, Tamara refuses to back away from the mystery surrounding her old friend’s death and the tragedy that met her son. All clues lead to the past Tamara shared with Celia Jones, and Tamara fears that that past will threaten her own son. But she uncovers more than she bargained for–and unearths secrets someone would kill to keep in the shadows.

Sue and her best friend, Kit, join the ranks of the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service in New York to work in an old and crowded neighborhood, but even her exciting career cannot make her forget Dr. Bill Barry

Soon-to-be new parents Kiera and her husband, Sebastian Gage, have been hoping for a respite from their inquiries, but murder and mayhem have a startling way of dropping into their laps in the all-new historical mystery in this national bestselling series.Edinburgh, Scotland. March 1832. Kiera and Gage have been eagerly awaiting their bundle of joy but trouble has been brewing in the form of the roguish criminal Bonnie Brock Kincaid. A new book and subsequent play features some of Kincaid's daringly heinous exploits, although he swears he had nothing to do with it or the characters which are obvious representations of Kiera and Gage. While the scoundrel's fury seems genuine, as well as his determined quest to uncover the real identity of the author, the Gages still hold doubts about his innocence.A rash of crimes break out across the city, seemingly inspired by the play and book. When the publisher is found brutally murdered--in an imitation of a gruesome scene--the finger not only points to Bonnie Brock as the possible culprit, but also the Gages, who have been outspoken in their condemnation of the tale. Now, the Gages are on a hunt to unmask the killer. Between the infamy garnered by the play, the cholera outbreak still wreaking havoc throughout the city, and the impending birth of their child, they will need all the resources they can garner.But family quarrels and the revelation of a secret Kiera has been keeping from Sebastian threaten to undermine everything they have overcome. When they find themselves in the crosshairs of the killer, trapped in the squalid underground vaults of the city, they will soon discover that the truth does not always set you free, and death can lurk around any corner.

"In 1921, heiress Marian Arnold begins having nightmarish visions in her family's butterfly house, but when she finds a body, she must separate her imaginings from reality. A century later, Remmy Shaw joins a memoir writer to research Marian's connection to the "Butterfly Butcher," only for the specter of the past to rise again"--