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Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 1
Summary
A lush and haunting novel of a city steeped in decadent pleasures . . . and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal.
It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted—by murder.
Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has...
It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted—by murder.
Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has...
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 14
Formats
Summary
"Benjamin January is called up to Vicksburg, deep in cotton-plantation country, to help a wounded 'conductor' of the Underground Railroad -- the secret network of safe-houses that guide escaping slaves to freedom. When the chief 'conductor' of the 'station' is found murdered, Jubal Cain, the coordinator of the whole Railroad system in Mississippi, is accused of the crime. Since Cain can't expose the nature of his involvement in the railroad, January...
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 19
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Summary
Musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January gets mixed in politics, with murderous results. September, 1840. A giant rally is being planned in New Orleans to stir up support for presidential candidate William Henry Harrison: the Indian-killing, hard-cider-drinking, wannabe "people's president". Trained surgeon turned piano-player Benjamin January has little use for politicians. But the run-up to the rally is packed with balls and dinner...
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Series
Benjamin January volume 10
Summary
Abishag Shaw is seeking vengeance for his brother's murder - and Benjamin January is seeking money after his bank crashes. Far beyond the frontier, in the depths of the Rocky Mountains, both are to be found at the great Rendezvous of the Mountain Men: a month-long orgy of cheap booze, shooting-matches, tall tales and cut-throat trading. But at the rendezvous, the discovery of a corpse opens the door to hints of a greater plot, of madness and wholesale...
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 5
Summary
In 1835 New Orleans, Benjamin January, a free man of color, becomes caught up in a deadly plot when he rescues opera impresario Lorenzo Belaggio, who has brought a production of the opera "Othello" to town, from a violent attack.
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Series
Benjamin January volume 4
Summary
When slave owner Simon Fourchet asks Benjamin January to investigate sabotage, arson, and murder on his plantation, January is reluctant to do any favors for the savage man who owned him until he was seven. But he knows too well that plantation justice means that if the true culprit is not found, every slave on Mon Triomphe will suffer. Abandoning his Parisian French for the African patois of the field hand, cutting cane until his bones ache and his...
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Benjamin January volume 9
Summary
New Orleans, 1836. When free black musician and surgeon Benjamin January attends the funeral of a friend, an accident tips the dead man out of his coffin - only to reveal an unexpected inhabitant. Just one person recognises the corpse of the white man: Hannibal Sefton, fiddle-player and one of January's closest friends. But he seems unwilling to talk about his connection to the dead man . .
Author
Series
Summary
"Benjamin January's search for a missing man takes him into a dark world filled with grave robbers and slave stealers. New Orleans, 1838. When Benjamin January suddenly finds that his services playing piano at extravagant balls held by the city's wealthy are no longer required, he ends up agreeing to accompany sugar planter Henri Viellard and his young wife, Chloee, on a mission to Washington to find a missing friend. Plunged into a murky world, it...
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Series
Benjamin January historical mystery volume 18
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Summary
"New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, that last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloe Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can't say no. Three weeks ago, seventeen-year-old Eve Russell boarded a steam-boat - and never got off it. Mrs Russell is adamant Eve's been kidnapped, but how could someone remove a teenager...
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 11
Summary
RAN AWAY. So began a score of advertisements every week in the New Orleans newspapers, advertising for slaves who'd fled their masters. But the Turk, Hüseyin Pasha, posted no such advertisement when his two lovely concubines disappeared. And when a witness proclaimed he'd seen the 'devilish infidel' hurl their dead bodies out of a window, everyone was willing to believe him the murderer. Only Benjamin January, who knows the Turk of old, is willing...
11) Murder in July
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 7
Summary
"When British spymaster Sir John Oldmixton offers Benjamin January a hundred dollars to find the murderer of an Englishman whose body has been found floating in the New Basin Canal, Benjamin turns him down immediately. As a free man of colour in New Orleans in the sweltering July of 1839, he knows this is not something he should get mixed up in. But when clues to the dead man's identity link the death to another murder, in another July in January's...
12) Graveyard dust
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 3
Summary
Bestselling author Barbara Hambly's A Free Man of Color and Fever Season established Benjamin January as one of mystery's most exciting heroes. Now he returns in a powerful new novel, a sensual mosaic of old New Orleans, where cultures clash and murder can hover around every darkened corner.
It is St. John's Eve in the summer of 1834 when Benjamin January-Creole physician and music teacher-is shattered by the news that his sister has been arrested...
13) Fever season
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 2
Summary
Benjamin January made his debut in bestselling author Barbara Hambly's A Free Man of Color, a haunting mélange of history and mystery. Now he returns in another novel of greed, madness, and murder amid the dark shadows and dazzling society of old New Orleans, named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.
The summer of 1833 has been one of brazen heat and brutal pestilence, as the city is stalked by Bronze John-the popular name for the...
14) Wet grave
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Series
Benjamin January volume 6
Summary
In such stunning novels of crime and character as Die Upon a Kiss, Sold Down the River, and A Free Man of Color, Benjamin January tracked down killers through the sensuous, atmospheric, dangerously beautiful world of Old New Orleans. Now, in this new novel by bestselling author Barbara Hambly, he follows a trail of murder from illicit back alleys to glittering mansions to a dark place where the oldest and deadliest secrets lie buried...
It's 1835...
15) Days of the dead
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 7
Summary
Mexico City in the autumn of 1835 is a lawless place, teeming with bandits and beggars. But an urgent letter from a desperate friend draws Benjamin January and his new bride Rose from New Orleans to this newly free province. Here they pray they'll find Hannibal Sefton alive-and not hanging from the end of a rope. Sefton stands accused of murdering the only son of prominent landowner Don Prospero de Castellón. But when Benjamin and Rose arrive at...
16) Dead water
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 8
Summary
Nineteenth-century New Orleans is a blazing hotbed of scorching politics and personal vendettas. And it's into this fire that Benjamin January falls when he is hired to follow Oliver Weems, a bank official who has absconded with $100,000 in gold and securities. But it's more than just a job for January. The missing money is vital to the survival of the school for freed slaves that he and his wife Rose have founded.
Following the suspected embezzler...
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 20
Summary
"A cursed statue... A haunted house... A seemingly supernatural death... The unexpected arrival of a friend from his past plunges musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January into an old, unsolved case in this historical mystery set in New Orleans. December 1840. Surgeon turned piano-player Benjamin January is looking forward to a peaceful holiday with his family. But the arrival of an old friend brings unexpected news - and unexpected...
18) Crimson angel
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Summary
When Jefferson Vitrack - the white half-brother of Benjamin January's wife - turns up on January's doorstep in the summer of 1838 claiming he has discovered a clue to the whereabouts of the family's lost treasure, January has no hesitation about refusing to help look for it. For the treasure lies in Haiti, the island that was once France's most profitable colony - until the blood-chilling repression practiced there by the whites upon their slaves...
19) Cold bayou
Author
Series
Benjamin January volume 16
Summary
"New Orleans, 1839. Despite his misgivings, Benjamin January has agreed to play the piano at the wedding of wealthy French Creole landowner Veryl St-Chinian. All is not well, for the marriage of 67-year-old, profoundly infatuated Uncle Veryl to an 18-year-old Irish tavern-slut spells potential disaster for everyone in the inter-married Viellard and St-Chinian clans. But the old man is determined to marry Miss Ellie Trask, and nothing will stand in...
Author
Series
Benjamin January historical mystery volume 17
Summary
"April, 1840. Benjamin January knows no black person in their right mind would willingly go to the Republic of Texas but when his former pupil Selina Bellinger is kidnapped and enslaved, he has no choice. Once there he is saved from being hanged by Valentina Taggart, wife of the wealthy landowner of Rancho Perdition. After Valentina is accused of the murder of her husband, she in turn calls on Benjamin for help. To do so, he must abandon the safe...