Books like Learning Curve by Catherine Aird

Alicia Berenson, a celebrated painter, shoots her husband Gabriel and then falls silent, becoming a media sensation. In North London’s Grove secure unit, psychotherapist Theo Faber devotes himself to uncovering why she became the Silent Patient and his own true motives.

A pioneering English detective story in which a priceless diamond, once stolen from a Hindu idol and presented to a young woman on her eighteenth birthday, disappears again, sparking intrigue and danger.

Walter Hartright, a drawing master, becomes entangled with Laura Fairlie, Sir Percival Glyde, and the scheming Count Fosco as questions of identity and madness intertwine in 19th‑century England.

When a crow drops a human finger on a walking club member’s path, a search for a missing body brings together police, community members and local farmers in a quiet English village.

In England’s Almstone Flower Show, a vanished fortuneteller turns up dead, prompting Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby to unravel a baffling murder with no obvious motive or opportunity.

421, 10 pages ; 21 cm

When old schoolteacher Miss Beatrice Wansdyke dies wealthy, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan must protect her fortune from ruthless pursuers while preparing for fatherhood.

When octogenarian Octavia Garamond demands a police‑presented funeral and a post‑mortem, Inspector C. D. Sloane and Constable Crosby investigate her mysterious death and a secretive past that may have put her life in danger.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec investigates a surprising death in the quiet village of Three Pines, uncovering a sinister truth beneath the seeming hunting accident.

Detective Inspector C. D. Sloane investigates a death that may be murder after a letter arrives at a nursing home for WWII veterans.

A collection of tightly crafted short mysteries that follow Inspector C. D. Sloan through a wealthier businessman’s death, a Christmas family drama, and a hospital scandal, plus a 1930s Foreign Office case and a 16th-century Scottish clansman’s murder.

Inspector Sloan investigates a suspicious death linked to a clandestine drug trial, uncovering a deeper conspiracy.

Detective Chief Inspector C.D. Sloan investigates a murder and a mysterious break‑in at Berebury Nursing Home, both linked to the life—and secrets—of Josephine Short, a woman whose recent death shocks her family.

A gripping mystery story following teenage girls grappling with personal tragedy and the pursuit of justice in a small English town.

Milo, a devoted woman sleuth, travels to Paris to uncover the sinister murder of famed perfume magnate Amory, whose imminent fragrance launch has attracted ruthless rivals and greedy heirs brashly fighting for his empire.

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950--and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story--of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder--but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse....An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions--and a rich literary delight.From the Hardcover edition.

309 pages ; 18 cm

Detective Banks investigates a case involving a runaway girl and her father's determination to destroy his career, leading him into a web of drugs, sex, and crime in London.