Books like Columbella by Phyllis A. Whitney

After Florentyna Kane becomes America’s first woman president, a shadowy conspiracy threatens her life; FBI Agent Mark Andrews races to uncover the plot before the next assassination attempt.

A mother's nightmare returns as she discovers her children are missing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and must confront the shadowy figure who murdered her first children.

Widow Charity Selborne’s leisurely drive through Provence turns into a suspenseful thriller when she encounters a frightened boy and his enigmatic father in Avignon, leading her into a dangerous web of romance, murder, and betrayal.

Camilla King returns to the decaying Thunder Heights mansion after an invitation from her ailing, wealthy grandfather, only to confront a harsh tyrant, mourning aunts, a greedy heir, and a mysterious trap tied to her mother's death.

A petty thief, Arthur Simpson, is coerced into smuggling arms into Turkey for a jewel heist, only to be blackmailed by Turkish police into spying on the criminal gang, escalating his peril at every turn.

In 1940, British engineer Graham is dispatched to Turkey to work on a naval project, only to become a target of hostile forces intent on eliminating him.

Five‑year‑old Anna faces a brutal bear attack while camping on a remote island, then must save herself and her brother, confronting hunger, danger and the wilderness to survive.

Mallie Rice confronts the haunted Silverhill, where mirrors distort reality and family secrets surface, as she battles for love, sanity and survival under the shadow of Grandmother Julia and her half‑demented Aunt Arvilla.

Christy Moreland returns to the Spindrift estate in Newport to uncover the truth behind her father’s death, confronting a domineering mother‑in‑law and unraveling a web of deception that threatens her son.

Contest over the presidency, death of a religious leader, and intelligence officers in the final presidential election of the century.

In Savannah’s historic streets, cousins Juliet and Josephine, who resemble each other as closely as twins, are reunited after years apart by war and fate. Their rekindled bond leads to a deadly game of deception and danger.

In Fairview, Connecticut, a young woman’s memory is erased after a violent assault, forcing her family to confront hidden secrets and a relentless search for justice in a seemingly perfect town.

A single mother in Washington, D.C., deals with the secrets of her family's past and the threat to her safety and stability as she begins a new life with her children and a tightly knit neighborhood community.

Lindsay Phillips is drawn back to Arizona to confront her past, her father’s murderer, a mystical cane, and a forbidden love tied to her half-sister’s husband, with the ghostly spirit Vermilion guiding and haunting her in Sedona’s red cliffs.

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American art expert Colin Grant is sent to Vienna to buy a Ruysdael painting for a Texas millionaire, but the transaction spirals into a Cold‑War conspiracy that could spark international terrorism.

Leyla faces betrayal and terror in the ancestral manor of Pemberton Hurst as a murderer stalks the corridors, forcing her to confront a divided family and the mystery of a name.

A Duke and two young friends decode a mysterious letter from a missing American treasure‑hunter, sending them on an urgent mission across Soviet Russia to rescue him from prison.

A mysterious ivory jackal gamepiece leads Lydia Harris on a journey of discovery in ancient Egypt and Rome.

Thunder Heights To Camilla King, her trip up the Hudson to the huge Gothic mansion named Thunder Heights was in a way a return to the home that had never been hers. From there her grandfather, Orrin Judd, the financier, ran his vast empire. When Camilla had been a child her mother had returned there for a visit and mysteriously died. From that point on, for reasons she had never understood, Camilla's father had cut himself off completely from the Judd family. And later Camilla, now an orphan and quite alone, had been making her way as a governess in New York City. The summons from the old man had come as a complete surprise. Yet Camilla obeyed it willingly, half out of curiosity, half in the hope of discovering a home and family of her own. She found a sick old man anxious to make his peace with her before he died. She found two extraordinary aunts--imperious Aunt Hortense, dressed in bygone fashions, and fey, ghostlike Aunt Letty, haunted by some strange guilt or sorrow. She found also Hortense's adopted son, Booth, a strange, sardonic young man who seemed content to idle away his considerable talents as a painter, and Ross Granger, who had been brought there as an aide to her grandfather and who treated her with the most rigid formality. Over the enormous house hung an atmosphere of gloom, impending danger, and strange crosscurrents. And out of these elements Phyllis Whitney has fashioned an extraordinarily holding story. Old Orrin Judd's amazing will, young Booth's unfinished portrait of Camilla's mother, the house itself, which took on a character of its own, and one near-accident after another, seemingly aimed at driving Camilla away, all play their parts. The Window on the Square THE SCENE IS NEW YORK CITY IN THE 1870's. A letter summons young Megan Kincaid to the house on Washington Square. In a startling interview the master of the house, Brandon Reid, informs her that he wishes her to devote herself to moody, unbalanced Jeremy, Mrs. Reid's son by her previous husband, Brandon's younger brother Dwight. Dwight Reid's brilliant career as New York District Attorney had been ended by a shocking and tragic accident with a gun--or so the newspapers had claimed--at the hands of this same guilt-ridden child, then aged seven. Against her better judgment, Megan accepts the challenge. From the beginning Megan feels uneasy in the house; she senses the presence of lurking evil, of mysterious emotional undercurrents, of relationships that are not what they appear to be. She does not know whom to trust--the haughty yet strangely sad beauty, Leslie Reid, or the somber, fascinating master of the house, whose warm voice belies his cold, grave manner. She finds herself irresistibly drawn toward him, and their growing mutual attraction is duly noted by interested members of the household. When Megan realizes fully the extent of her own feelings, she knows she cannot honorably remain in the Reid home. Yet she also knows that if she goes, Jeremy will be left alone in world, irretrievably lost.