. ." London, 1582: Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey, a talented and well-educated woman of independent means, is recruited by Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, to be lady-in-waiting to Lady Mary, a cousin of the queen. With her talent in languages and knowledge of ciphers and codes, she will be integral to the spymaster as an intelligence gatherer, being able to get close to Lady Mary just at the time when she is being courted by Russia's Ivan the Terrible. However, there are some nobles at court who will do anything they can to thwart such an alliance and Rosamond soon realises the extent of the danger when a prominent official is murdered and then there is an attempt on Lady Mary's life. In her quest to protect Lady Mary and her own estranged husband Rosamond must put herself in mortal peril.Kathy Lynn Emerson's Murder in the Queen's Wardrobe brings back characters last seen in her Face Down Mystery Series. Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey, the illegitimate daughter of Lady Appleton's late, unlamented husband, Sir Robert Appleton, is the sleuth in this new series. She previously appeared as a young girl in Face Down Beside St. Anne's Well and the story of her elopement can be found in the short story "Any Means Short of Murder."

    As zeppelin bombs fall on London and with the sinking of the Lusitania, anti-German hysteria reaches fever pitch and attacks on German immigrants surge. Not even the West End of London is immune. Jacob Stein's bespoke tailoring business comes under brutal attack, leaving his safe ransacked, his daughter, Ruth, raped and traumatized and Jacob dead. Inspector Harvey Marmion is detailed to the case and faces an uphill struggle to track down the perpetrators, even up to the chaos of the Front Line. But was the murder as opportunistic as it first appears, or did someone with a deadly grudge plan the attack?

    Joanna Stafford, a Dominican nun, learns that her favorite cousin has been condemned by Henry VIII to be burned at the stake. Defying the rule of enclosure, Joanna leaves the priory to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with the king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, is sent to the Tower of London.While Joanna is in the Tower, the ruthless Bishop of Winchester forces her to spy for him: to save her father’s life she must find an ancient relic—a crown so powerful, it may possess the ability to end the Reformation.With Cromwell’s troops threatening to shutter her priory, bright and bold Joanna must decide who she can trust so that she may save herself, her family, and her sacred way of life. This provocative story set in Tudor England melds heart-stopping suspense with historical detail and brings to life the poignant dramas of women and men at a fascinating and critical moment in England’s past.

    He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.

    Kate Haywood, a simple musician in the employ of a princess, will find herself involved in games of crowns as she sets out to solve the murder of the queen’s envoy....   England is in tumult under the rule of Queen Mary and her Spanish husband. Confined to house arrest at Hatfield House, young Princess Elizabeth is the country’s greatest hope. Far from court intrigues, Elizabeth finds solace in simple things: the quiet countryside and peaceful recreation, including the melodies of her chief musician and his daughter, Kate Haywood.   But Kate will prove herself most valuable when an envoy of the queen—sent to flush out heretics in the princess’s household—is found dead on the grounds of Hatfield. Acting as Elizabeth’s eyes and ears, Kate is sent out on the trail of a killer whose mission could destroy her family, friends—and the future of England.

    Suspicion instantly falls on the only stranger to arrive in the village of Birch Hill just before the crime took place, but the American captain proves to be an unexpected asset. A former soldier and a skilled surgeon, Jason Redmond is not only willing to assist Haze with the investigation but will risk his own safety to apprehend the killer. With no suspects, no motive, and few leads to follow, Redmond and Haze must solve the crime before one of them becomes the murderer’s next victim. Murder in the Crypt is the exciting first installment of this Victorian murder mystery series set in a quaint British village.

    . . .Bianca Goddard employs her knowledge of herbs and medicinal plants to concoct remedies for the disease-riddled poor in London’s squalid Southwark slum. But when her friend Jolyn comes to her complaining of severe stomach pains, Bianca’s prescription seems to kill her on the spot. Recovering from her shock, Bianca suspects Jolyn may have been poisoned before coming to her—but the local constable is not so easily convinced.To clear her name and keep her neck free of the gallows, Bianca must apply her knowledge of the healing arts to deduce exactly how her friend was murdered and by whom—before she herself falls victim to a similar fate.

    It was the first assassination by handgun in the history of the capital and it shook London to its core.Thomas Treviot is a young London goldsmith and a close family friend of Robert Packington. Through his own upstanding social connections – and some less upstanding acquaintances he has made along the way – Thomas launches an investigation into Packington's death.Before long he is drawn into a dark conspiracy beyond his wildest imaginings and claiming justice for his friend starts to look impossible. Especially when Thomas realises that Robert wasn't the man he thought he knew...

    Mysterious deaths. And all that jazz.London, 1925. With their band the Dizzy Heights, jazz musicians Ivor ‘Skins’ Maloney and Bartholomew ‘Barty’ Dunn are used to improvising as they play the Charleston for flappers and toffs, but things are about to take a surprising turn.Superintendent Sunderland has had word that a deserter who stole a fortune in diamonds as he fled the war is a member of the Aristippus private members’ club in Mayfair—where the Dizzy Heights have a residency. And the thief is planning to steal a hoard of jewels hidden there under the cover of a dance contest.As mutual pal Lady Hardcastle has suggested, Skins and Dunn are perfectly placed to be Sunderland’s eyes and ears—and Skins’s wife Ellie soon lends a hand with a bit of light snooping. But the stakes change dramatically when a mysterious death at the club brings a sinister note to the investigation.With the dance contest fast approaching, the trio must solve the mystery of the missing diamonds, unmask the murderer, and prevent more deadly crimes—all without missing a beat.

    So when a leading cloth-manufacturer is found murdered and his business totters on the brink of collapse, everyone fears his fall will ruin hundreds of working families and cause the economy of the whole county to collapse. In near panic, the mayor and aldermen turn to an unlikely person to solve the riddle: Mr. Ashmole Foxe, a man who claims to be a mere bookseller, yet lives in grand style, dresses like a dandy and associates as easily with the demi-monde as the gentry. With few firm clues to go on and every sign the dead man himself had been hiding many secrets, Mr Foxe sets out to do as the City Fathers want. Who benefited from the death? Why had the murdered man been stockpiling cloth for months? Who is the stranger now trying to buy up all this surplus stock and what will he do with it? Follow Mr Foxe through Norwich’s teeming 18th-century streets as he seeks out the answers and tracks down a killer with more than profit on his mind.

    Ginger's Boston terrier, Boss, noses out a missing phalange from under the cot.It's a mystery that once again puts Ginger alongside the handsome Chief Inspector Basil Reed. Who is the victim? And how did she end up in Ginger's home?Clues lead Ginger and her good friend Haley Higgins to a soirée hosted in 1913 by Ginger's late father, George Hartigan. A shadow of suspicion is cast on her father's legacy, and Ginger isn't so sure she wants to know the truth about the man she dearly loved.Ginger decides to host another soirée, inviting the guest list from ten years previous. Before the night is over, another person is dead.

    Banished by her spiteful half sister, Queen Mary, to Hatfield House in the English countryside, twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth cannot refuse the summons. The Boleyns are in grave danger. And Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, is marked for death by a master poisoner whose reign of terror may have royal sanction.With her few loyal retainers, Elizabeth escapes to Kent. Here, in her ancestral Hever Castle, now held by the Queen's loyalists, Elizabeth seeks to unravel the plot against her. And here, in the embrace of intrigue and betrayal, the princess must find a brilliant, powerfully connected killer--before the killer finds her....

    A young nobleman. And death stalks them both.... The date is 1191 Aumary Belvoir is seventeen. Seventeen, and bound by an oath so holy, he dare not break it.
 Unexpectedly thrust into the position of the Warden of the Savernake; a woodland of one hundred and fifty square miles in Wiltshire, will Aumary succeed in stamping his authority on the forest? He has also acquired a half brother he did not know he had. With the help of his experienced staff and his willing family, things go well. The surprise brother, Robert proves a worthy assistant. Then the deaths begin. Are they accidents as they seem or is there something more sinister happening in the forest? Seventy year old Aumary is dictating his story to a scribe. He can no longer write for himself and wishes to set down for all time, the truth of two mysteries; the death of Arthur Duke of Brittany, King John's nephew and rival, and other more disturbing deaths closer to home. Aumary Belvoir sets off to uncover a plot so dastardly and deadly, so patient and well planned that it takes thirteen years to lay bare.

    Charles II is well established at White Hall Palace, his mistress at hand in rooms over the Holbein bridge, the heads of some of the regicides on public display. London seethes with new energy, freed from the strictures of the Protectorate, but many of its inhabitants have lost their livelihoods. One is Thomas Chaloner, a reluctant spy for the feared Secretary of State, John Thurloe, and now returned from Holland in desperate need of employment. His erstwhile boss, knowing he has many enemies at court, recommends Thomas to Lord Clarendon, but in return demands that Thomas keep him informed of any plot against him. But what Thomas discovers is that Thurloe had sent another ex-employee to White Hall and he is dead, supposedly murdered by footpads near the Thames. Chaloner volunteers to investigate his killing: instead he is despatched to the Tower to unearth the gold buried by the last Governor. He discovers not treasure, but evidence that greed and self-interest are uppermost in men's minds whoever is in power, and that his life has no value to either side.

    Sampson, S.J. Parris and Rory Clements."A superb, page-turning debut. The author balances gimlet-eyed research with narrative drive and clever reveals... Danforth is a strong yet torn central character... I look forward to reading the second book in the series." Richard Foreman.Steven Veerapen was born in Glasgow and raised in Paisley. Pursuing an interest in the sixteenth century, he was awarded a first-class Honours degree in English, focussing his dissertation on representations of Henry VIII’s six wives. He then received a Masters in Renaissance studies, and a Ph.D. investigating Elizabethan slander. The Abbey Close represents his first foray into fictional writing. Steven is fascinated by the glamour and ghastliness of life in the 1500s, and has a penchant for myths, mysteries and murders in an age in which the law was as slippery as those who defied it.