It’s May Day, a time of joyful song and dance. But Jane Moone is called at sunrise to view a sorrowful sight — Lucy Quirk, strangled in the maypole’s tangled ribbons. Lucy came to Ayreford to re-unite with her long-lost father. The prominent cunning man is delighted to welcome her into his work, as well as his life. But Lucy has her own agenda and soon starts spilling secrets from his confidential patient notebooks.
Jane and John Greenslade, local barrister, find plenty of conflict around Lucy’s death. The local Puritans wanted to stop May Day once and for all. Quirk wanted to stop his daughter’s gossip. Any number of townsfolk might have confided secrets worth killing to conceal. Worse, Jane’s every step is shadowed by troublesome fairies, especially the old river goddess protecting Quirk. But is she trying to help the investigation or hinder it?
Jane risks her life to peel back the glamours confusing the case. She’s rescued in the end by the last person she ever expected to meet.
London, 1593. An anonymous ballad calls for violence. The mayor offers 100 crowns for the author's name. Thomas Clarady wants that money and drags Francis Bacon in to help.
Then the authorities turn on two popular playmakers. One is tortured. Another is killed in a brawl. The official story seems plausible, but Tom doesn't buy it. He refuses stop digging, uncovering a plot best left buried.
Bacon and his team must hazard their lives to find the truth. Whether justice can be obtained is another matter.
Three award-winning historical mystery novels in one convenient package!
Francis Bacon reluctantly puts down his books to solve crimes in Elizabethan London, aided by Thomas Clarady, a privateer’s son who will do anything to climb into the ranks of the gentry — or up to a lady’s bedchamber.
Book 1: Murder by Misrule
Francis Bacon must catch a killer to regain Queen Elizabeth’s favor. He recruits dashing Thomas Clarady to chase witnesses from Whitehall to the London streets, where everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve.
Book 2: Death by Disputation
Thomas Clarady risks his life, his chastity, and his very soul to catch a Puritan seditioner at Cambridge with Francis Bacon as his exacting spymaster.
Book 3: The Widows Guild
London, 1588: Someone is turning Catholics into widows, masking the crimes under armada fever. Francis Bacon is charged with the investigation by a widows’ guild led by his formidable aunt. He must untangle multiple crimes driven by patriotism, greed, lunacy — or all three.
Anthony Bacon returns after thirteen years in France to live in his brother’s house at Gray’s Inn. Though seldom strong enough to leave his rooms, his gouty legs never hinder his agile mind. He’s built the most valuable intelligence service in Europe. Now the Bacon brothers are ready to offer it to the patron with the deepest pockets.
Then Francis finds a body lying near Anthony’s coach. The clues inside point to Anthony’s secretary. Worse, the murdered man had been spreading rumors that could destroy Anthony’s reputation.
Francis thinks his brother did it. Assistant Thomas Clarady thinks the secretary did it. As they investigate, they hear one story after another about what happened. Which is the truth? Can they sort through the lies before disaster strikes?
Professor & Mrs. Moriarty tackle a case too ticklish for Sherlock Holmes to handle on his own.
James and Angelina Moriarty are settling into their new marriage and their fashionable new home — or trying to.Then Sherlock Holmes comes to call with a challenging case. He suspects a prominent Harley Street specialist of committing murders for hire, sending patients home from his private hospital with deadly doses or fatal conditions. Holmes wants to investigate, but the doctor’s clientele is exclusively female. He needs Angelina’s help.
While Moriarty, Holmes, and Watson explore the many ways a doctor can murder patients with impunity, Angelina poses as a nervous woman seeking treatment from their primary suspect. Then half-truths and angry words drive James and Angelina apart, sending her deep into danger. They must find the courage to trust each other as they race the clock to win justice for the murdered women before they become victims themselves.
Professor James Moriarty has but one desire left in his shattered life: to stop the man who ruined him from harming anyone else. Then he meets Angelina Gould and his world turns upside down.
At the International Exhibition, an exploding steam engine kills a man. When Moriarty tries to figure out what happened, he comes up against Sherlock Holmes, sent to investigate by Moriarty’s old enemy. Holmes collects evidence that points at Moriarty, who realizes he must either solve the crime or swing it for it himself. He soon uncovers trouble among the board members of the engine company and its unscrupulous promoter. Moriarty tries to untangle those relationships, but everywhere he turns, he meets the alluring Angelina. She’s playing some game, but what’s her goal? And whose side is she on?
Between them, Holmes and Angelina push Moriarty to his limits -- and beyond. He’ll have to lose himself to save his life and win the woman he loves.
Secret trysts, daring dalliances, and a pair of pedigreed hounds
keep Francis Bacon and his team busy while trying to catch a reckless murderer.
It's Midsummer, 1591, at Richmond Palace, and love is in the air. Gallant courtiers sport with great ladies while Tom and Trumpet bring their long-laid plans to fruition at last. Everybody's doing it - even Francis Bacon enjoys a private liaison with the secretary to the new French ambassador. But the queen loathes scandal and will punish anyone rash enough to get caught.
Still, it's all in a summer day until a man is found dead in the orchard. The youth had few talents beyond a keen nose for gossip. He was doubtless murdered to keep a secret, but what sort? Romantic, or political? They carried different penalties - banishment from court or a traitor's death. Either way, worth killing to protect.
Bacon wants nothing more than to leave things alone. He has no position and no patron. But can he live with himself if another innocent person dies?
It’s 1589 and England is embroiled in a furious pamphlet war between an impudent Puritan calling himself Martin Marprelate and London’s wittiest writers. The archbishop wants Martin to hang. The Privy Council wants the tumult to end. But nobody knows who Martin is or where he’s hiding his illegal press.
Then two writers are strangled, mistaken for Thomas Nashe, the pamphleteer who is hot on Martin’s trail. Francis Bacon is tasked with stopping the murders — and catching Martin, while he’s about it. But the more he learns, the more he fears Martin may be someone dangerously close to home.
Can Bacon and his band of intelligencers stop the strangler before another writer dies, without stepping on Martin’s possibly very important toes?
Welcome to Ayreford in 1591, where cats can talk and fairies are real.
Jane Moone leaves her thriving practice as a cunning woman in London to return to Ayreford to care for her aging father Amias. She's scarcely settled in when her only client's husband is murdered. The tailor is found in his workshop covered in red spots with a bottle of tonic from Moone's apothecary near at hand. A rival cunning man accuses Amias of poisoning him and the old man is arrested.
Jane knows her father is innocent. She joins forces with a handsome barrister to study the scene. They find evidence to support Amias, but each item is altered when a blackbird sings. That bird has been following them everywhere. Then things turn even more peculiar. Amias's ginger cat gives Jane wise counsel, a frog-pond fairy claims to know her long-lost mother, and a hedge witch shows Jane how to stop the malevolent fairy behind all the glamors.
Either Jane is caught in a very strange dream, or Ayreford is thickly inhabited by the Fair Folk. Either way, Jane must do whatever she can, however bizarre, to save her father from hanging. Then she'll get the truth from him - or possibly his cat.
Professor and Mrs. Moriarty each take on a small case to fill the time before their next play opens. They place a bet on who will finish first. James will find out if three old soldiers have been cheated of their discharge pay. Angelina must find a missing servant, presumed to have been poached.
But as they start asking questions, things take a dark turn. They uncover corruption at the heart of a circle of Army officers. A man is murdered, a friend is blamed, and Sherlock Holmes is sent to catch him. The Moriartys must use all their courage and ingenuity to save their friend, stop the loathsome crimes, and put the killer behind bars.
An old friend brings a strange problem to Professor and Mrs. Moriarty: either his theater is being haunted by an angry ghost or someone is trying to drive him into bankruptcy. That would shut down his Christmas pantomime before it opens, throwing two hundred people out of work. The Moriartys can't let that happen! Besides, Angelina is longing to play the lead in a West End show and James needs a bigger challenge than yet another high-stakes game of whist.
But the day they move into the theater, the stage manager dies. It wasn't an accident; it also was most definitely not a ghost. While Angelina works backstage turning up secrets and old grudges, James follows the money in search of a motive. The pranks grow deadlier and more frequent. Then someone sets Sherlock Holmes on the trail, trying to catch our sleuths crossing the line into crime.
How far will Moriarty have to go to keep the show afloat? And will they all make it to opening night in one piece?
London, 1588: Someone is turning Catholics into widows, taking advantage of armada fever to mask the crimes. Francis Bacon is charged with identifying the murderer by the Andromache Society, a widows' guild led by his formidable aunt. He must free his friends from the Tower, track an exotic poison, and untangle multiple crimes to determine if the motive is patriotism, greed, lunacy - or all three.
