Audiobooks narrated by James Musgrave

Boomtown San Diego, in 1888, erupts in murder. Retired Marshal and hero of the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp is involved. What's really going on? Award-winning, best-selling mystery author, James Musgrave, takes issues from the present and turns them into ingenious puzzles for readers to solve. In the Nineteenth Century the same human foibles existed, but the problems happened at a much slower pace. In The Dancing Murders, Musgrave turns four suspects over to the reader to choose a murderer. Wyatt Earp, the hero of the O. K. Corral shoot-out in Tombstone, Arizona, is charged with the First Degree Murder. Series attorney and detective, Clara Shortridge Foltz, takes the case to defend him, as she’s moved to the San Diego boomtown, and she needs the money. The mystery soon escalates into a deep and increasingly frightening exploration into sex-trafficking, terrorism, mystical Kabbalah, Tantric sex, sado-masochism, and the rivalry of three Stingaree bordello madams, who each has a secret. With an extremely unique frame, Musgrave allows the reader to first explore the suspects and the issues through five chapters of prologue. Then, in a very Kurosawa-type twist, as in Rashomon, the reader/viewer gets to explore the psyches of the four main suspects, in chronological progression. However, deep within these characters, in their first-person narratives, lies the underlying truth of this entire mystery and how it will explode into the plot for the seventh mystery in this popular series.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave, Joan Dukore (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Dancing Murders

The Dancing Murders is the latest iteration in a series of mysteries and murders that revolve around the amazing and redoubtable Clara Shortridge Foltz. As one of the very first women attorneys and private detectives seeking to perform in a man's arena, Clara always has her back to the wall but her deductive skills and her uncanny intuition have seen some label her as the real-life incarnation of the fictional Sherlock Holmes. Author James Musgrave uses a literary contrivance of telling essentially the same story from four different perspectives,that of the principal suspects. This is a technique fraught with danger that risks the reader becoming overwhelmed with the repetitive nature of the facts; however, Musgrave handles it extraordinarily well, with strong characters whose interesting, and at times, unusual perspectives of the same event prevent the reader from wearying of its retelling. The plot is as twisty and convoluted as any I have read lately and sucks the reader into the narrative so completely that they will constantly find themselves questioning the motives and actions of the various characters. You genuinely will want to read this story from cover to cover because it just won't let you go. 'The Dancing Murders is a trove of secrets, but author James Musgrave's own secret is his gift for capturing the psyches of larger than life historical figures including gunslinger Wyatt Earp and his Jewish common-law wife, notorious madam Ida Bailey, and pioneering female attorney Clara Shortridge Foltz. From the heights of Jewish mysticism to the seedy underbelly of nineteenth century San Diego, The Dancing Murders is California's answer to Rashomon and As I Lay Dying. In Musgrave's nimble hands, the death of Rabbi Sonenschein becomes a window into the life of a West Coast as fascinating as it is forgotten.'--Jacob M. Appel, author of Einstein's Beach House.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave, Joan Dukore (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Spiritualist Murders: Portia of the Pacific Historical Myteries, Volume 2

Kirkus Review: Women in 1886 San Francisco investigate murders of husbands by their hypnotized wives. In Musgrave's (Chinawoman's Chance, 2018, etc.) first installment of his series, he tells the story of a fictional 1884 murder case involving several historical San Franciscans, including Clara Shortridge Foltz, California's first female lawyer, and Ah Toy, a famous and wealthy Chinatown madam. In this volume, set two years later, Clara, 37, has been living with her brood of children at a Nob Hill mansion with her best friend, Ah Toy, 58, now an affluent art dealer. At a Rosicrucian gathering, Clara meets Adeline Quantrill, a distressed young woman who can hear thoughts from the living and the dead. She's a disciple of Rosicrucian Dr. Paschal Beverly Randolph, another historical figure, who wrote a banned book on sexual magic. A servant in a prosperous household, Adeline was called as a witness in the trial of Rachel Wilson-Rafferty for killing her abusive husband; the defense hoped her testimony would establish that the wife's doctor mesmerized her into doing it. The Nob Hill crew investigates further: questioning witnesses (sometimes through Adeline's clairvoyance), drawing on Ah Toy's uncle Little Pete (a Chinatown criminal), and learning more about Randolph. Additional cases arise of rich, abusive husbands seemingly murdered by their wives, and clues increasingly point toward wealthy widow Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion and a flamboyant spiritualist residing there. Can his nefarious plot be stopped? In this second outing, Musgrave nicely orchestrates historical elements from this heady era, such as the Winchester house and Randolph's ideas; they're as strange and compelling as fictive paranormal abilities. The link between the occult and the suffrage movement is a captivating example of how politics makes strange bedfellows, since two of the few venues where women's voices could be heard were churches and spiritualist meetings.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Spiritualist Murders

CLARA AND HER FAMILY MUST STOP A MESMERIZING MURDERERWomen in 1886 San Francisco are killing their husbands. Attorney detective Clara Foltz uses an eighteen-year-old clairvoyant to track down the mysterious man using the powers of sexual magnetism and mesmerism to turn abused women into murderers. This becomes a family mystery, as Clara's two oldest children get involved. Clara's assistant, Ah Toy, must also enlist the help of her evil uncle, Little Pete, because he also uses his paranormal abilities to control his harem of prostitutes in Chinatown. Ah Toy learns how he does it and leads Clara and her family inside the dark, seamy side of how women are controlled for nefarious purposes. But the true confrontation comes when Clara joins together with her attorney friend, Laura de Force Gordon, to question witnesses who testified at the trial of Mrs. Rachel Wilson-Rafferty. They also pay a visit to the wife of the man who began the first Rosicrucian group in America, Dr. Paschal Beverly Randolph. They learn he taught sexual magnetism and the use of hashish and marijuana to help transfix his members in spiritual trances before they had sex with their partners. As the wealthy and abusive husbands are murdered by their wives all over the United States, Clara and her team begin to close in on a variety of suspects. The supernatural climax leads to a final confrontation and the solution to the mystery, inside the Winchester house in San Jose, but not without several twists in the action, which place Clara's daughter and son in immediate danger. This second, much-awaited mystery in the Portia of the Pacific series shows how women used Spiritualism in order to further their rights as women and wives. In this case, however, women once again become victims of a sexist predator who will risk everything to achieve his misogynistic goals.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by James Musgrave