Historical

Celeste Connally: Revenge, Served Royal

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Lady Petra Inquires #3

Revenge, Served Royal is the delightful third entry in Celeste Connally’s series Lady Petra Investigates, featuring aristocratic sleuth Lady Petra Forsyth, the daughter of an earl, in Regency England.  Petra is an unconventional woman of her time.  She is fiercely independent and has sworn never to marry, after the death, in suspicious circumstances, of her fiancé.  That doesn’t keep her from having a sexual relationship with handsome intelligence officer Duncan Shawcross, and making no effort to hide the nature of their relationship.  She is also an excellent horsewoman and wears a special riding habit for riding astride.  Although she often defies the conventions, Petra is very much at home in high society, and has connections to the royal family. read more

Rosemary Simpson: In Deadly Fashion

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Gilded Age #10

Rosemary Simpson’s two protagonists in her Gilded Age series set in New York city are heiress and lawyer Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton agent Geoffrey Hunter,  partners in an investigative law firm.  Prudence is a member of New York’s elite, known as the Four Hundred, but she has defied society’s conventions and become one of the first female lawyers in the city, even though she is frustrated that she has not yet been allowed to argue a case in court.  Geoffrey is a Southerner who grew up on a plantation, but he left for the North as a young man because of his antislavery views, and decided to build a life for himself in New York.  The two of them have had a slow-burning romance since the beginning of the series.  Geoffrey realized he loved Prudence before she realized she loved him, and once she acknowledged her feelings, she resisted marriage for a long time because she didn’t want to give up her independence.  But now they are finally engaged and, as this book begins, in the late summer of 1891, the wedding date is set for mid-September, just a few weeks away. read more

Beth Lewis: The Rush

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Set in the late 1890s in the Klondike during the gold rush, this is epic story telling in the good old fashioned sense of the word, with the sweep of books like Gone with the Wind, Hawaii or Shogun. Author Lewis familiarizes the reader vividly with the hardships of simply surviving in the hostile climate of Klondike (then as now a part of Canada, not Alaska) while staking out a claim and mining in the hotly competitive hunt for gold.

The story is grounded in three female main characters, Kate, Ellen and Martha, who are loosely based on real women of the time, but come to vivid fictional life as the author applies her writerly magic. Kate is a reporter being paid a great deal of money to go on the trail and write about the men seeking claims, but who is also pursuing a search for her missing sister on her own time.  Ellen lives on her claim with her feckless husband, Charlie, who despite his best efforts is terrible at mining and only manages to steadily lose all their money.  Martha owns a hotel in the town of Dawson (where all the adventures begin), which also serves as a bar and a house of prostitution. read more

Andrea Penrose: Murder at Somerset House

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Wrexford & Sloane #9

Murder at Somerset House is the ninth book in Andrea Penrose’s Regency mystery series featuring the Earl of Wrexford, a chemist and amateur detective, and his wife Charlotte Sloane, who, under the pseudonym A.J. Quill, is England’s most famous political cartoonist.  It is an attraction of opposites: scientist and artist.  Wrexford uses logic and the scientific method to solve crimes, while Charlotte uses intuition and her artist’s eye.  Gradually, though, they learn the value of the other’s method and will occasionally adopt it when confronted with a crime.  One of the strengths of this series, besides the central couple’s developing relationship, is that each book deals with a different aspect of Regency science and technology, or inventions that were originally thought of during the Regency period, but not developed until later.  Recent books have covered such topics as steamships, locomotives, and suspension bridges.  In this book, the development of an electrical telegraph (not fully realized until 1838), is central to the plot. read more

Catherine Lloyd: Miss Morton and the Missing Heir

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Miss Morton #4

Not so long ago, Caroline Morton lost everything when her titled father died, leaving only debts and forcing her into service. Her employer, Mrs. Frogerton, treats her as a member of the family, however, and she likes being in control of her own fate. That free lifestyle is threatened when a claimant to the Morton earldom steps forward. In this fourth installment of the Regency set series by Catherine Llyod, Miss Morton and the Missing Heir, things get complicated quickly.

Mr. Scutton, the claimant, and his family arrive in town and want to meet Caroline. Caroline would rather have nothing to do with the Morton estate, as she can’t inherit anything herself anyway, but the Scuttons are immediately quite interested in her. Mrs. Scutton asks after her personal life, Mr. Scutton is much too interested in her marriage prospects and who she is friends with, and both are not the most polite. Even when Mrs. Frogerton offers to let them stay in her house to get to know Caroline so they don’t have to stay in a hotel, as the Morton home itself is run down and uninhabitable. read more

Colleen Gleason: Lady Darling Inquires After a Killer

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Series debut

Colleen Gleason (who also writes as Colleen Cambridge) adds a new series to her considerable list of works with a new series featuring Lady Darling, set in 1898 London. The Dowager Marchioness of Darling, Irene Colchester, has decided to return to London after a long sabbatical in the countryside. She’s helping a dear friend of hers who happens to be too ill to introduce her daughter to society by assisting that daughter in looking for a husband. Lady Darling is well respected but seen as a bit eccentric, and is the perfect sponsor for young Priscilla Bedwith. With all of her own children married off, Lady Darling has plenty of time and connections to help Priscilla make a success of her debut Season. Her secret hope is to marry the girl off quickly so that she can return to the countryside and avoid the frivolity of high society politics and gossip. Lady Darling has very little patience for wasting time on what she sees as frivolous conversation and false niceties, although she does put her best foot forward whenever she happens to be stuck in said social situations. read more

James R. Benn: A Bitter Wind

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Billy Boyle #20

This series is still enjoyable twenty books in, and while Benn’s fictional WWII may have now lasted longer than the real one, the latest book demonstrates that there are still many unexamined aspects to be explored, among them the dramatization what a complex and far reaching conflict it was, and how many different types of battlefields there were.  The story begins with the then nascent tactic of radio jamming, where radio waves were used to jam German signals, diverting or stopping attacks. read more

Katie Tietjen: Murder in Miniature

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Maple Bishop #2

The second book in the Maple Bishop series, Murder in Miniature, finds Maple at a bit of a crossroads. Though she has started to find her place in her small town, with a thriving dollhouse business, new friends, and a new position with the local law enforcement, she isn’t quite settled. When she came out here, it was with her husband, to support his career. Maple grew up a city girl in Boston, and worked hard to earn a legal degree, something she hasn’t been able to make use of in small town Vermont. Even with all the good things going on in her life, does she truly belong? read more

Cathy Pegau: A Murderous Buisness

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Series debut

This is an “old school” read, with everything good that comes to mind when you hear that phrase, which is to say it’s well structured, well written, with vivid  characters and a plot that moves efficiently to the conclusion. While this is a series debut, it’s far from Ms. Pegau’s maiden novel, as she’s written an assortment of others in various genres, including other mysteries.  This one is set in 1912 New York, anchored by references to the recent sinking of the Titanic. read more

Mariah Fredericks: The Girl in the Green Dress

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I love the way Mariah Fredericks writes. Her prose sings.  And if you are going to write about one of the greatest of all prose stylists, F. Scott Fitzgerald, you’ve got to have game yourself. While Scott and the lovely Zelda are not the main characters in this novel, they certainly inform it in every possible way.  The main character is a much lesser-known writer of the time, Morris Markey.  Markey, a friend of James Thurber’s and James M. Cain’s, wrote for The New Yorker and wrote extensively (for the purposes of this novel) about the still unsolved murder of James Elwell in 1920, a “swell” found shot through the head in his library.  His house happens to be across the street from Markey’s and he is one of the last people to have seen him alive, very early the morning of his death. read more