Queen Victoria

Patrice McDonough: Murder by Moonrise

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Dr. Julia Lewis #3

In 1867 London, the Isle of Wight was a holiday destination, one even favored by the royal family.  Queen Victoria had a home there and was often in residence.  In our story, Dr. Julia Lewis is vacationing on the Isle of Wight with her grandparents and missing and wondering about Detective Richard Tennant, who has been abroad and on the hunt for a villain for months.  She hasn’t heard from him and alongside worrying that he’s OK, she’s also worried that she was too forward, and that he doesn’t feel about her as she does about him. read more

Darcie Wilde: The Heir

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Series debut

I’ve read many books by Darcie Wilde (aka Sarah Zettel), but this may be my favorite.  The writing and pacing are crisp and the character development seems to utilize all the things Wilde must have learned writing her other books.  It’s exquisite.  While this is a pretty familiar story to a history buff, like any good historical novelist, Wilde shines a new light on history, illuminating the facts with her perceptions of the characters in the story.

The main character, Queen Victoria – Princess Victoria at the time of this novel – is living under the “Kensington System,” an elaborate and restrictive set of rules that governed Victoria’s life until she became Queen.  She never had a moment alone, had to sleep in her mother’s room, and every movement and thought she had was determined by her mother and her mother’s aide, Sir John Conroy. The result in both fact and fiction was that Victoria wanted nothing more than to shed the rules imposed on her and to try and evade them. read more

Dianne Freeman: A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder

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Lady Harleigh #6

A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder is the sixth book in Dianne Freeman’s delightful Countess of Harleigh mystery series set in London in 1900.  Frances, the American-born Countess of Harleigh, is newly married to her beloved George Hazelton.  She has found the happiness in her second marriage that she did not find in her first, to a philandering aristocrat who married her for her money and who died under mysterious circumstances in his mistress’ bed.  In the first book in the series, A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Murder, she solves the mystery of her first husband’s death, and it is this case that brings Frances and George together.  They have become partners in crime-solving as well as in life, and it is very much an equal partnership, even though George objects to accepting money from Frances’ father and that becomes a point of tension between them early in the book.  But never fear, the tension doesn’t last very long. read more