Tag: mystery
Will two bullets allow the murderer and the French master spy to continue their work against the British government?
Meet Phinney ~ at this link
Meet Conrad ~ by following this link.
Vic the lockpick ~ is introduced here.
And have another Glimpse of the Danger ~ read it here.
Purchase it Here or at one of the online distributors at this link.
Years ago, Agatha Helmes’ lover abandoned her. When her baby died at birth, she thought all her hopes for the future had ended.
She poured herself into her family’s farm, but in the last year, mismanagement by three different stewards has the farm losing more money than she can pour into it.
Jess Carter occasionally crewed for a known smuggler to bring a little extra into his home. He fell for a maid working at the Hawthorn Inn. Then the smuggling ring was arrested. The woman he thought he loved married another man. With a bruised heart for company, he packed up all his possessions and left his home.
Not knowing where to go, Jess consulted the smugglers’ fence Richard Helmes who directed him to Helmes Farm to assist the current steward. His cousin Agatha Helmes, he says, will hire anyone he sends to her.
When Jess arrives, the current steward is assaulting Agatha. He routs the old steward and finds himself in a job he doesn’t understand, taking advice and orders from a woman.
Agatha knows only one thing about her new steward: he doesn’t lie. Jess admits what he knows and doesn’t know about farming. He admits that he is avoiding arrest for smuggling. That is more than she can say about her former stewards and her former fiancé.
Trust between Agatha and Jess grows from a seed to a mighty oak. Attraction entwines them with compatibility and grows the first tendrils of love.
Then the steward’s cottage is set on fire, and Jess barely escapes.
The burned house reveals an old murder as the bones of Agatha’s former lover are discovered—with a bullet hole in the skull.
And the deed to Helmes Farm and other documents go missing.
With Agatha’s cousin trying to steal her farm, can Jess reveal her cousin hired him to watch out for his interests?
Will the constable investigating the new arson and the old murder think Agatha guilty of murdering her lover when he wouldn’t marry her?
And will their new love survive the questions and confusion?
The Dangers to Hearts is a sweet romantic suspense of approximately 50,000 words. While the novel is the sixth in the Hazards to Hearts series, it is complete and contains no cliffhangers. The character of Jess Carter was introduced in the first Hearts in Hazard book, A Game of Secrets. Reading that novel will enrich your experience, but it is not necessary.
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A short story mystery featuring Isabella Newcombe Tarrant from the Into Death series.
Blackmail threatens a young bride when her secret diary is stolen. Her marriage of convenience is threatened if the contents are revealed to her new husband and his autocratic mother.
Can Isabella recover the diary before the bride loses all hope?
Sailing With Mystery ~
Travel presents opportunities to meet new friends and see new places. Isabella also encounters puzzling crimes and dangerous intrigue as she sails from England to India.
The next short story is “Purple Poison”.
Link for Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1YG2J6Q
Link to Wide Distribution ~ Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/3yWAAl
In discussing with the covers with Kim, the design project manager at Deranged Doctor Design, we decided to avoid the problem with so few accurate images from 1921. Instead, we chose to emphasize the protagonist Isabella’s art with five watercolor images. Finding similar images became the next design challenge. We hope that the ones we have picked not only represent Isabella’s venture into watercolors but also the atmosphere and settings for the story.
The “Amber Dreams” cover represents the rocky coasts that Isabella would have seen along the French and Spanish coastlines.
The primary cover harks to Isabella standing to one side of the image. The ocean and the railing of the ship evoke where she is while the tumultuous sky echoes the mysteries she encounters while aboard the passenger ship.
Enjoy!
The Into Death series:
Digging into Death ~ Love and murder on an archaeological dig. Has the love of her life beguiled Isabella straight into death?
Christmas with Death ~ An English country manor offers Christmas merriment, miracles, and murder. Will Isabella be the next victim?
Portrait with Death ~ When murder paints with blood, will Isabella and her new friend Flick discover that the murderer? Or will the murderer stop them?
View M.A. Lee’s page on this site (click the link above) for more information about the Into Death series and to find links to the three novels and a bundle of the first three novels.
Discovering Your Writing. Characters. Plot. Branding. Sentence Craft. A ready-reference to build your writing career.
One-click link for the book description, trailer, and purchase.
The bundled series Spells of Air. Elemental magic. Dangerous Dark Fae allies. Treacherous shape-shifted. A twisted sorceress.
The Dangers to Hearts
What can possibly go wrong in an idyll?
Arson uncovers a decade-old murder. Agatha’s vanished fiancé didn’t abandon her; someone murdered him.
Troubles past and present swirl around destructive hatred in this twisty romantic mystery.
Explore here and purchase here.
The Hazard for Spies ~ Disguised to Spy.
A young constable tracks treacherous traitors. A spinster hopes to find a killer. Will murder destroy their chance for love?
The Danger for Spies brings back the character of Toby Kennitt from A Game of Spies.
Past actions cause present dangers.
Eugenie DesChamps thinks she is safe, hidden in the English village of Little Houghton. She paints landscapes to supplement her income. She embarks on a flirtation with Charles Audley. To her the world seems radiant, so very different from eight years ago.
No one knows that she once was a toast of Paris, a pretense she used to acquire information to pass on to English spies. Eugenie hated the corrupt French government that had caused the deaths of her family. Then a French agent discovered her double game. She barely escaped with her life.
Eight years ago, Tobias Kennit worked with Eugenie, stealing information about Napoleon’s troop movements. Then their operation crashed. He fled, believing that Eugenie was executed as a traitor to her home country. Toby abandoned his undercover spying and became a gamester and a rake.
Yet now the English spycatcher Roger Nazenby has approached Toby once more. He wants him to protect a cryptographer living in the village of Little Houghton. French spies have infiltrated England to capture Charles Audley and return with him to France. Toby agrees to the assignment only because the woman he wants to marry (Melly Ratcliffe) lives in that village.
Charles Audley returned to his home village for peace and quiet after stressful years in London developing a series of ciphers for English agents. His latest ciphers led to English victories in the Peninsular War.
In Little Houghton, he is charmed by Eugenie DesChamps, a mysterious French artist. Their flirtation distracts him from his cryptography, but he feels no guilt whenever he is in her company.
When Toby sees Eugenie, he is shocked. Eugenie is not dead, and he wants answers from a woman he thought was a double agent. Is she in Little Houghton to help kidnap the cryptographer? She convinces him that she is not—but who is the threat to Charles Audley? And can they protect Audley when they do not know when or where the attack will strike?
French agent Didier Poulaine has spent eight years weaving together the snippets of threads to help him locate the only two spies who ever escaped him: Eugenie de la Croix and an Englishman masquerading as a French military officer. He tracks them to Little Houghton, the location of the cryptographer he came to England to kidnap—or kill.
Poulaine’s threads have woven together. Three lives intersect again and involve a fourth. Blood will be shed before the past is purged. Whose blood?
The Dangers for Spies is a romantic historical suspense set in Regency England, part of the Hearts in Hazard series. While this novel and The Game of Spies have interconnected characters, D4Spies is a complete work on its own. However, readers will have a richer experience if they have also read The Game of Spies.
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