The lean times following the Great War continue to require creative solutions for England’s noble class. But Lady Phoebe’s proposal to open up the Renshaw estate to guided tours for additional income strikes many in the family as a “vulgar enterprise.” Phoebe’s grandfather, the Earl of Wroxly, however, reluctantly concedes the necessity.

Their first tour group consists of members of the Historical Society, a magazine writer, and a flock of students. It’s a large group for Phoebe, Phoebe’s sister Amelia, and Eva to manage, and when the widow Arvina Bell goes missing, Eva goes in search of her-only to find her in the library, strangled with a silken drapery cord.

The schoolchildren are promptly sent home, but the members of the Historical Society-many of whom also wandered off at times-remain for interrogation. There is also, curiously, a framed photo missing from the library. As the police hastily zero in on a suspect, Phoebe and Eva weigh the clues. Does the crime have to do with rumors of hidden treasure at Foxwood Hall? But they must make haste to solve the widow’s murder-before someone else becomes history . . .

Amid the aftermath of the Great War and its hardships, it’s no wonder that many wish to rediscover life’s pleasures-parties, fashion, dancing. Still, Lady Phoebe and Eva are disconcerted when a small gathering at the home of Phoebe’s sister, Julia, becomes a far larger and more glamorous affair . . .

Julia has invited her favorite French fashion designer, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, and Coco’s current beau, the Earl of Chesterhaven. Coco has brought an entourage of her own, including two models, and intends to use the gardens as a photographic setting for her latest creations.

Madame Chanel is as outspoken as she is talented, offering a scathing critique of Phoebe’s fashion sense. There is tense competition between the models as well. When one of the guests is found dead of smoke inhalation, it appears to be a tragic accident. But was a footman really to blame for mistakenly closing the fireplace flue, or is there a more sinister explanation?

Phoebe is determined to find out, despite the protestations of her sweetheart, Owen Seabright. Both above and below stairs, Phoebe and Eva uncover myriad motives-career ambition, romantic rivalries, and even deeper betrayals.

Since the Great War, some family fortunes have suffered, including those of the Renshaws. Despite being the granddaughter of an earl, Julia Renshaw is under pressure to marry for money-and has settled for Gilbert Townsend, a viscount and a wealthy industrialist. He is decades older than Julia, and it’s clear to her sister Phoebe-and to Eva, who has been like a surrogate mother to the girls-that this is not a love match. Nevertheless, the wedding takes place-and in a hurry.

At the reception aboard the groom’s yacht, there appears to be tension between Gil and several guests: his best man, a fellow veteran of the Boer War; his grouchy spinster sister; and his current heir, a nervous young cousin named Ernest. The bride is also less than pleased when she discovers that her honeymoon will be more crowded than expected-with Gil’s pretty secretary, among others, coming along.

That very night, Julia pounds on her sister’s door, brandishing a bandaged hand and reporting a hot-tempered outburst on her new husband’s part. Then the next morning, before the yacht can depart the harbor, Gil’s body is found in the water below. Phoebe and Eva must discover who pushed him over-before the Renshaws’ social standing is irreparably stained by Julia’s arrest for his murder . . .

As England recovers from its costly involvement in the Great War, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s
maid, Eva Huntford, find the steady comforts of their lives unsettled by a local case of murder …

Eva is excited for a visit from her sister Alice, who lives in Suffolk with her husband and three children. But when
Alice arrives alone, desiring a break from her family, Eva becomes concerned. Her dismay deepens as Alice starts
spending time with a former beau, Keenan Ripley, who owns the nearby pear orchard. At the same time, Phoebe’s
sister Julia, now a widow and pregnant, is in a fretful state, and Phoebe struggles to be helpful to her.

When Keenan’s brother Stephen, the new head gardener at the Renshaw estate, Foxwood Hall, is found impaled by
a pair of hedge clippers, the police–including Eva’s beau, Constable Miles Brannock–suspect his closest kin. Stephen
had been eager to sell their orchard to an American developer, but Keenan had fiercely resisted. A table set with two
teacups and scones suggests Keenan had company the morning of the murder–and Eva fears her sister was with him.

If Alice were to provide Keenan with an alibi, her reputation and marriage would be ruined. She denies being there
but is clearly withholding secrets, much to Eva’s consternation. Now, to protect her sister, Eva and Phoebe set off to
expose the gardener’s real killer, putting their own lives at risk …

Following the devastation of the Great War, England’s noble class takes comfort in honoring tradition. To celebrate their grandparents’ wedding anniversary, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her siblings travel to Staffordshire to commission a china service bearing the Wroxly coat of arms from the venerated Crown Lily Potteries, a favorite of Queen Mary.

The two leading designers at the illustrious china manufacturer offer competing patterns. But when one of them is found dead-his body crushed in a grinding pan and his design pattern book missing-his rival is immediately suspected. The police are also suspicious of the dead designer’s resentful young son, a schoolmate of Phoebe’s fifteen-year-old brother Fox. When Fox gets involved to help his friend, Phoebe begins to investigate the rival artist.

At the same time, Eva is enlisted to go undercover at the works so she can gain the confidence of the female employees, who are only allowed to paint, not design, which may have led to a grudge against the victim. Pursuing a killer who has no compunction about using a kiln as a coffin, Phoebe and Eva take their lives into their hands to discover the shattering truth . . .

As a reporter, Emma is used to covering Newport’s social events. But this time she is appearing on the arm of her fiance, Derrick Andrews, at a small but exclusive gathering of the New York Yacht Club at Beacon Rock, the Grecian-inspired summer “cottage” of Edwin and Elizabeth Morgan. The members-which include cousin and Yacht Club Commodore John Pierpoint Morgan and widow Lucy Carnegie, the first woman to be admitted to the Club-are there to discuss their strategy for the next America’s Cup Challenge, to be held in New York Harbor the following summer.

But it’s Emma who must come up with a strategy when she discovers a woman’s body bobbing against one of the hulls of the boats moored at the base of Beacon Rock. Is it possible she fell from the Newport ferry and was carried by the tide? Or could she have drowned herself or fallen victim to foul play?

After the woman is identified as the missing daughter of a yacht designer, the police-with the exception of Emma’s friend Detective Jesse Whyte-hastily conclude she is a suicide, perhaps to quiet any scandal for the Morgans, since her body was found floating near their property. But Emma suspects the woman was murdered and begins to sort through a who’s who of sportsmen, boat crews, and the Newport elite in search of a stone-cold killer . . .

Late nineteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, is home to some of America’s wealthiest citizens. For society reporter Emma Cross, a less well-heeled cousin to the illustrious Vanderbilts, trailing gossip and glamour will lead her straight into murder . . .

Emma’s job is to take note of the real players off the field-Newport’s well-bred elite. But the fashionable façade is breached when a woman demands to speak to the wife of Senator George Wetmore-until she is escorted off the grounds by the police.

The next morning, police detective Jesse Whyte asks Emma to meet him at the Wetmores’s Bellevue Avenue home, Chateau sur Mer, where the senator’s wife, Edith, has mysteriously asked to see her. Upon entering the mansion, Emma is confronted with a crime scene-the intruder from the polo match lies dead at the foot of a grand staircase.

Edith Wetmore implores Emma to use her reporter skills and her discretion to investigate. When Emma learns the victim was a prostitute-and pregnant-she wonders if the senator was being blackmailed. As Emma peels back layers of deception and family secrets, she may have met her match in a desperate killer who will trample anyone who gets in the way . . .

The days are getting shorter as summer’s end approaches, which means it’s time for the Harvest Festival, the last big event of the season, held by Mamie Fish, wife of millionaire railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish, at their grand “cottage,” Crossways. The neocolonial mansion is decked out in artificial autumn splendor, and an extravagant scavenger hunt will be held. But the crowning jewel of the evening will be the guest of honor, Prince Otto of Austria.

As acting editor-in-chief of the Newport Messenger, Emma had hoped to leave her days as a society reporter behind her. But at the last moment, she must fill in and attend the Harvest Festival. With nearly every eligible daughter of Newport high society in attendance, Emma can almost hear romantic dreams shattering like glass slippers when the prince fails to appear. The next morning, he is found dead in the side garden at Crossways, making it clear a murderer crashed the party.

The prince has been stabbed in the same manner as another man, recently found on nearby Bailey’s Beach-who strongly resembles Emma’s half-brother Brady’s father, presumed dead for nearly thirty years after a yachting mishap. As Emma investigates a connection between the two victims, she is joined on the hunt by Mamie Fish herself. But they must hurry-before the killer slips away like the fading summer . . .

In late nineteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, journalist Emma Cross discovers the newest form of
transportation has become the newest type of murder weapon …

On a clear July day in 1899, the salty ocean breeze along Bellevue Avenue carries new smells of gasoline and
exhaust as Emma, now editor-in-chief of the Newport Messenger, covers Newport’s first-ever automobile parade. But
the festive atmosphere soon turns to shock as young Philip King drunkenly swerves his motorcar into a wooden figure
of a nanny pushing a pram on the obstacle course.

That evening, at a dinner party hosted by Ella King at her magnificent Gothic-inspired “cottage,” Kingscote,
Emma and her beau Derrick Andrews are enjoying the food and the company when Ella’s son staggers in, obviously
still inebriated. But the disruption is nothing compared to the urgent shouts of the coachman. Rushing out, they find
the family’s butler pinned against a tree beneath the front wheels of Philip’s motorcar, close to death.

At first, the tragic tableau appears to be a reckless accident–one which could ruin Philip’s reputation. But when
Emma later receives a message informing her that the butler bullied his staff and took advantage of young maids, she
begins to suspect the scene may have been staged and steers the police toward a murder investigation. But while Emma
investigates the connections between a competing heir for the King fortune, a mysterious child, an inmate of an insane
asylum, and the brutal boxing rings of Providence, a killer remains at large–with unfinished business to attend to …

With the dawn of the twentieth century on the horizon, the fortunes of the venerable Vanderbilt family still shine brightly in the glittering high society of Newport, Rhode Island. But when a potential scandal strikes, the Vanderbilts turn to cousin and society page reporter Emma Cross to solve a murder and a disappearance . . .
Responding to a frantic call on her newfangled telephone from her eighteen-year-old cousin, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Emma Cross arrives at the Marble House mansion and learns the cause of her distress-Consuelo’s mother, Alva, is forcing her into marriage with the Duke of Marlborough. Her mother has even called in a fortune teller to assure Consuelo of a happy future.
But the future is short-lived for the fortune teller, who is found dead by her crystal ball, strangled with a silk scarf. Standing above her is one of the Vanderbilts’ maids, who is promptly taken into police custody. After the frenzy has died down, Consuelo is nowhere to be found. At Alva’s request, Emma must employ her sleuthing skills to determine if the vanishing Vanderbilt has eloped with the beau of her choice-or if her disappearance may be directly connected to the murder . . .

After a disappointing year as a society columnist for the Herald and staying with her more well-heeled Vanderbilt relatives in New York City, Emma has returned to the salty air, glittering ocean vistas, and grand stately mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, more determined than ever to report on hard news.

But for now she’s covering the social event of the season at Ochre Court, a coming-out ball designed to showcase Cleo Cooper-Smith, who will be literally on display, fittingly as Cleopatra, in an elaborate tableau vivant. Recently installed modern electricity will allow Miss Cooper-Smith to truly shine. But as the deb ascends to her place of honor, the ballroom is plunged into darkness. When the lights come back on, Cleo sits still on her throne, electrocuted to death.

Quickly establishing that the wiring was tampered with, Emma now has a murder to investigate. And the array of eligible suspects could fill another ballroom-from a shady New York real estate developer to a neglected sister and the mother of a spurned suitor. As Emma begins to discover this crime has unseen connections to a nefarious network, she puts her own life at risk to shine a light on the dark motives behind a merciless murder.

In a historical mystery for Downton Abbey fans, a society reporter covers a killer party in Gilded Age Newport.
Newport, Rhode Island, August 1895: She may be a less well-heeled relation, but as second cousin to millionaire patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt, twenty-one-year-old Emma Cross is on the guest list for a grand ball at the Breakers, the Vanderbilts’ summer home. She also has a job to do-report on the event for the society page of the Newport Observer.
But Emma observes much more than glitz and gaiety when she witnesses a murder. The victim is Cornelius Vanderbilt’s financial secretary, who plunges off a balcony faster than falling stock prices. Emma’s black sheep brother Brady is found in Cornelius’s bedroom passed out next to a bottle of bourbon and stolen plans for a new railroad line. Brady has barely come to before the police have arrested him for the murder. But Emma is sure someone is trying to railroad her brother and resolves to find the real killer at any cost . . .

Following the death of her uncle, Cornelius Vanderbilt, in September 1899, a somber Emma is in no mood for one of Newport’s extravagant parties. But to keep Vanderbilt’s reckless son Neily out of trouble, she agrees to accompany him to an Elizabethan fete on the lavish grounds of Wakehurst, the Ochre Point “cottage” modeled after an English palace, owned by Anglophile James Van Alen.
Held in Wakehurst’s English-style gardens, the festivities will include a swordplay demonstration, an archery competition, scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, and even a joust. As Emma wanders the grounds distracted by grief, she overhears a fierce argument between a man and a woman behind a tall hedge. As the joust begins, she’s drawn by the barking of Van Alen’s dogs and finds a man on the ground, an arrow through his chest.
The victim is one of the 400’s most influential members, Judge Clayton Schuyler. Could one of the countless criminals he’d imprisoned over the years have returned to seek revenge-or could one of his own family members have targeted him? With the help of her beau Derrick Andrews and Detective Jesse Whyte, Emma begins to learn the judge was not the straight arrow he appeared to be. As their investigation leads them in ever-widening circles, Emma will have to score a bull’s eye to stop the killer from taking another life . . .