When University of Washington Professor Benjamin Bradshaw discovers the dead body of a despised colleague inside the Faraday cage of the electric machine, his carefully controlled world shatters.

The facts don’t add up. The police shout murder—and Bradshaw is the lone suspect. To protect his young son and clear his name, he must find the killer.

Seattle in 1901 is a bustling blend of frontier attitude and cosmopolitan swagger. The Snoqualmie Falls Power Plant lights the city, but to most Seattleites, electricity is newfangled and dangerous. The public wants a culprit—they want Bradshaw behind bars.

The killer wants Bradshaw dead.

His life and liberty threatened, Bradshaw discovers the thrill of investigation as he’s thrust deeper into the hunt. But questions abound. How had the electric machine’s Tesla coil delivered a fatal shock? Was the murder personal, or was it connected to President McKinley’s planned visit? Were students involved, or were they in danger? And why had Bradshaw’s best friend, Henry, fled to Alaska on the day of the murder?

Danger and death lurk everywhere—disguised as accidents. Then Henry’s niece, Missouri, appears on Bradshaw’s porch in need of a home. Her unorthodox views and femininity confuse and intrigue him, and he feels a spark of love while yet struggling to protect his own haunting secret. Has Bradshaw begun to feel alive again only to lose all he holds dear? Before it’s too late, he must discover the circuit path that led to a spark of death.

In the early years of the twentieth century, restorative waters are a popular health draw for many.

Healing Sands Sanitarium, northwest of Hoquiam, Washington, is located on the sandy edge of the Pacific Ocean and is famous for its restorative rest cure, fermented diets, and Dr. Hornsby’s electrotherapeutics. No one has ever died at Healing Sands–until now.

When Benjamin Bradshaw, a professor at the University of Washington and a specialist in electricity, is summoned to investigate, he immediately knows that this death was no accident. The only clue to foul play is an obvious one to him but will seem as insubstantial as smoke to anyone other than an electrical engineer. Suspects are limited to a handful whose lives–and lies–must be exhumed and examined.

A sinister tale emerges as deep undercurrents turn personal, provoking Bradshaw to make a decision about the woman he loves. And then an everyday object provides the key, alerting Bradshaw that one among them is a walking dead man and that another possesses the capacity for murder.

The race to win an electrical competition incites Professor Benjamin Bradshaw’s obsession for invention in this sequel to A Spark of Death.

The contest winner’s telephonic system will deliver music of the Seattle Grand Theater to homes throughout the city, and Bradshaw is confident he can win. But he is diverted by a peddler and a child gone missing, while the assassination of President McKinley drops Bradshaw and the entire nation into shock.

When Bradshaw discovers that the peddler’s child may have witnessed a murder, he follows her trail, which takes him to the Seattle waterfront below Yesler Way and into the seedy underworld of bars and brothels. Frustrated by the police department’s apathy and caught between power struggles, he doesn’t know whom to trust. Each step of his investigation entangles him deeper in crime and corruption until he realizes that, to save the peddler’s child, he must transform his contest entry into a trap to catch a killer.

The Professor Bradshaw Mystery series features Benjamin Bradshaw, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. Bradshaw’s electrical, forensic, and investigative skills, combined with a keen understanding of human nature, once againbring the Seattle Police–and murder–to his doorstep amid the social and scientific turmoil of the early twentieth century.

When Thomas Alva Edison asks for information, most feel compelled to give it. Not University of Washington professor Benjamin Bradshaw. Not when the question concerns a device conceived in anger and harnessed for murder. Bradshaw hopes the mysterious invention remains lost in Elliott Bay, eluding the search of deep-sea divers. But when, on a cold December morning in 1903, an electrician is found dead in the men’s wear window of Seattle’s Bon March+(r) clutching a festoon of Edison’s holiday lights, Bradshaw suspects a dangerous game has been set in motion. Greed, passion, silence? Motives multiply as the dead man’s secrets come to light.

Bradshaw and his investigative partner Henry Pratt join Seattle police detective James O’Brien to narrow suspects, but Bradshaw’s intuition fails him. His heart is elsewhere, his attention distracted by the dilemma of loving a woman he cannot marry without defying his faith. With Christmas fast approaching, the pressure mounts, as does Bradshaw’s dread that this will be his first unsolved case. With no other option, he does the unthinkable and prepares to face his greatest fears. Whatever the outcome, there will be no going back.