Showing results by author "Marisa Paxon" in All Categories

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already carried an entire Mayfair Season, three dozen teacups, and one extremely rude corpse across the page, and now they have decided I must also persuade you to join the mess. Fine. Come in, mind the carpet. In A Spot of Murder in Mayfair, Lady Helena Foxe is supposed to be doing what well bred young ladies do best, namely, smiling politely while other people ruin their own lives in whispers. Instead, a tired clerk with ink on his finger and trouble in his wake collapses in her family’s drawing room, leaving blood in the wool and ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled the novel through every dripping corridor, every self-important meeting, and every cup of coffee that tastes faintly of despair, and now “they” want me to sell it as well. Fine. I have carried heavier things than a blurb, usually other people’s egos. At Ainsworth Court, Lady Seraphina Vale, Countess of Ainsworth, is attempting the apparently scandalous feat of being a widow with a spine and a canal to build, when her map room decides to lock itself and her chief surveyor obligingly dies face-first in ink. Locked door, ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I already carried every waltz, whisper, and corpse across the finish line, and now “they” have decided I should also stand in the foyer and beckon strangers inside. Splendid. Miss Clemency Harrow arrives at Ashbourne Hall on a Tuesday with a sensible spine, an insolvent father, and an engagement arranged as neatly as a place setting, right down to the Earl waiting at the bottom of the stairs like a man who has never trusted soup. Unfortunately, the house has opinions, the guests have secrets, and Mr Horace Pettigrew has come armed with moral ...

I am the narrator of this book; I dragged every quarrel, corpse, kitchen mishap, and regrettable glance across the page without so much as a thank you, and now they have decided I must sell it to you as well. Very well; if I could endure the Earl of Harrowden’s dinner table, I can certainly endure your browser window. What you are walking into is a cozy Regency manor house mystery with one extremely opinionated ghost. Harrowden House is a grand Northumberland pile kept upright on watered wine and creative accounting, and I had the privilege of watching its famously miserly earl drop dead ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I already carried every locked gate, every polite lie, and one remarkably well dressed corpse without so much as a “thank you.” Now they have decided I should also lure you in from the product page, as if my duties include recruitment. Welcome to a cozy Regency murder in the Tower of London menagerie, where the animals are caged, the humans are not, and someone has the audacity to leave a dead viscount on the stones like an item misplaced in a hallway. Imogen Aldridge only meant to unlock the lion house at dawn, check the beasts, and get on ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled an entire viscount, several cups and saucers, and one academy’s worth of respectable hysteria into orderly sentences, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Apparently my reward for keeping everyone from fainting into the evidence is marketing. At Madame Rochfort’s Academy for Select Young Ladies, morning chocolate is meant to calm nerves and encourage obedient embroidery, not drop a patron dead onto the salon carpet. Viscount Halverton arrives to be admired, praised, and quietly mined for subscriptions; he ...

I have already carried this entire tale across the finish line, kept the facts in order, and stopped the characters from licking anything obviously poisonous, and now they have decided I must sell it too. Very well, hover at the threshold, and try to look innocent. Here is what waits on the other side of page one: Miss Tabitha Grey of Greycot Cottage, botanist, notebook tyrant, and the sort of nosy neighbour who owns a spyglass “for excursions” and then points it at Merrow Abbey because, frankly, there were grooms and trunks and a returning duke to be assessed. Gabriel Merrow comes home...

Hydrotherapy is meant to soothe the nerves, not drown the investors. At the Royal Hydropathic, it has started doing both. Come for the cure, stay murdered. Miss Beatrice Harrow, lady physician with a talent for calm diagnoses and inconvenient honesty, expects difficult lungs, sulky vapour, and guests who cheat on their prescribed walks. She does not expect Alderman Josiah Frobisher, the hotel’s loudest shareholder, to be found very quiet indeed in the grand marble bath after a “restorative” treatment. The water smells wrong, the electrical apparatus looks offensively innocent, and the...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already carried one stubborn widow, one inconveniently principled doctor, and an entire village’s worth of holy outrage across the page, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Apparently murder is not labour unless it comes with marketing. A cozy Regency whodunit where Sunday best meets a very un-Sunday death. In the village of Hartleigh, Phoebe Hartwell keeps an apothecary, a steady hand, and her temper in a respectable jar, largely because the alternative is letting the manor decide what sort of widow she is allowed to be. ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled an entire Egyptian gallery, one stubborn earl, several crates of “private arrangements,” and a corpse dressed for the wrong millennium into coherent order, and now they have decided I must also persuade you to join in. Apparently my reward for keeping everyone from fainting into the evidence is commerce. Lord Caddington hosts an after dinner unwrapping in his London townhouse, candles lit, scholars twitching, society ladies sharpening their smiles, and one coffin waiting under glass like a promise. Miss Isabel Fairleigh, ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled you through sea-mist, ruined stone, and the moral fibre of the British upper classes, and now “they” have decided I should also sell it. Naturally. Welcome to Wynthorpe Castle, perched on the North Sea cliffs like a threat. Miss Elinor Gresham, hired expert in manufactured hauntings, arrives with lenses, gauze, lamp oil, and the calm competence of a woman who can make a drawing room scream on schedule. The Duke of Wynthorpe wants a harbour, a handful of wealthy subscribers to pay for it, and a weekend of tastefully ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled everyone through every candlelit smile, every petty social skirmish, and one spectacularly ill timed corpse, and now they have decided I should also sell it. Naturally. Welcome to Penninghurst, where the Dowager Marchioness hosts a matchmaking fête so expensive it could heat a curate for the winter, and so tightly managed it could make a grown man apologise for breathing out of rhythm. Imogen Fairweather arrives as chaperone to her seventeen year old cousin, armed with borrowed silk, a talent for sums, and the sort of ...

As the narrator of this novel, I have, against my better judgement, already carried you through every sly wager, every sanctimonious club rule, and one extremely inconvenient death, and now they insist I must also stand here and hawk the whole ordeal like a street vendor with a conscience. Fine. Hold onto your gloves. Newmarket is full of men who think honour is something you pin to a cravat, right up until the Prince’s Cup favourite collapses in the straw with foam at his mouth and nobody can agree whether it counts as murder because the victim had four legs. Miss Beatrice Linton is only...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I already hauled you through every paragraph of virtue, vice, and shelving, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Apparently death by furniture is not self explanatory. Welcome to the Ladies’ Minerva Library, where the hall smells of ink and soap, the rule book is impeccable, and the shelves are full of exactly what everyone swears they are not reading. Eleanor Pryce keeps the catalogues honest, the keys accounted for, and the sermons politely returned, while the Gothic romances travel under cover of moral improvement, as God and Mrs...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I am to haul you through every polite disaster inside it and receive precisely none of the credit. Now they have decided I should also sell it, as though I were not busy keeping everyone from lying in the same sentence. Beatrix Langford arrives at a country observatory to do the sensible work, copy figures, reconcile ledgers, and let titled people feel clever beneath a dome with a slit like a watchful eye. Then Lady Honoria Pemberton falls down her own staircase, very dramatically and quite dead, leaving behind an irritable ghost who refuses to be...

I am the narrator of this book. I carried every soaked boot, every jangled key, every polite lie, and the entire corpse without so much as a thank-you; now they want me to smile and sell it too. Splendid. Welcome to a Regency manor house mystery where order is a weapon, and Miss Cecilia Arden wields it like a teaspoon sharpened by necessity. She arrives at Larkspur Hall in December, boots and patience equally damp, to take a post that requires figures, nerve, and the ability to shut a front door in the face of Dorset itself. She has all three. She also has very little choice. Naturally, the...

One dead patron. One poisonous Palm House. One inspector who keeps noticing the same woman. The difficulty with unveiling a grand new Palm House is that someone invariably decides to die in it before the tea has been poured. When Lady Helena Westerleigh collapses face first into Briarwick Conservatory’s prize orchid at the opening ceremony, polite society blames the heat, the brass railings, and possibly the sandwiches, in that order. Miss Beatrice Elwood, botanical illustrator and reluctant expert in poisonous foliage, quietly notices the wrong spores on the right gloves and realises the...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled you across a frozen river, past gingerbread stalls and shrieking swing ropes, and now they have decided I should sell the whole affair as well. Dead satirist, thawing hearts, absolutely freezing toes, if you enjoy slogans that double as medical warnings. Welcome to the Thames Frost Fair, that short lived miracle where London pretends it is sensible to build shops on ice. Anne Redgrave, daughter of a Paternoster Row bookseller (ink on her fingers, opinions in her pocket), is trying to make an honest living selling improving ...

There are places one expects to find dead railway directors. The message room of the Central Telegraph Office is not supposed to be one of them. Senior telegraph clerk Miss Clara Nevin spends her nights routing London’s secrets along humming wires, turning other people’s crises into neat lines of ink. Then Mr Arthur Lestrange of the North-Eastern Railway is discovered sitting unnaturally upright at her instrument, politely strangled with a coil of spare wire, and a single Home Office message quietly disappears from her rack. Enter Mr Elias Blackwood, discreet inquiry agent with an ...

I am the narrator of this book. I carried every ink blot, every committee smile, and one extremely heavy marble torso without so much as a thank-you, and now they have decided I should sell it to you as well. Marvellous. I drop you into Mayfair, where a perfectly respectable townhouse has been dressed up as the centre of Greek learning, mostly so the ton can drink wine and mispronounce Athens with confidence. Miss Adelaide Pembroke arrives with a portfolio, a generous fee, and the sort of inconvenient eyesight that notices when a plinth has been wedged, unwedged, and wedged again. Then Sir ...