Showing results by author "Anne Arrandale" in All Categories

Til Duprey is living his dream. The young man is working in Europe as a stringer for an international news service, doing a bit of snooping for the US Government, all while helping Father Roncalli smuggle some Jewish orphans out of France. Meanwhile, Maeve Nagel is fed up. She can't live up to her mother's expectations, no matter what she does. It all began when she was born, although Maeve never knew it. At least not until she had the audacity to be seen in public wearing slacks. Then she does the unthinkable and goes out with Til Duprey. Maeve's father takes his daughter's side. Is this ...

Wilhelm Weissmann and his bride of five months have welcomed a new arrival, Sofia Alis Weissmann. Unfortunately, a younger member of the Weissmann clan, Til Duprey, managed to infiltrate the German American Bund, who in turn took revenge on young Til by having his mother murdered. The killer was eventually killed. But the Bund never forgets. Two days after her christening, two week old Sofia Alis is stolen from her bed. Was it the Bund? A Klan member with an ax to grind? And the bigger question, where is she, and will she be returned to her parents unharmed?

Laura Tregonning Weissmann has blown into town like an ill wind. After making her singing debut with Isaac Pick at only 17 in Strasbourg, she has gone on to bigger, if not better things. She's been singing with a big band in some dump in Alabama. Her boyfriend, the drummer Lonzo Phoenix, beat her within an inch of her life. It was enough to finally drive Laura to o home to her adoptive father, Wilhelm Weissmann. As Laura is arriving, Til is leaving town for his first big job. His paper is sending him to Lakehurst, New Jersey to cover the arrival of the giant Hindenburg Zeppelin. His ...

July 1935: An oddly dressed young woman is found wandering a country road, bloody and covered in ants. Later, a body is found in a wrecked car about two miles away. The question is, what happened to the woman, and is the blood hers? Follow the continued drama of the families in Tennessee Valley Blues Mysteries.

Marcel Duprey and his family are moving south to Tennessee when the unthinkable happens. And because the victim is a person of color, the local police refuse to really investigate. Marcel calls upon his brother-in-law and friend to take over the investigation. Meanwhile, Danny Shay, the former Marine, gets his first taste of police undercover work, when he braves the seamy underbelly of one of Baltimore's marginalized communities.

Monument City Mysteries ended in 1925. Now, in 1934, share the lives of the next generation. Declan Dougherty, Mary Faith Shay and her sister Chiara are returning home after finishing college. They step off the train and right into a family tragedy. Just when they think things can’t get worse, Declan’s step-father is called to the police station to stave off a lynching. It is the fledgling attorney’s opportunity to take on his first case as he tries to decide between opening his own practice or going to work for the District Attorney’s office. A young man's life hangs in the balance...

Martin Durkin, Jr., "The Sheik Killer", has been cutting a wide swath through the country. He's known far and wide as a vicious cop killer and robber. But he's tall and sharp looking, and the women think he has "IT". He's got three wives in different states, and girlfriends all over the place. He's also got a father who's trying to flatten his time in the Maryland Penitentiary, thanks to the efforts of Tom Ribiero and Dylan Shay of the Bureau of Investigation. When Junior figures out a way to help his father bust out, while he goes after the men who put him away, all hell is about to bust ...

Things are heating up in Coatesville. The Klan has taken umbrage because there is a group of Catholics in their "Christian" town. Worst of all, those Catholics are doing well for themselves and have the audacity to do things like hire and befriend people of color. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, things are getting even hotter. Dr. Karl Reichmann has established a medical practice near a college where he has young men working as "Therapists" for some of his female patients. Isaac, the young baritone who has graduated from Peabody, has been invited to sing in Europe. His music master has a month to ...

January, 1923. The United States Marine Corps has occupied Haiti since 1915. Danny Shay joined up as soon as he turned 18, figuring he'd get sent to Europe to fight in the War to End All Wars. Instead he got shipped off to Haiti, where he was witness to some of the atrocities being perpetrated against the Haitian population. As soon as he was able, he left the service and began working his way back to Baltimore. He arrives in town only to discover that his brothers have moved to Tennessee. Marcel's half-brother, Klaus, has been letting his jealousy get the better of him. He wants what his ...

February, 1920. Prohibition went into effect a month before. Prohibition agents are political hacks, most having bought their positions, and more apt to make more in graft from the bootleggers than from their salaries. At the same time, the Governor of the State of Maryland declared his state would remain as "wet as ever". Police were told to stand down on all matters regarding enforcement of the Volstead Act or the 18th Amendment. Gabby Lane Pennington is no longer running a patent medicine mail order business. Now she has a full blown distillery, making not just Pennington's Tonic, but ...

The eleventh month, the eleventh day, the eleventh hour, the eleventh minute. Armistice Day. The end of the War to End All Wars. The toll in lives was tremendous. Spanish flu brought an even greater toll. Men who came through the war unscathed succumbed to the plague. In the end, no one was left untouched. This was especially true for the families of Zofia's Cakes and Tarts.

April 4, 1917: The United States enters The Great War. Young men are being drafted, while young women volunteer to serve in auxilary positions, freeing "A Man to Fight." Rhys Shay has his draft notice, and is preparing to report any day now. Lucy Goodheart, the young woman his brother rescued from a sex trafficker five years before, has learned the art of telegraphy from her foster father. Now that she is out of school, she joins the U.S. Navy in the only capacity available, as a Yeoman (F). Not only does being a Yeomanette enable her to make use of her telegraphy skills, it lets her feel ...

1914: England has entered the War to End All Wars.. Germany seems determined to force the British to split their forces and to fight against the Irish rebels in the north. Mounted Police Officer Tadhg Nagel has become somewhat of a local hero. First he was instrumental in breaking up a peonage operation for the Bureau of Investigation. Then he foiled a major theft at a society fashion show. That wasn't enough for Officer Nagel. He needed to do something to stop the Germans from destroying his homeland. Joining the Britsh Army would most likely mean coming home in a pine box. Nagel didn't ...

Gabrielle Lane Pennington has a great grift. She's running tent revivals all over the east coast, and preaching the Gospel as it is convenient.. On the side, her roustabouts are snatching young girls from their revivals and shipping them off to brothels run by a notorious madam. The fledgling Bureau of Investigation has a new agent,. Still with only forty-three agents in the country, Dylan Shay was accepted on the force. The BoI's mandate still includes sussing out violations of the Mann Act, as well as investigating acts of espionage. Newly minted Agent Shay is called upon to surveille ...

1922: Eugenics has taken hold. A woman of color gives birth to a biracial baby who is a light complexioned blond cherub. She is told the child was stillborn. She and her husband refuse to accept that. Meanwhile, evil is afoot in Baltimore City. Someone is kidnapping little girls. When they are found, they have been raped beaten and sometimes killed. The police feel as if they are running in circles.

Everybody's two-stepping. They're dancing to Jazz, the new music performed so well at Gans Goldfield, the first "black and tan" club in Maryland, where the races can mix. Politicians are two-stepping, making money hand over fist, and spreading it around amongst their constituents. The cops are two-stepping, too, trying to catch up with the usual suspects, and to prosecute crooked politicians. The women who own Zofia's Cakes and Tarts are doing their own version of the two-step, when the Archdiocese demands they give up their bakery so a church may be built on its location. The fledgling ...

Gwendolyn Graham's last happy day was just before her 15th birthday, the day before her beloved father died. Her mother forces her to abandon everything she has ever known, including the young man she loves and hopes to wed, and drags her from their farm to Baltimore, where she throws her daughter into the path of every man who shows an interest. Unfortunately, one of those men is a brothel owner. When Gwendolyn disappears, Detective Shay has to find her before it's too late.