Frankie Foster is the sheltered daughter of a proper Southern lady and a prominent judge, but she really wants to be a movie star. In spite of her family's misgivings, she boards a train and heads for Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. Frankie eventually finds work at Monumental Pictures as an extra in a swashbuckling costume picture. Unfortunately, her career threatens to be short-lived when producer Arthur Cohen staggers onto the soundstage in an apparent drunken rage and drops dead at her feet. The police dismiss the death as a heart attack, but then, they don't know about the...

Estranged from her husband through her failure to produce an heir, Lady Fieldhurst resolves to repay his neglect by taking a lover. Fate takes a hand when she and her would-be lover enter her bedchamber to find Lord Fieldhurst lying on the floor--with her nail scissors protruding from his neck. Bow Street Runner John Pickett, twenty-four years old and new to the Bow Street force, has spent most of his brief career chasing petty thieves and pickpockets. Nothing in his experience has prepared him for low dealings in high society--or for the beautiful young widow who is the chief suspect.

Haughty Lady Helen Radney is one of London's most beautiful women and the daughter of a duke, but her sharp tongue has frightened away most of her suitors. When her father gambles away his fortune, the duke's only chance for recouping his losses lies in marrying off Lady Helen to any man wealthy enough to take a bride with nothing to recommend her but a lovely face and an eight-hundred-year-old pedigree. Enter Mr. Ethan Brundy, once an illegitimate workhouse orphan, now owner of a Lancashire textile mill and one of England's richest men. When he glimpses Lady Helen at Covent Garden Theatre,...

FOR FANS OF: Georgette Heyer, Deanna Raybourn, and C. S. Harris

The third installment of the John Pickett series of humorous Regency mysteries finds Bow Street Runner Pickett in Scotland investigating a woman found unconscious on the beach--a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the local laird's daughter, a girl missing and presumed dead for the last fifteen years. Pickett is surprised to discover that the woman was found by none other than Lady Fieldhurst and her three young nephews--and gratified to learn that her ladyship has registered at the seaside inn as Mrs. Julia...

After a modest wedding ceremony, Bow Street Runner John Pickett and his bride Julia, the former Lady Fieldhurst, set out for a wedding trip to Somersetshire, where Pickett must face his greatest challenge yet: meeting his in-laws. Sir Thaddeus and Lady Runyon are shocked at their daughter's hasty remarriage-and appalled by her choice of a second husband. Pickett, for his part, is surprised to learn that Julia once had an elder sister: Claudia, Lady Buckleigh, disappeared thirteen years earlier, leaving no trace beyond a blood-soaked shawl. When Sir Thaddeus confides that his wife is convinced...