Showing results by author "T E Kinsey" in All Categories

July 1912. Lady Hardcastle and her tenacious lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, are enjoying a convivial gathering at the home of their dear friends, the Farley-Strouds. The only fly in the idyllic ointment seems to be the lack of musical entertainment for the forthcoming summer party—until, that is, Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry calls with news of a murder.

May 1912. After the previous year’s deadly heatwave, it’s been an uneventful spring in Littleton Cotterell. Though for Lady Hardcastle and her fiercely loyal lady’s maid Flo, at least there are the provincial delights of the village’s inaugural art exhibition—and bicycle race—to look forward to. But at the exhibition opening, there’s a panicked shout of ‘Fire!’ In the confusion, the main attraction—an extremely expensive book—is stolen from under everyone’s nose, as is a valuable painting lent by Sir Hector Farley-Stroud.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong - with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.

July 1910. Lady Hardcastle and her tireless sidekick Flo have finally embarked on a long-overdue seaside break. But just as they’re wavering between ice creams and donkey rides, their fellow guests start to go missing - and the duo find themselves with a hysterical hotel manager and a case to solve. The first to disappear is Dr Goddard, a scientist doing something terribly top-secret for the government.

Summer 1911. A scorching heatwave engulfs the quiet town of Littleton Cotterell and brings about an unusually early harvest. The villagers are thrilled, but events quickly turn sour when one of them turns up dead in an apple orchard, stabbed through the heart. Amateur sleuth Lady Hardcastle and her trusty lady’s maid, Flo, suddenly have a juicy case on their hands. Might the mysterious stranger they recently met in the village be to blame?

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

Spring, 1909, and Lady Hardcastle, amateur sleuth and all-round eccentric, is enjoying a well-deserved rest. But a week after a trip to the cattle market, Spencer Caradine, a local farmer, turns up dead in the pub, face-down in his beef and mushroom pie. Once again, it is up to Lady Hardcastle and her maid, Florence, to solve the case. Armed with wit and whimsy, not to mention Florence’s mean right hook, the pair set out to discover what really happened and why. Was it poison or just ill luck?

Late October 1909, and the season of ghouls and things that go bump in the night has descended on the village of Littleton Cotterell. Lady Hardcastle and her trusted lady’s maid, Florence, find themselves hosting a colorful cast of actors whose spooky moving picture, The Witch’s Downfall, is being shown to mark Halloween. But things take a macabre turn when the first night’s screening ends with a mysterious murder, and the second night with another. One by one the actors turn up dead in ways that eerily echo their film.

November 1911. Lady Emily Hardcastle is celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke’s Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage—a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval. When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects—and his police colleagues.

January 1910. A journalist has been killed in a suspicious blaze. Everything points to a group of suffragettes, but the apparent culprit insists she is innocent. When Lady Hardcastle receives a letter from a suffragette requesting her urgent help, the retired spy turned sleuth knows only she stands between an accused young woman and the gallows. Evidence at the scene makes Lizzie Worrel’s innocence difficult to believe, and with the police treating it as an open-and-shut case of arson, Lady Hardcastle faces a barrage of resistance as she tries to dig out the truth.

London, 1925. With their band the Dizzy Heights, jazz musicians Ivor ‘Skins’ Maloney and Bartholomew ‘Barty’ Dunn are used to improvising as they play the Charleston for flappers and toffs, but things are about to take a surprising turn.

It's Christmas 1909, and for once Lady Hardcastle - respectable gentlewoman, amateur spy - and her lady's maid, Florence Armstrong, are setting sleuthing aside. They are invited to the festivities up at The Grange, as guests of Sir Hector and Lady Farley-Stroud. But barely have corks been popped and parlour games played when a mysterious crime comes to light.

September 1909, and Lady Hardcastle and her maid, Florence, have been invited to Lord Riddlethorpe’s country estate for a week of motor racing and parties. They both agree that it sounds like a perfectly charming holiday. But when one of the drivers dies in a crash during the very first race, they discover that what seemed like an uncharacteristic error in judgement may have a more sinister explanation...

England 1908: Ein geruhsames Leben fernab des Londoner Trubels ... genau das ist es, wonach Lady Emily Hardcastle sich sehnt. Kurzerhand lässt die exzentrische Lady die Koffer packen und zieht mit ihrer tatkräftigen Zofe Florence „Flo” Armstrong in die malerischen Cotswolds. Doch kaum dort angekommen wird ihr Traum vom ländlichen Idyll rüde gestört: Bei einem Spaziergang stolpern die beiden über einen toten Mann im Wald.

Ein toter Bauer, verschwundene Trophäen und eine geisterhafte Heimsuchung - keine Langweile für Lady Hardcastle und ihre Zofe Florence! Gloucestershire 1909. Lady Hardcastle, Hobbydetektivin und Exzentrikerin durch und durch, genießt die Ruhe auf dem Land. Bis der örtliche Viehzüchter Spencer Caradine beim Mittagessen im Pub tot umfällt und mit dem Gesicht mitten in einer der berühmten Rindfleisch-Champignon-Pasteten landet. Wieder einmal ist es die Aufgabe von Lady Hardcastle und ihrer Zofe Florence, das Geheimnis um die Todesursache zu enträtseln.

Mord auf der Zielgeraden - Bahn frei für Hobbydetektivin Lady Emily Hardcastle und ihre Zofe Flo Armstrong! September 1909. Eine Woche mit eleganten Dinnern, rauschenden Partys und aufregenden Autorennen - Lady Hardcastle und ihre Zofe Florence Armstrong folgen der Einladung Lord Riddlethorpes auf dessen Landsitz. Doch während des ersten Rennens geschieht ein fürchterlicher Unfall, und einer der Fahrer stirbt. Die beiden Frauen ahnen, dass kein Fahrfehler dahintersteckt, sondern eine weitaus teuflischere Ursache.

Auf der Suche nach einem Mörder heißt es wieder: Bühne frei für Lady Hardcastle und ihre treue Zofe Flo Armstrong! Eine Filmcrew besucht den kleinen Ort Littleton Cotterell, um dort ihren neusten Film zu promoten. Eigentlich hätten der Regisseur und die Schauspieler von Lady Farley-Stroud beherbergt werden sollen, doch nach einem Brand in deren Küche erklärt sich Lady Hardcastle bereit, die Gastgeberin zu sein. Obwohl nicht alle Dorfbewohner von der Idee einer Filmvorführung begeistert sind, ist der erste Filmabend ein voller Erfolg.