Lynn Messina

Traveling to the ancestral Matlock estate with her husband, Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, is finally able to confront her greatest foe: the pinery.

The former Beatrice Hyde-Clare is having a little trouble adjusting to her new situation. Now installed as the duchess of Kesgrave in elegant splendor in Berkeley Square, she is confounded by the stately residence’s seemingly endless array of rooms....

Since the new Duchess of Kesgrave cannot be swayed from her unfortunate interest in dead bodies, Lady Abercrombie decides to confront the matter head-on by hosting a murder mystery dinner party....

As much as Beatrice Hyde-Clare relished the challenge of figuring out who murdered a fellow guest during a house party in the Lake District, she certainly does not consider herself an amateur investigator....

Finally, Flora Hyde-Clare has wrest the narrative from Beatrice by finding her own compelling murder mystery to solve. Well, it’s not entirely her own because the victim is her cousin’s former beau Mr. Theodore Davies, whose father cruelly separated the young lovers....

To be clear: Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, does not think every dead person in London is the victim of a sinister plot. The city is large, after all, and some of its inhabitants had to have died from innocent causes. Like Peter Huzza, who was killed in a horrifying steam engine accident....

Earning the nickname Lady Agony was no minor achievement for Lady Agatha Bolingbroke. It required a great deal of effort to make herself so disagreeable, but she did it for a good cause: The fewer invitations she received, the more time she had to paint. Her mother, refusing to accept an...

Verity Lark—England's most tenacious gossip, the London Daily Gazette's most dogged reporter—relishes a challenge, which is why she refuses Colson Hardwicke's offer of menial employment....

Having solved the two murders that somehow fell in her path, Beatrice Hyde-Clare is on the lookout for a third....

Twenty-six-year-old Beatrice Hyde-Clare is far too shy to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow guest in the Lake District. A spinster who lives on the sufferance of her relatives, she would certainly not presume to search the rooms of her host's son and his friend looking for evidence....

As eager as Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, is to meet her husband’s newly discovered illegitimate half sister, she does not want it to happen like this: in the keeper's house at Newgate. Yes, that Newgate, the abject prison filled with squalor and misery.

As the London Daily Gazette’s popular gossip columnist, she is extremely adept at sneaking into houses, assuming disguises and overseeing a vast network of spies to ensure she stays abreast of the beau monde’s comings and goings....

Flora Hyde-Clare’s visit to her beau’s ancestral home was always going to be a disaster.

It is hardly surprising Verity Lark can’t sleep at night with all the thoughts darting through her mind.

Bedeviled by Colson Hardwicke’s treatment—summarily dumping her via tersely worded message!—Verity Lark is lying awake in her bed seething over his behavior when she hears a floorboard creak.

Deeply distressed to discover her husband lied about his whereabouts the day before, Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, emerges from a wretched night’s sleep to discover him embracing the most beautiful woman she has ever seen....

Twenty-four-year-old Catherine Fellingham keeps a low profile - in society and in her family. A practical young woman, she leaves the spotlight to her beautiful younger sister and prefers quiet pursuits such as reading. But all that changes....

Having inexplicably nabbed the duke of Kesgrave, 26-year-old spinster Beatrice Hyde-Clare is determined to marry him at once, and no amount of hand-wringing from anxious family members, worried friends, and well-meaning acquaintances will convince her to delay....

No, no, no! It doesn't matter how many times the Duchess of Trent (The Harlow Hoyden) requests her help with a delicate matter regarding a patent for her sister's invention, Tuppence Templeton will not lend a hand. She has a habit, yes, of coming up with ingenious plans to solve other people's...

If there is one thing Verity Lark finds more unsettling than having to give a shooting lesson to the woman whom she has ridiculed in print for months, it is having to give the lesson on the very same morning her alter ego Mr. Twaddle-Thum publishes an apology....