Murder, Marmalade, and Other Ballroom Disasters

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Love and Murder

The violins keep losing the tune, the marmalade cakes are a health hazard, and Miss Julia Amberley’s quiet social exile in Bath has just tripped over a corpse. When the man who once ruined her life drops dead beside the Assembly Rooms supper table, sticky with ratafia and orange peel, Julia finds herself exactly where polite society likes her least: at the center of the scandal, with her hand inconveniently near the body and half the room eager to improve the story.

Captain Miles Rutland, cavalry officer turned master of ceremonies, has one job: keep Bath’s entertainments orderly and free of corpses. He would prefer cavalry fire to Bath gossip, but a dead London rake, four mutually incompatible eyewitness accounts, card debts, a fluttering widow, and a suspiciously precise recipe for cordial do not leave him much choice. If Julia cannot help Miles untangle altered drinks, weaponised small talk, and a locked door from her past, she will lose her last shreds of reputation and her cousins’ prospects, and he will obligingly take the blame. The violence stays off the page; the social carnage does not.

Perfect for readers who enjoy cozy Regency mysteries, Bath Assembly Rooms, morally exasperated wallflowers, slow burn partners in detection, and corpses that pick the worst moment to be inconvenient, this stand alone in the Corpses & Courtship world delivers a fair play mystery and a closed door slow burn romance with a happy for now ending. Slip into Bath, listen to the violins forget their tune, and see if you can spot the hand on the glass before Julia and Miles do.