Murder, Fireworks and Other Vauxhall Amusements

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Love and Murder

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already carried you through every lamp lit folly, every sharp tongued conversation, and one extremely public corpse, and now “they” have decided I must also sell it. Naturally.

Vauxhall Gardens is meant to provide music, fireworks, and the comforting illusion that London can behave itself for an evening. Instead, it hands Charlotte Penbury a borrowed gown, a borrowed name, and the sort of trouble that clings to ink. Charlotte draws for a living, mostly by recording the city’s most ridiculous men in lines they do not enjoy seeing printed. Unfortunately, she is also painfully observant, and observation is how you end up noticing hands, ribbon, and a shadow in the wrong place right before a Member of Parliament turns into tonight’s entertainment.

Enter Sebastian Harcourt of the Home Office, a man with quiet manners, inconvenient questions, and the weary competence of someone who can smell a lie through starch. He wants Charlotte’s sketches, her memory, and, ideally, her cooperation. Charlotte would prefer to keep her head down, sell her prints, and go home to tea with her terrifying aunt. But the Gardens are full of people who profit from secrets, and if Charlotte and Harcourt do not untangle this one, the law will do what it does best: choose the nearest convenient neck and call it justice.

Perfect for readers who like Regency London mischief, sharp banter and sharper deductions, a clue rich mystery with a satisfying, logical reveal, and a closed door, slow burn romance with an HEA, all with non gory peril and plenty of scandalous ambience to go around.

This is a complete stand alone case in the Regency: Corpses and Courtship Club world, so you can start here without anyone tutting at you. Now, do me a kindness and click Look Inside, the fireworks are due, and I should like at least one evening in which the only thing that explodes is someone’s pride.