Showing results by author "Marisa Paxon" in All Categories

I am the narrator of this book; I dragged every quarrel, corpse, kitchen mishap, and regrettable glance across the page without so much as a thank you, and now they have decided I must sell it to you as well. Very well; if I could endure the Earl of Harrowden’s dinner table, I can certainly endure your browser window. What you are walking into is a cozy Regency manor house mystery with one extremely opinionated ghost. Harrowden House is a grand Northumberland pile kept upright on watered wine and creative accounting, and I had the privilege of watching its famously miserly earl drop dead ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled an entire viscount, several cups and saucers, and one academy’s worth of respectable hysteria into orderly sentences, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Apparently my reward for keeping everyone from fainting into the evidence is marketing. At Madame Rochfort’s Academy for Select Young Ladies, morning chocolate is meant to calm nerves and encourage obedient embroidery, not drop a patron dead onto the salon carpet. Viscount Halverton arrives to be admired, praised, and quietly mined for subscriptions; he ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already carried an entire Mayfair Season, three dozen teacups, and one extremely rude corpse across the page, and now they have decided I must also persuade you to join the mess. Fine. Come in, mind the carpet. In A Spot of Murder in Mayfair, Lady Helena Foxe is supposed to be doing what well bred young ladies do best, namely, smiling politely while other people ruin their own lives in whispers. Instead, a tired clerk with ink on his finger and trouble in his wake collapses in her family’s drawing room, leaving blood in the wool and ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already carried one stubborn widow, one inconveniently principled doctor, and an entire village’s worth of holy outrage across the page, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Apparently murder is not labour unless it comes with marketing. A cozy Regency whodunit where Sunday best meets a very un-Sunday death. In the village of Hartleigh, Phoebe Hartwell keeps an apothecary, a steady hand, and her temper in a respectable jar, largely because the alternative is letting the manor decide what sort of widow she is allowed to be. ...

House parties are all harmless flirtation until a guest turns up dead in the ornamental fountain and the household bell only rings for fire or death. Miss Eliza Fairburn comes to Foxglove Court for respectable employment, not village scandal: companion to Lady Ashcombe, watcher of tedious card parties, and firmly resolved not to be impressed by the Marquess of Rothley or his inconveniently blue eyes. Then his charming cousin is found with a broken neck in the fountain court, three years after a steward’s son “accidentally” fell from the west gallery, and everyone suddenly prefers the ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled everyone through every candlelit smile, every petty social skirmish, and one spectacularly ill timed corpse, and now they have decided I should also sell it. Naturally. Welcome to Penninghurst, where the Dowager Marchioness hosts a matchmaking fête so expensive it could heat a curate for the winter, and so tightly managed it could make a grown man apologise for breathing out of rhythm. Imogen Fairweather arrives as chaperone to her seventeen year old cousin, armed with borrowed silk, a talent for sums, and the sort of ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled the novel through every dripping corridor, every self-important meeting, and every cup of coffee that tastes faintly of despair, and now “they” want me to sell it as well. Fine. I have carried heavier things than a blurb, usually other people’s egos. At Ainsworth Court, Lady Seraphina Vale, Countess of Ainsworth, is attempting the apparently scandalous feat of being a widow with a spine and a canal to build, when her map room decides to lock itself and her chief surveyor obligingly dies face-first in ink. Locked door, ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I already carried every locked gate, every polite lie, and one remarkably well dressed corpse without so much as a “thank you.” Now they have decided I should also lure you in from the product page, as if my duties include recruitment. Welcome to a cozy Regency murder in the Tower of London menagerie, where the animals are caged, the humans are not, and someone has the audacity to leave a dead viscount on the stones like an item misplaced in a hallway. Imogen Aldridge only meant to unlock the lion house at dawn, check the beasts, and get on ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I carried every bonnet, bruise and bad decision across the finish line, and now they have decided I must sell it too. Fine. Welcome to the duke of Wescott’s private theatre, where the curtains are crimson, the manners are impeccable, and the main prop is in a temper. Lady Arabella Sorrell arrives engaged to Lord Crispin Fallowmere, dressed for a betrothal celebration and braced for the kind of conversation that kills the spirit slowly. Instead she gets a sulking black cabinet built to make a gentleman vanish, a manager named Draycott who looks ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I already carried every waltz, whisper, and corpse across the finish line, and now “they” have decided I should also stand in the foyer and beckon strangers inside. Splendid. Miss Clemency Harrow arrives at Ashbourne Hall on a Tuesday with a sensible spine, an insolvent father, and an engagement arranged as neatly as a place setting, right down to the Earl waiting at the bottom of the stairs like a man who has never trusted soup. Unfortunately, the house has opinions, the guests have secrets, and Mr Horace Pettigrew has come armed with moral ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I already hauled you through every paragraph of virtue, vice, and shelving, and now they have decided I must sell it as well. Apparently death by furniture is not self explanatory. Welcome to the Ladies’ Minerva Library, where the hall smells of ink and soap, the rule book is impeccable, and the shelves are full of exactly what everyone swears they are not reading. Eleanor Pryce keeps the catalogues honest, the keys accounted for, and the sermons politely returned, while the Gothic romances travel under cover of moral improvement, as God and Mrs...

I am the narrator of this book. I have already carried every footstep, every whispered aside, every inconvenient corpse, and now they have decided I should also persuade you to read it. This is what happens when one proves reliable. What I carried was a cozy Regency murder with a ghost who refuses to mind his own death. Bath’s Assembly Rooms are polished, candlelit, and brimming with manners, until the dancing master collapses mid-figure and immediately reappears floating above his own body, deeply offended and tethered to Miss Adelaide Finchwick, a woman whose greatest social crime is ...

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled you through sea-mist, ruined stone, and the moral fibre of the British upper classes, and now “they” have decided I should also sell it. Naturally. Welcome to Wynthorpe Castle, perched on the North Sea cliffs like a threat. Miss Elinor Gresham, hired expert in manufactured hauntings, arrives with lenses, gauze, lamp oil, and the calm competence of a woman who can make a drawing room scream on schedule. The Duke of Wynthorpe wants a harbour, a handful of wealthy subscribers to pay for it, and a weekend of tastefully ...

There are places one expects to find dead railway directors. The message room of the Central Telegraph Office is not supposed to be one of them. Senior telegraph clerk Miss Clara Nevin spends her nights routing London’s secrets along humming wires, turning other people’s crises into neat lines of ink. Then Mr Arthur Lestrange of the North-Eastern Railway is discovered sitting unnaturally upright at her instrument, politely strangled with a coil of spare wire, and a single Home Office message quietly disappears from her rack. Enter Mr Elias Blackwood, discreet inquiry agent with an ...

One dead patron. One poisonous Palm House. One inspector who keeps noticing the same woman. The difficulty with unveiling a grand new Palm House is that someone invariably decides to die in it before the tea has been poured. When Lady Helena Westerleigh collapses face first into Briarwick Conservatory’s prize orchid at the opening ceremony, polite society blames the heat, the brass railings, and possibly the sandwiches, in that order. Miss Beatrice Elwood, botanical illustrator and reluctant expert in poisonous foliage, quietly notices the wrong spores on the right gloves and realises the...

Hydrotherapy is meant to soothe the nerves, not drown the investors. At the Royal Hydropathic, it has started doing both. Come for the cure, stay murdered. Miss Beatrice Harrow, lady physician with a talent for calm diagnoses and inconvenient honesty, expects difficult lungs, sulky vapour, and guests who cheat on their prescribed walks. She does not expect Alderman Josiah Frobisher, the hotel’s loudest shareholder, to be found very quiet indeed in the grand marble bath after a “restorative” treatment. The water smells wrong, the electrical apparatus looks offensively innocent, and the...

I have already dragged a full evening of Drury Lane vanity, hot footlights, and damp wool through your the entire novel without so much as a thank you; now they have decided I must also persuade strangers to volunteer for it. Marvellous. I do adore unpaid encores. Welcome to Regency London, where a government censor is found neatly flattened by a fallen backdrop during the interval of a fashionable new comedy. The audience is still demanding laughter, the investors are still demanding profit, and Miss Eliza March is still trying to behave like a quiet, respectable ward in Lady Hartley’s ...

I am the narrator of this book. I carried every soaked boot, every jangled key, every polite lie, and the entire corpse without so much as a thank-you; now they want me to smile and sell it too. Splendid. Welcome to a Regency manor house mystery where order is a weapon, and Miss Cecilia Arden wields it like a teaspoon sharpened by necessity. She arrives at Larkspur Hall in December, boots and patience equally damp, to take a post that requires figures, nerve, and the ability to shut a front door in the face of Dorset itself. She has all three. She also has very little choice. Naturally, the...

I am the narrator of this book. I carried every ink blot, every committee smile, and one extremely heavy marble torso without so much as a thank-you, and now they have decided I should sell it to you as well. Marvellous. I drop you into Mayfair, where a perfectly respectable townhouse has been dressed up as the centre of Greek learning, mostly so the ton can drink wine and mispronounce Athens with confidence. Miss Adelaide Pembroke arrives with a portfolio, a generous fee, and the sort of inconvenient eyesight that notices when a plinth has been wedged, unwedged, and wedged again. Then Sir ...

Lights, camera, corpse; Primrose Studios is meant to uplift the nation’s morals, not leave a patron strangled in the wardrobe between the sackcloth and the velvet. Respectable pictures are hard enough to sell without a moral reformer dying in the costumes and threatening to ruin the box office from beyond the grave. Clara Ashcombe, junior scenario writer and reluctant conscience of London’s most improving picture house, spends her days trimming sins for the censors and adding railings to staircases. When Miss Temperance Vale of the Society for the Improvement of Modern Amusements turns ...