Regency Cozy

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. So when a London dandy falls dead at her feet in the entryway of a London Daily Gazette, she feels no compulsion to investigate. It was a newspaper office, after all, and reporters are already on the case as are the authorities.

Having long abandoned any hope of making a match, 26-year-old Beatrice Hyde Clare finds herself a little overwhelmed by her engagement to the Duke of Kesgrave. Cloying society matrons clamor for her attention while her aunt reels off an endless list of servants she will have to oversee. Even the most intrepid female would quake at the prospect of managing eight footmen! Fortunately, Bea knows the perfect distraction - an intriguing mystery - and pays a call on the Countess of Abercrombie, who had promised her that very thing only the evening before.

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. And every time one of the maids addresses her as "your grace", she flinches.

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. Reared in the twin virtues of deference and docility, she would absolutely never think to question the imperious Duke of Kesgrave about anything, let alone how he chose to represent the incident to the local constable. And yet that's exactly what she does.

Having solved the two murders that somehow fell in her path, Beatrice Hyde-Clare is on the lookout for a third. Through a absurd quirk of stupid fate, the shy spinster has fallen in love with the thoroughly unattainable Duke of Kesgrave and is desperate for something, anything, to occupy her mind. A dead body would do nicely.

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 (though not so cruelly, for it left the door open for Bea to woo the duke of Kesgrave).

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. Gathering together several of society’s most influential members, she concocts an amusing puzzle-play, assigns roles, and stands back to allow Bea to impress them all with her ingenuity.

MURDER ON MARSH LANE is book 8 in the popular Regency-set Mystery Series by best-selling author MARILYN CLAY. What can possibly go wrong when Miss Juliette Abbott agrees to pass a pleasant fortnight chaperoning two young ladies making their debuts into Polite Society? In the spring of 1822, the Season is about to get underway when a frantic Lady Medley, of Medley Park, and her daughter Hannah and a friend, Miss Ellie Palmer, arrive in London; the girls excitedly looking forward to attending Almack’s Assembly Rooms, passing long afternoons shopping in Mayfair, and evenings attending ...

MURDER IN MARGATE, Book 3 in Marilyn Clay's Juliette Abbott Regency Mystery Series features clever young Regency sleuth, Miss Juliette Abbott. What begins as a relaxing holiday for Juliette in the seaside village of Margate quickly turns into an anxiety-riddled nightmare! Once Juliette and her friend Miss Cathleen Haworth are settled in the picturesque village, things go vastly awry when the younger sister of Juliette’s new friend in Margate goes missing and Juliette finds the girl’s abigail dead on a ledge below a cliff! As she searches for clues to the killer’s identity, and for the...

MURDER IN MIDDLEWYCH is Book 5 in MARILYN CLAY's Juliette Abbott Regency Mystery Series. A carriage accident on the way up to London dictates that Miss Abbott, her maid Tilda, along with Juliette's gentleman friend, Mr. Sheridan, who offered to escort the ladies up to Town are forced to stay the night at an inn in the Cotswold village of Middlewych. Tilda objects since "Ever'one knows Middlewych is full of witches!" When Mr. Sheridan makes the grim discovery of a village lass beaten to death, the authorities rush to judgment and charge the handsome stranger with the crime! While their ...

MURDER IN MARTINDALE by MARILYN CLAY is book nine in the popular JULIETTE ABBOTT REGENCY MYSTERY SERIES. When clever young sleuth Miss Juliette Abbott is invited to spend a fortnight at Martindale Manor as companion to a young blind girl whose father suddenly passed away, she believes she has been offered the perfect respite from murder and mayhem in the tiny hamlet of Martindale in England’s North Country. Told that the girl’s brother and heir, Sir James Martindale, is even now on his way home, Miss Abbott and her trusted maid Tilda set out in high spirits for their four-day journey ...