For Brother Cadfael in the autumn of his life, the mild November of our Lord’s year 1145 may bring a bitter — and deadly — harvest. England is torn between supporters of the Empress Maud and those of her cousin Stephen. The civil strife is...
At the height of the hot summer of 1144, a lucky hit by one of King Stephen's archers rids the Fen country of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who has amassed his castles and gold by robbing rich and poor alike. Thus, the Benedictine abbey at...
In October of 1142, a local landlord gives the Potter's Field to the local clergy. The monks begin to plow it, and the blades turn up the long tresses of a young woman, dead over a year. Then the arrival of a novice who fled from an abbey ravaged by...
In the summer of 1143, William of Lythwood arrives at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, but it is not a joyous occasion—he’s come back from his pilgrimage in a coffin. William’s body is accompanied by his young attendant Elave,...
When the Morton Street Slasher leaves the corpses of his victims on the tangled gaslit streets near San Francisco's Union Square, he marks each body with a playing card. Ambrose "Bitter" Bierce, the city's famed newspaperman, immediately blames the...
March 1814. With the allied armies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia advancing, Paris is in real danger of falling to occupying forces for the first time in four-hundred years. In the final installment of The Napoleonic Murders series, Armand Cabasson...
Previously published as GUN TRUTH
A Spur Award-winning Author
Tom Prine figured that a stint as deputy in a backwash town like Claybank would give him a nice rest. Until, in the space of just a few days, arson, kidnapping and murder turn...
In 1809, the forces of Napoleon’s Grande Armée are in Austria. For young Lieutenant Lukas Relmyer, it is hard to return to the place where he and fellow orphan Franz, were kidnapped four years previously. Franz was brutally murdered and Lukas has...
1989 – the world holds its breath. The Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse, its eastern empire in a state of rebellion. Only a street trader, a drug dealer, a discredited young colonel and a woman, haunted by her past, stand between the...
The year is 1141 and civil war continues to rage. When the sheriff of Shropshire is taken prisoner, arrangements are made to exchange him for Elis, a young Welshman. But when the sheriff is brought to the abbey, he is murdered. Suspicion falls on...