Gravesyde Priory Mysteries

The descendant of adventuring-dead-aristocrats, Clarissa Knightley supplements a modest inheritance by penning gothic novels that cost more than they earn. Upon learning that she has mysteriously inherited a share of an earl's estate, she rashly packs up her household. In remote Gravesyde Priory, she hopes to find a safe haven and family who will welcome her and her young nephew. Instead, she discovers a drunken American army captain, his African servant, and ancient, surly caretakers.

On a long-delayed errand to remote Wycliffe Manor, ex-Lieutenant Jack de Sackville stumbles across the murdered body of London dandy, Basil Culpepper, in the hedgerow, a long way from his usual haunts. To Jack's dismay, he discovers the earl's daughter Culpepper hiding in Wycliffe's kitchen. Disguised as a lowly cook, Lady Elspeth Villiers may have liked to shoot Culpepper for ruining her life, but she dropped out of sight for more immediate reasons than an old scandal-her wealth has become the focus of greedy men.

Wycliffe Manor has been neglected for decades. Its new heirs are determined to create a welcoming home. Yet soon after the latest family moves in, bones are uncovered in the orchard . . . and odd strangers arrive. When her curate father returns his family to Gravesyde for the marriages of the manor's heirs, gawky spinster Patience Upton has high expectations—until her father is murdered. Shock at learning her father had a mysterious past leads to alarm that the killer may have been after his notebook, which she now possesses.

Spinster and secret novelist Clarissa Knightley and her gruff American engineer, Captain Huntley, along with their friend and cousin, the Honorable Jack de Sackville and Lady Elspeth, are to wed at last! In anticipation of the double wedding, friends and family are gathering at moldering Wycliffe Manor—until a dying stranger is discovered on the neglected grounds. Despite the tragedy, aristocratic wedding guests and their retinues, foreign and domestic, continue to arrive, not all by invitation.

Minerva Peniston, intrepid spinster and book lover, is determined to capture the villain who tried to shoot a duke at a book auction—imperiling her father's position and the only home she's ever known. And now the same wealthy bibliophiles are gathering at Wycliffe Manor . . .Paul Upton, overeducated and impoverished curate, has volunteered to assist the residents of Wycliffe Manor in preparing for a book auction to save the village and the manor's future. When an intriguing wallflower drags him into aiding her quest to find a potential killer, he agrees for her safety.