Medieval Historical Fiction Mystery

In the spring of 1277, Prioress Eleanor goes on a pilgrimage to a famous East Anglian shrine. There are rumors that King Edward may also visit the shrine soon to seek God's blessing for his invasion of Wales. Lurking in this sacred place, however, is an assassin hoping to murder a king. Soon after Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas arrive, a nun falls to her death from the priory bell tower. Brother Thomas finds the body, and the pair quickly grasp that this nun's death was not an accident.

Guilt and desire battle within Hughe, Lord Oxley’s, soul. When the enigmatic leader of the Assassin’s Guild learns that the widow of one of his targets is at the mercy of a cruel man, he does the only thing left in his power to do. He marries her. Then the worst thing happens. He falls in love with her. With more than one person trying to kill him and a family to rescue, Hughe needs the help of all his Assassins Guild friends to stay alive and keep his wife from learning the truth. Because he knows, and dreads, what will happen when she discovers what he did.

This series features a real historical figure—the formidable Ela Longespée. The young Countess of Salisbury was chosen to marry King Henry II’s illegitimate son William. After her husband’s untimely death, Ela served as high sheriff of Wiltshire, castellan of Salisbury Castle, and ultimately founder and abbess of Lacock Abbey.

As the year 1349 approaches, the Black Death continues its devastating course across England. In Dorseteshire, the quarantined people of Develish question whether they are the only survivors. Guided by their beloved young mistress, Lady Anne, they wait, knowing that when their dwindling stores are finally gone they will have no choice but to leave. But where will they find safety in the desolate wasteland outside? One man has the courage to find out. Thaddeus Thurkell, a free-thinking, educated serf, strikes out in search of supplies and news.

The summer of 1276 at Tyndal Priory is peaceful - until Kenelm’s corpse is found floating in the millpond. When Brother Thomas concludes that the murder occurred on priory grounds, Prioress Eleanor and Crowner Ralf swiftly agree to help each other solve the crime. The murder victim, a newcomer, was disliked in Tyndal village, and no one there wants one of their own hanged for the deed. Fingers quickly point to a Jewish family, refugees under the relocation provisions of King Edward’s Statute of Jewry. As riots loom and threats mount against the family, Eleanor and Ralf have little time before popular opinion rules the murder solved.

Summer 1381. The Great Revolt has been crushed. Brother Athelstan, meanwhile, is preparing for a pilgrimage to St Thomas Becket's shrine in Canterbury to give thanks for the well-being of his congregation after the violent rebellion. But preparations are disrupted when Athelstan is summoned to the scene of a brutal triple murder.

There are plots to invade England and Normandy. There are assassination attempts and the only man who can stop all of these is the Earl of Cleveland. Moving from Scotland to Normandy and back again this is a fast moving novel set in the months before the civil war in England and Normandy begins.

In March 1279, Edward I takes a break from hammering the Welsh and bearing down on England's Jews to vacation in Gloucestershire. The royal party breaks the journey at Woodstock Manor. There, one life begins as the queen gives birth to a daughter, and one draws to an end as apoplexy fells Baron Adam Wynethorpe. Hastening to the baron's deathbed is his eldest son, Hugh, a veteran of Edward's Crusades who can't shake off the battle horrors he has witnessed.

Eighteen years old and four times a widow? This is the Penwyth Curse. Become acquainted with two sets of heroes and heroines as their stories overlap. History, romantic suspense, magic, and mayhem ensue.

King Charles of France has announced that he is confiscating Aquitaine, and Prince Edward has sent for knights and men at arms from England to assist him in opposing the French king. Lord Gilbert Talbot is required to provide five knights, 12 squires, and 20 archers and men at arms, and wishes his surgeon - Hugh de Singleton - to travel with the party, while Hugh’s wife Kate oversees the castle. Among the party will be Sir Simon Trillowe, Hugh’s old nemesis and Kate’s former suitor, who had once set fire to Hugh’s house.

Weak in battle, powerless at court, and absent in the bedroom: the English crown has rarely sat less easily than on the head of Edward II. Inheriting the Plantagenet throne in a powerful position, Edward needs a wife to continue the dynasty - but the beautiful, charming Isabella fails to stir his heart like his close friend Piers Gaveston. Slighted and ignored, Isabella takes a new lover: the ambitious nobleman Roger Mortimer. Seduced by Mortimer's treachery, Isabella plots with him to murder her husband and take the throne.

Scotland, 1296. The winds of rebellion are blowing. The wars of independence for Scotland are on the brink of changing the history of Great Britain. Under assault from King Edward I, the besieged city of Berwick-upon-Tweed is delivered into the hands of the English, who massacre and burn everything in their path. Aileas and Fillan, 16-year-old orphan twins, get separated on that horrific night. Aileas is carried away and disappears while Fillan manages to join forces with a Scottish clan fleeing to the north, into the very heart of the Highlands.

When the woodcutter's only daughter is murdered, the bailiff tries to arrest Bertwoin the Plowman, who flees to a master alchemist and his professional virgin, Flowia, for help. Bertwoin must find the brutal killer while the grieving woodcutter, the relentless bailiff, and righteous monks pursue him. His search for clues takes him to the corpse room inside an abbey, to a torture pit near the Devil’s Doorstep, and to the accursed home of a heretic priest.

Master Hugh, Kate, and their children attend the Midsummer’s Eve fire. Early next morning, Hugh hears the passing bell ring from the Church of St. Beornwald and moments later is summoned. Tenants collecting the ashes to spread upon their fields have found burned bones. Master Hugh learns of several men of Bampton and nearby villages who have gone missing recently. Most are soon found, some alive, some dead. Master Hugh eventually learns that the bones are those of a bailiff from a nearby manor. Someone has slain him and placed his body in the fire to destroy evidence of murder.

Rome 998 AD. Galen and his friends have taken shelter in an abbey where there is much to learn from the local scribes and illustrators. Galen is grateful for the order and tranquillity of their temporary new home, but is it a false peace?

With Isabella and Molay both trapped in Paris, the weight of the world hangs on the shoulders of two unsuspecting nuns who are caught up in a game of control for the medieval world. Sister Fransie and Sister Caroline must flee France and smuggle the key to the Templars' greatest secret across the Camino de Santiago. On their pilgrimage, the sisters are forced to face the seven deadly sins, which have taken on a physical form and threaten to stop them at every turn.

The fourth chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew continues the adventures of the 14th-century Cambridge physician when he is called to attend to two deaths from some poisoned wine. The opening of a new and very well-endowed college has created petty infighting amongst the academics as new appointments are made. The winter and spring have been appallingly wet, there is a fever outbreak amongst the poorer townspeople and the country is not yet fully recovered from the aftermath of the plague.

A plowman who fails to prevent a murder. A corpse stolen while a priest prays over it. A clever killer who must be caught in three days. Cathar country, (now southern France), late autumn in the year 1200. The alchemist sends Bertwoin to work in the château’s kitchen to prevent the murder of the visconte’s son. Bertwoin fails. And before the alchemist can examine the corpse for clues, the killer commits the impossible crime of stealing the body while a priest keeps vigil over it.

It is nearing the end of the Year of Our Lord 1145. A monk vows to abandon all earthly ties, but how can Brother Cadfael obey when his son is captured in battle? Olivier de Bretagne is one of many young knights taken prisoner in the current power dispute in Britain, but he is also Cadfael's son, and the monk cannot be objective. A council is planned at Coventry to try to appease the warring factions, and Brother Cadfael asks leave to attend, knowing he must do all in his power to find and deliver his son.

Europe, 998 AD. Galen and Alcuin have finally escaped the clutches of the Moors. Now they're adrift in an unsettled continent where invasions, cults, plagues, drought and the looming millennium have upset the world order. Do these two young monks have what it takes to fulfil Alcuin's promise to get to Rome? The journey over the Pyrenees and across the Mediterranean isn't even the greatest challenge. Galen needs to decide whether he's a saint. Can he find the answer amongst the people he meets or will he have to look deeper within himself to find the truth?