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5 total works
It's Christmas time, and the sisters of St. Frideswide cannot turn away travellers - even the theatre players knocking at the nunnery door. But along with the motley troupe comes the grievously wounded husband of the cloister's scullery maid, Meg. The actors swear they found the drunken wastrel in a ditch, but their tale sounds remarkably like another song and dance. Especially when two dead bodies are found waiting in the wings...Now, Sister Frevisse must find out if one of the actors is a murderer in masquerade or face a deadly Yuletide season..
Who could ever want to harm two young boys, aged five and six? When the boys are half brothers to Henry VI, King of England, the list is long and distinguished. A lady in their mother's household flees with the boys to St Frideswide's and asks Dame Frevisse to offer them a haven. Unable to refuse children, she takes them in and conceals them. But as attempts are made on the boys' lives inside St Frideswide's walls, Dame Frevisse realizes that from the ambitious and the wicked there is no sanctuary...
Sister Frevisse is sinfully good at discerning the mysteries of the soul and solving the crimes of the human heart. Now, on her way to a baptism, Sister Frevisse finds the truth in the saying blood is thicker than water...and as easily spilled. Waylaid by a band of outlaws, she learns that their leader is her long-lost cousin, who asks her to help him get pardoned for his crimes. But while Sister Frevisse is lodging at the home of Nicholas' business companion, an unpardonable act of murder is committed. Even if it means her own kin is condemned, Sister Frevisse must discover who robbed a rich landowner of his purse and his life.
It is the Spring of 1449. Recently widowed and still grieving for her husband, Christiana Helyngton finds her life wrenched apart by her late husband's greedy and ambitious relatives who are determined to have control of her lands and her daughters. Kidnapped, defamed and imprisoned, she must find a way to save herself before she can save her children. For Dame Frevisse at St. Frideswide's nunnery, Christiana is at first nothing more than a puzzle. Then, questions rise and troubles deepen and turn deadly. England is being drawn towards civil war by a struggle between the corrupt men who hold power around the king and those who oppose them. Christiana must use a secret entrusted to her by her husband as he was dying - but it is a secret that could bring down those lords nearest the king and destroy, rather than save, those most dear to her. Drawn into trouble far deeper than it first seemed, Frevisse must decide where her loyalties lie.
Death, the pious say, is the great mystery and Sister Frevisse finds it puzzling indeed. She has come to grieve for her uncle at Ewelme Manor, where his old friend Bishop Beaufort is also in attendance. Neither expected querulous Sir Clement Sharpe to stand at the funeral feast, dare God to strike him down and then actually collapse. With all the guests having supped on the same meat and wine without ill effect, was it indeed the Lord's hand that smote Sir Clement? The wily bishop suspects an unusual poison and orders Sister Frevisse to investigate. But the clever nun has her eyes open for something else; a killer with a venomous hatred...or a diabolical love.