New Release! Lady Rosamund and the Poison Pen

Happy Book Birthday to me! It's been years since I started writing about Lady Rosamund, and now, at last, the first book in her series is out.


This is a new sort of book for me. 1) It's a Regency historical mystery, not a romance. Some of my romances are also mysteries, but the mystery usually takes second place to the romantic part of the story. The Lady Rosamund series as a whole will have a romance running through it, but the main focus in each book will be the mystery. And 2) It's written in first person -- that is, from the intimate point of view of one character, as if she is speaking to the reader.

(Actually, I have written in first person before. When I was thirteen years old, I wrote a story inspired by something that had happened in real life. Oh, the melodrama! Oh, the teen angst! Fortunately, I never finished it. More recently, I wrote a short story in first person -- a sort of historical time travel -- which was published in the anthology Crime Travel. But I digress -- back to Lady R.)

Here's the blurb of Lady Rosamund and the Poison Pen:

Lady Rosamund Phipps, daughter of an earl, has a secret. Well, more than one. Such as the fact that she’s so uninterested in sex that she married a man who promised to leave her alone and stick to his mistress. And a secret only her family knows—the mortifying compulsion to check things over and over. Society condemns people like her to asylums. But when she discovers the dead body of a footman on the stairs, everything she’s tried to hide for years may be spilled out in broad daylight.

First the anonymous caricaturist, Corvus, implicates Lady Rosamund in a series of scandalous prints. Worse, though, are the poison pen letters that indicate someone knows the shameful secret of her compulsions. She cannot do detective work on her own without seeming odder than she already is, but she has no choice if she is to unmask both Corvus and the poison pen.

Will Corvus prove to be an ally or an enemy? With the anonymous poison pen still out there, her sanity—and her life—are at stake.

~~~

If you'd like to read an excerpt, click here to go to my website and scroll down for the excerpt.

Lastly, here are some buy links:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087BBLLNL/
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B087BBLLNL/
Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B087BBLLNL/
Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B087BBLLNL/

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lady-rosamund-and-the-poison-pen-barbara-monajem/1136829963

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lady-rosamund-and-the-poison-pen

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/lady-rosamund-and-the-poison-pen/id1507264864

What I've Been Reading

I’ve been on vacation from blogging about books—actually, blogging about anything—because the first few months of the year are too packed with work for me. But I’ve been reading every spare moment (usually in the middle of the night).

So here are a few recommendations:

 

The Rockliffe Series by Stella Riley. These are brilliantly-written Georgian-era romances reminiscent of Georgette Heyer. 

I’ve read the first three – The Parfit Knight, The Mésalliance, and The Player, and I’m in the middle of book four, The Wicked Cousin (and will go right back to it when I finish writing this blog). 

The characters are all related somehow -- friends, relatives, business partners, etc. -- so each book foreshadows later romances. Once you start reading this series, you simply have to keep going.

If you want a gripping historical romance to whisk you away from the stressful present, these are for you.

  

The Beatrix Potter mystery series by Susan Wittig Albert. If you don’t mind a bit of the whimsical in your cozy, these stories are your cup of tea.

They follow Beatrix Potter’s life at her farm and the nearby villages in the Lake District of England. Some characters are real people and some are not, and we are treated to the point of view of the animals as well. The mysteries, which involve little to no violence, are solved by Potter, who is portrayed as a determined and inquisitive character.

I love all of it – the people, the animals, the beauties of the countryside, the workings of an English village in the early 20^th century, and the details about Potter’s life. These are great comfort reads. The first is The Tale of Hill Top Farm.

FREE E-BOOK FOR TWO DAYS ONLY!

Back to Bite You, the prequel to my Bayou Gavotte series, is free on Amazon on January 7th and 8th. It's a novella with a touch of mystery, a bit of New Orleans history, a lot of crazy fun, and a bite of paranormal lite.

 
IS THIS LOVE -- OR MURDER?

When vampire Mirabel Lane goes to Bayou Gavotte to hide out from the mobster she just dumped, the last thing she expects is to inherit a house. No, make that the second to last thing. What she really doesn’t expect is to fall for the previous owner’s gorgeous grandson.

When Gerry Kingsley goes to Bayou Gavotte to check out probable gold-digger and possible murderer Mirabel Lane, the last thing he expects is to fall in love with the irresistible twenty-something vampire.

No, what he really doesn’t expect is to unearth―once and for all―his family’s dark, convoluted past.

Go ahead, get yourself a copy while it's FREE!

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
Amazon Australia