Accepting a dashing viscount's marriage proposal as part of a plan to escape her overbearing mother, Emily finds herself widowed early after her marriage and subsequently learns that her husband was not who he professed to be, a discovery that prompts an investigation in the quiet corridors of the British Museum.

When her friend's husband is wrongfully accused of murder, Lady Emily searches for answers from London's glittering ballrooms to Vienna's sordid alleys.

"Set in the lush countryside of Normandy, France, this new novel of suspense featuring Lady Emily Hargreaves is filled with intrigue, romance, mysterious deaths, and madness"--Page 4 of cover. "Returning from her honeymoon with Colin Hargreaves and a near brush with death in Constantinople, Lady Emily convalesces at her mother-in-law's beautiful estate in Normandy. But the calm she so desperately seeks is shattered when, out riding a horse, she comes...

Entreated for help by a childhood nemesis who has been wrongly accused of murder, Lady Emily launches an investigation in Venice that takes her from elegant palazzi to slums, libraries, and bordellos before she links the crime to a centuries-old puzzle.

"After an odd encounter at a grand masquerade ball, Lady Emily becomes embroiled in the murder investigation of one of the guests, a sometime actress trying to pass herself off as the mysterious heiress and world traveler Estella Lamar. Each small discovery, however, leads to more questions. Was the intended victim Miss Lamar or the imposter? And who would want either of them dead? As Emily and Colin try to make sense of all this, a larger puzzle...

"Lady Emily retreats to her villa on the island of Santorini for a brief respite from London. But when she arrives, the housekeeper informs her that the master of the house has returned--Emily's first husband who died a decade earlier.."--

"Lady Emily and her husband Colin must stop a serial killer whose sights may be set on the new king, Edward VII. On her deathbed, Queen Victoria asks to speak privately with trusted agent of the Crown Colin Hargreaves, slipping him a letter with her last, parting command: Une sanz pluis. Sapere aude. 'One and no more. Dare to know.' The year is 1901 and the death of Britain's longest-reigning monarch has sent all of the Empire into mourning. But for...

"In 1903, tensions between Britain and Germany are starting to loom over Europe, something that has not gone unnoticed by Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves. An agent of the Crown, Colin carries the weight of the Empire, but his focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter's palazzo in Florence--burglaries that might have international ramifications. He and Emily travel to Tuscany where, soon after their arrival, a stranger...

"Lady Emily, husband Colin Hargreaves, and their three sons eagerly embark on a family vacation at Cairnfarn Castle, the Scottish estate of their dear friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge. But a high-spirited celebration at the beginning of their stay comes to a grisly end when the duke's gamekeeper is found murdered on the banks of the loch. Handsome Angus Sinclair had a host of enemies: the fianc©♭e he abandoned in Edinburgh, the young woman who...