I’m excited to announce that I have a new Regency-set historical mystery series in the works! (A pause as I hit the play button for Handel’s Music for Royal Fireworks!) The first book, Murder on Black Swan Lane, will hit the shelves in July.

I’ll be posting more during the upcoming weeks about the inspiration behind the series, as well as a fun look at how the cover was created . . .

But for now, I’ll just dish on why I find the Regency such a fabulously interesting time and place. It was a world aswirl in silks, seduction and the intrigue of the Napoleonic Wars. Radical new ideas were clashing with the conventional thinking of the past. Science and technology were changing the world with frightening speed. As a result, people were challenging and changing the fundamentals of their society.

In so many ways, it was the birth of the modern world, and for me, its challenges, its characters and its conflicts have such relevance to our own times. (And hey, who can resist men in breeches and boots!)

In MURDER ON BLACK SWAN LANE, the first book in my new series, which comes out in July of this year, I’ve sought to create two lead characters who embody the intellectual curiosity—and gritty courage—of the times. They are opposites: a brooding aristocrat whose extraordinary mind runs on the rational new principles of scientific inquiry, paired with a struggling artist whose innate cleverness and intuition are the keys to her survival. Forced to work together, the Earl of Wrexford and Charlotte Sloane find they make a formidable team, despite their differences. (Ah, but as science tells us, opposites often attract!)

They’ll be setting off on some devilishly daunting adventures. So lace up your corsets, tweak the tails of your cravat and get ready to enter a world of glittering ballrooms, dangerous alleyways and deadly intrigues . . .

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