Kathryn Swinbrooke Books

When a series of murders paralyzes the town of Canterbury, physician and chemist Kathryn Swinbrooke searches for a killer with literary tastes and rather personal motives

Physician and chemist Kathryn Swinbrooke of Canterbury, England, returns in her second medieval mystery, full of Chaucerian allusions, to investigate, with soldier Colum Murtagh, a series of murders connected with the disappearance of a royal relic, the Eye of God.

This third novel featuring medieval physician and chemist Kathryn Swinbrooke opens just before Christmas in 1471. Snowstorms have blanketed the city of Canterbury. Kathryn and her cook Thomasina are busily preparing for the holiday, when terrible news arrives: The painter Richard Blunt has confessed to killing his young wife, along with two men who were dallying with her. Kathryn is disturbed by Blunt's serene demeanor, but before she can articulate her suspicions, another death captures her attention. A tax collector, Sir Reginald Erpingham, has been found dead in his room at the Wicker Man tavern, and the King's monies have been stolen. Kathryn quickly determines that the collector was murdered, perhaps by poison, and begins questioning the guests at the tavern. Meanwhile, there are patients to be cared for, a practice to build, and a household to maintain - but Kathryn must put aside these pleasant duties if she is to find the link between Richard Blunt and the strange events at the Wicker Man tavern.

The Book of Shadows is the fourth novel in the acclaimed series featuring Kathryn Swinbrooke, medieval physician and chemist. It begins shortly after the murderous takeover of the throne by Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville in 1471, when blackmailers thrived by threatening detractors of the new king. The ugliest threat to the decent people of Canterbury is the magus Tenebrae, who controls the Book of Shadows - a grimoire of spells and magic containing secrets about the dead and the living. When Tenebrae is murdered, Kathryn Swinbrooke is summoned to solve the crime, or else risk the transfer of her love, Colum Murtagh, far away to London. However, the secrets stretch all the way to the King and Queen themselves, and everyone is a suspect - especially Tenebrae's last visitors, a nervous group of goldsmiths from London. Tenebrae is dead but the Book of Shadows still exerts his power, and its new owners will die for it. The suspects fall victim, one by one, to violent deaths, and Swinbrooke most solve the mystery before the Book of Shadows closes on them all.

In the late summer of 1472, medieval physician and apothecary Kathryn Swinbrooke is summoned to investigate yet another puzzling situation in Canterbury. She is appointed by the Archbishop as Advocatus Diaboli-the Devil's Advocate-to argue against the beatification of Roger Atworth, a friar in the Order of the Sack and the confessor of Dame Cecily of York, King Edward's mother. Atworth has died under mysterious circumstances, and there are rumors afloat of miraculous happenings surrounding his body. At the same time, an infestation of rats has begun to afflict Canterbury. Never in the history of the city has such an invasion occurred, and the topic is one everyone's lips. Meanwhile, when Kathryn begins asking questions at the friary about Atworth's death, she discovers that the logical explanation is murder, not a miracle. His involvement with Cecily may have brought about his demise, and Kathryn suspects a link between his death and that of an English spy outside the friary. With the murderer still on the loose, what began as a search for the town's ills becomes instead Kathryn's pursuit of a killer.

A violent past haunts Sir Walter Maltravers, the wealthy lord of Ingoldby Hall. As a commander during the War of the Roses, he fought alongside Edward IV at the bloody, fratricidal Battle of Towton. Decades earlier, and thousands of miles away, he served in the fanatical bodyguard of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus. There, as Turkish Jannisaries breached Constantinople’s walls and set the city aflame, Sir Walter committed what may have been an unforgivable sin: instead of defending the emperor with his last drop of blood, Maltravers fled. But not before scooping up all the treasure he could carry, including the Lacrima Christi---a giant ruby said to be a holy relic of incalculable value. When the ruby disappears from Canterbury’s Franciscan monastery, Sir Walter fears the emperor’s vengeful loyalists---the Athanatoi---have tracked him to his estate. He doesn’t have much time to ponder his dilemma. Crawling on his bare knees to the shrine at the center of his enormous private hedge maze, the penitent Sir Walter encounters his axe-wielding killer. . . . Maltravers’s head turns up days later, impaled on a pole. Gossips in Canterbury whisper of the fabled Athanatoi, come to claim their bloody due from a traitor. But apothecary Kathryn Swinbrooke doesn’t think so. Her Irish fiancée, Colum Murtagh, the King’s Commissioner in Canterbury, is called in to investigate the crimes. A Renaissance woman in a Middle Age world, Swinbroke comes to believe that all is not as it seems within the cozy confines of Ingoldby Hall. She asks tough questions of the wealthy power-players who seem to hover around the murder case. And before long, the death toll mounts: a maid, a madwoman, a scribe, a retainer. . . . One thing becomes abundantly clear: if Swinbrooke and Murtagh don’t nail down the killer---or killers---soon, they’ll be next!

The village of Walmer is a small, claustrophobic place where everyone knows everyone and everyone's business. Everyone knows the blacksmith, Elias, liked to drink and liked the ladies. Everyone knows his wife, Isabella, had been spotted many a time entering the woods with men other than her husband. And everyone knows the couple fought, sometimes violently. But could they have independently, and on the same day - the festive eve of Michaelmas - murdered each other with two entirely different poisons? The village's medicine woman, Mother Croul, doesn't think so. And neither does Kathryn Swinbrooke, Physician of Canterbury, who is in town with her new husband, Colum Murtagh. Kathryn and Colum are visiting on state business: Lord Henry Beauchamp is to receive the shadowy emissaries of Louis XI of France, on behalf of his own master, Edward of York, only recently triumphant over Lancastrian forces in the bloody, fratricidal War of the Roses. The Frenchmen claim to have the ultimate bargaining chip - but do they? It is a tense time for the kingdom; everything hinges on the meeting between Lord Henry and the French agents. Now murder stalks the land, and only Kathryn Swinbrooke can cut through the web of murder and deceit that seems to arrive with the Spider King's minions.