A Season Worth Dying For

Some invitations come with a body.

London, 1815. Arabella Sterling arrived for the Season with a sensible plan: secure a husband, survive the ballrooms, and avoid becoming the subject of anyone's gossip. She did not plan on the corpse in Lady Marchwood's rose beds - and she certainly did not plan on being the one clever enough to notice it wasn't an accident.

Enter Julian Hartfield, the King's magistrate: infuriatingly composed, inconveniently perceptive, and possessed of two unforgivable habits. The first is being right. The second is noticing that Arabella is right too - about the murder, about the suspects, and about the current of something neither of them will name.

Then there is Edmund Ashworth. Charming. Wealthy. Attentive in exactly the way a young woman is taught to want. He is everything the Season promises - and every instinct Arabella owns is quietly screaming that a thing this perfect is a thing worth fearing.

As the bodies multiply and the drawing-room smiles grow thinner, Arabella discovers the ton hides worse things than scandal, and that the most dangerous man in the room is often the one being congratulated. To catch a killer who moves in the best circles, she'll have to gamble her reputation, her heart, and possibly the one Season she has left.

A Season Worth Dying For is a slow-burn Regency mystery with a sharp tongue, a darkening heart, and a villain who walks away from his own story - the first in a series where courtship and murder turn out to share a great deal of etiquette.

For readers who like their romance laced with dread and their heroines armed with more than a fan.