Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #11
Berkley
March 2017
On Sale: March 7, 2017
384 pages ISBN: 0451471172 EAN: 9780451471178 Kindle: B00Z8VT89U Trade Size / e-Book (reprint) Add to Wish List
The much-anticipated new entrée in the Sebastian St. Cyr
“simply elegant”* historical mystery series, from the
national bestselling author of Who Buries the Dead
and Why Kings Confess.
Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount
Devlin, has come to this seemingly peaceful Shropshire
village to honor a slain friend and on a quest to learn more
about his own ancestry. But when the body of a lovely widow
is found on the banks of the River Teme, a bottle of
laudanum at her side, the village’s inexperienced new
magistrate turns to St. Cyr for help.
Almost immediately, Sebastian realizes that Emma Chance did
not, in truth, take her own life. Less easy to discern is
exactly how she died, and why. For as Sebastian and Hero
soon discover, Emma was hiding both her true identity and
her real reasons for traveling to Ayleswick. Also troubling
are the machinations of Lucien Bonaparte, the estranged
brother of the megalomaniac French Emperor Napoleon. Held
captive under the British government’s watchful eye, the
younger Bonaparte is restless, ambitious, and treacherous.
Sebastian’s investigation takes on new urgency when he
discovers that Emma was not the first, or even the second,
beautiful young woman in the village to die under suspicious
circumstances. Home to the eerie ruins of an ancient
monastery, Ayleswick reveals itself to be a dark and
dangerous place of secrets that have festered among the
villagers for decades—and a violent past that may be
connected to Sebastian’s own unsettling origins. And as he
faces his most diabolical opponent ever, he is forced to
consider what malevolence he’s willing to embrace in order
to destroy a killer.