P.F. Chisholm Books In Order

A Famine of Horses

In the year 1592, Sir Robert Carey comes north to Carlisle to take up his new post. He has wangled his appointment to be nearer his true love. And of course, he can use the money…
. Rich in atmosphere and packed with vivid real and fictional characters, few novels are as well imagined or as much fun as this romp through roguish courtiers, rival gangs, rustling, treason, and high ambition.

A Season of Knives

In 1592, Sir Robert Carey, a handsome courtier fleeing his creditors, his father’s wrath, and the close scrutiny of his Queen, came north to Carlisle to take up his new post as Deputy Warden of the West March. The presence of his true love, the married Elizabeth Widdrington, was no mere coincidence. Before long, Sir Robert was up to his ruff in horse rustling and treason A Famine of Horses, but he sorted that out with dispatch. Now he’s in trouble again. The rowdy Grahams plan to kidnap Elizabeth as she journeys home to her husband. While Sir Robert storms out to stop them, someone murders the man he has just sacked from his post of paymaster to the Carlisle garrison. When Sir Robert returns, he finds his servant Barnabus slung into the castle dungeon, accused of the crime, and his arch enemy Sir Richard Lowther scheming to have Carey arrested for masterminding the murder…
. When even faithful Sergeant Dodd is prepared to believe he did it, the courtier finds his hands full while ruin stares him in the face as he juggles the murder inquiry and untangles a skein of love and greed that reminds him most uncomfortably of how carefully he must conceal his love for Elizabeth. A Season of Knives, based on the real Sir Robert Carey’s tumultuous life, is not only a keenly plotted detective story, it’s an innovative police procedural and historical writing at its rousing best. The other works in this series are A Plague of Angels Introduction by Diana Gabaldon, A Famine of Horses Introduction by Sharon Kay Penman, and A Surfeit of Guns Introduction by Barbara Peters. The author is at work on a fifth Sir Robert Carey.

A Surfeit of Guns

Sir Robert Carey took up his northern post as Warden of the West March in order to escape the complications of creditors and court life. Trouble, however, is where the dashing Carey, possibly a cousin of the Queen, finds it. One black night in 1592, Carey is on night patrol along the unsettled border anchored by the garrison in Carlisle. It’s a disaster. First, there’s the fugitive he has to hand over to the warring Scots. Next come Wee Colin Elliot’s sheep stealers. And then a gun explodes and takes off the hand of one of Carey’s men. Back in Carlisle, Carey soon learns more faulty guns lie in the armoury in place of the sound weapons shipped in from Newcastle only last week. When these explosive deathtraps are stolen, he sets off in pursuit of both batches of guns and the thieves. The search ends in Dumfries where King James VI of Scotland potentially King James I of England when his cousin Elizabeth dies and his raucous court have assembled. James is as dissolute as ever, lovely Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, Carey’s true love, is still shackled to her husband, and seductive Signora Bonnetti takes a serious interest in Carey and in the missing guns. Will the frustrated courtier be gallant enough to flirt with the Signora and with treason?…
As wild as the American West, P.F. Chisholm’s witty historical detections are also elegantly crafted and historically accurate as they reimagine the life of a real Elizabethan gunslinger. Her other Carey novels are A Plague of Angels Introduction by Diana Gabaldon, A Famine of Horses Introduction by Sharon Kay Penman, A Season of Knives Introduction by Dana Stabenow. The author is at work on a fifth Sir Robert Carey.

A Plague of Angels

In 1592, dashing courtier Sir Robert Carey took up his northern post as Warden of the West March in order to escape the complications of creditors and court life. Trouble, however, dogs his heels wherever he goes. And where he goes in autumn, after the summer’s misadventures in Carlisle, is back to London upon a summons from his father. Carey is on difficult terms with his powerful sire, Henry, Lord Hunsdon. Hunsdon, son of Anne Boleyn’s elder sister, Mary and probably of a young King Henry VIII swings a lot of weight as ‘cousin’ to Queen Elizabeth. But Hunsdon needs his ingenious younger son, Carey to sort out the difficulties his elder son has got himself into as an innocent party in a plot to discredit the family. Accompanied by the shrewd Sergeant George Dodd, who’s like a fish out of water as he copes with the strange Londoners, Carey tackles Catholics, treachery, and such persons known to history and students of literature as George Greene and Christopher Marlowe who are working as spies and double agents. Most arresting is a portrait of a love sick, snivelling hanger on named Will Shakespeare…
.

A Murder of Crows

As wild as the American West, P. F. Chisholm’s witty historical detections are also elegantly crafted and historically accurate as they re-imagine the life of a real Elizabethan gunslinger in 16th century England.

September 1592 — and the redoubtable Sergeant Dodd is still in London with that dashing courtier Sir Robert Carey, dealing with the fall-out from their earlier adventures. Carey urgently needs to get back to Carlisle, where he is the Deputy Warden and the raiding season is about to begin. However, there are complications in the way. His powerful father, Lord Henry Hunsdon — son of the other Boleyn girl, Mary, and her paramour, young Henry VIII — wants him to solve the mystery of a badly decomposed corpse from the Thames that has washed up on Her Majesty’s Privy Steps.

Meanwhile, although he hates London, Sergeant Dodd has decided that he will not go north until he has taken a suitable revenge for his mistreatment by the Queen’s Vice Chamberlain, Thomas Heneage. Carey’s father wants him to sue — but none of the lawyers in London will take the brief against such a dangerous courtier. Then a mysterious young lawyer with a pock-marked face offers to help Dodd, with suspicious eagerness. Nobody knows who that balding young would-be poet and lover William Shakespeare might be working for, if he knows himself. And then, just as Carey is resigning himself to the delay, the one person he really does not want to see again arrives in London to stir everything up.

With the River Thames for a freeway and the dark streets of London full of people up to no good, Sergeant Dodd has to help Carey find the identity of the corpse and who murdered him, while bringing a little taste of the Borders to his dealings with Heneage.