Countess Ashby De La Zouche Books In Order
- Unnatural Fire (2000)
- The Rival Queens (2001)
- The Ambitious Stepmother (2002)
- Fortune’s Slave (2004)
Novels
- The Murder Quadrille (2011)
- My Dark Rosaleen (2019)
Collections
- Triple Shorts (2011)
Countess Ashby De La Zouche Book Covers
Novels Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
Fidelis Morgan Books Overview
Unnatural Fire
Restoration London, 1699 Anastasia Ashby de la Zouche, Baroness Penge, Countess of Clapham, and former mistress to King Charles II, has astonishingly been jailed in debtors’ prison. Joining forces with her loyal ex maidservant, Alpiew, the formerly pampered and proper Countess sets out to make a living by working for the scandal sheets a line of work that inevitably leads her through some of the seamier byways of the city. She and Alpiew find a welcome additional source of income when they are approached by a stranger who asks them to gather evidence to prove her husband is committing adultery. But the uncomfortable job of trailing after the handsome merchant in the depths of winter ends abruptly in a Covent Garden churchyard with a brutal murder. Implicated in the crime, the Countess and Alpiew find themselves drawn into a complex labyrinth of deceit, violence, and the mysterious world of alchemy. And the more they investigate, the more complex the picture becomes, involving everyone from the most decrepit back alley criminals to some of the most influential people in all the land.
The Rival Queens
Restoration London, 1700. Those intrepid and destitute hero*ines the Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her maidservant Alpiew whose most recent caper involved trying to uncover an adulterer and accidentally unearthing a plot involving corruption, alchemy, transvestitism, treason and murder are once more scavenging for scandal to entertain the readers of that scurrilous rag the London Trumpet. With the tireless bailiffs hot on their skirt tails, the Countess and Alpiew are reduced to seeking refuge in a philosophical lecture at the York Buildings concert hall. But their expectations of a dull evening are confounded when one of the players staggers onto the stage, her hands dripping with blood. A doyenne has been decapitated under their very noses!In the resulting chaos the unlikely sleuths find themselves with an abundance of suspects: players, phanatiques, punks, ruffians in pink ribbons, a Punch and Judy man not to mention a painter with a silver proboscis. Determined to leave no stone unturned, they relentlessly pursue their suspect from the Tower of London to Bedlam, with a brief detour to the wilds of Wapping. Along the way they uncover with a little help from Samuel Pepys a vast web of intrigue and corruption that extends into the highest echelons of both society and the judiciary. Building upon her beguiling first novel, Unnatural Fire, Fidelis Morgan once again weaves a fabulous romp through London’s darker and seamier side, with a charged historical mystery that is as darkly funny as it is gripping and entertaining. An unforgettable story of murder and mayhem, The Rival Queens is a wonderfully complex and revealing portrait of London at the dawn of the eighteenth century.
My Dark Rosaleen
Who is Rosaleen? In Liverpool, she is Irish. At Catholic boarding school she is working class atheist. At Protestant school she is southern middle class Irish. Now, held on charges of terrorism, Rosaleen, a housewife, represents the sum total of centuries of turbulent Irish history.
Related Authors