"Today's letter was not a summons to serve Queen Elizabeth. It came from Lancashire. John Bexwith, my steward at Appleton Manor, is dead." Susanna frowned, surprised that this news should have affected her husband so strongly. "The man was quite elderly," she said hesitantly, "was he not?" "Your memory is excellent," Robert told her, absently tucking an unruly lock of dark brown hair back up under her brocaded cap. "He was found face down in a marrow-bone pie." With that incredible statement, Robert placed the letter in his wife's outstretched hand. Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie is a delightfully cozy Elizabethan mystery introducing Susanna, Lady Appleton. When her husband's steward dies in a unique, ignominious, and highly suspicious manner, Susanna takes advantage of her husband's absence on a political mission for Queen Elizabeth to investigate Bexwith's mysterious demise. The serving wench who found Bexwith claims that he was frightened to death by a ghost, but Susanna can think of several poisons that could have been concealed in the marrow-bone pie. (Susanna is something of an expert on poisons, having been inspired by her sister's fatal encounter with some poisonous berries to write a cautionary herbal for housewives.) Even if Bexwith was poisoned, was it accidental or intentional? As if the case weren't complicated enough, Susanna must also unmask a "ghost"— or are the ghost and the poisoner one and the same? Kathy Lynn Emerson's debut Elizabethan mystery will delight as it introduces you to a sixteenth-century husband's worst nightmare: an intelligent, no-nonsense wife who happens to know hundreds of poisons.

Face Down upon an Herbal marks the return of Susanna, Lady Appleton, an Elizabethan woman who literally wrote the book on poisons. While her husband is away on a diplomatic mission to Scotland, Susanna is summoned by Queen Elizabeth to work on a new book of botanical decoctions at Madderly Castle. But when the herbalist learns that a pugnacious Scots baron has been found murdered atop the herbal that she has authored, she realizes that there is more to the queen's request. Then the killer strikes again, and strong-minded Susanna takes matters into her own hands and investigates the dastardly deeds. To uncover the truth, however, she must answer some vexing questions: Why are Lord Madderly and the local authorities so quick to blame an outside intruder? How are the deaths linked to a forger who specializes in noble genealogies? Is the murderer part of a treasonous conspiracy against the queen? Faced with a host of suspects who are not as they seem, Susanna must work quickly to find the killer's identity - before she becomes his or her next victim.

She heard him come up behind her, expected him to turn her in his arms and embrace her with a lover's enthusiasm. Instead, his forearm abruptly cut off her supply of air as it pressed into her throat. A harsh whisper, close to her ear, was the last thing she heard before one abrupt movement snapped her neck. "Whore," her murderer said. "No better than a Winchester goose." It is the spring of 1563, and Susanna, Lady Appleton, wants only to tend to the medicinal herbs in the garden of her London townhouse. But the appearance of a mysterious veiled woman disrupts her plans. Is the woman just another mistress of Robert's, her forever-philandering husband? When the gentlewoman is found dead with a snapped neck in London's notorious brothel district, and her last known visitor was Robert, Lady Appleton is forced to investigate. As she delves deeper into the mystery, she uncovers a string of murders from years dark-haired of dark-ahaired women, all occurring on St. Mark's Day, and, most perplexing, all with a goose feather left by the bodies. For Susanna, nobody, not even her own husband, is above suspicion. Kathy Lynn Emerson's third mystery in the Lady Appleton series once again will delight "readers who appreciate suspenseful historical mysteries with a feminist slant" (Booklist).

Susanna, Lady Appleton discovers that her husband, Sir Robert, thought long dead, is actually alive. The renowned herbalist is summoned to London, but finds her poisoned husband beneath the Eleanor Cross. Vowing to bring his killer to justice, Susanna embarks on a daring winter journey and discovers there is no shortage of those who bore animosity toward Robert.

Wealthily widowed and fiercely independent herbalist Lady Susanna Appleton sets out to save her former nemesis from being burned at the stake.

The moment her friend Sir Walter Pendennis comes to call carrying his wife's crimson cloak over one arm, Susanna senses something terrible has happened - and she's not mistaken. Sir Walter's wife Eleanor, has been trampled by runaway horses, and her dying confession reveals that she has been involved in a plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. Since the lady's co-conspirators have no idea she is dead, Walter proposes a daring Susanna will impersonate his late wife and take her place among the traitors. Now, caught in a web of treachery, deceit, and double-crosses, where there is a turncoat in the shadows who knows more than she does...and who will stop at nothing to silence her forever..

Anxious to prove England's claim on the New World, Queen Elizabeth has charged Sir Walter Pendennis, seasoned spy and diplomat, with the top-secret mission. Walter gathers a team of scholars at his Cornwall estate, and calls upon his dear friend Susanna, Lady Appleton, to assist. Susanna is an expert herbalist with a quick mind and wise ways-and Walter has long carried a flame for her. When Walter's wife appears uninvited at Priory House, she sets about extinguishing that flame. Meanwhile, Susanna and Walter find that troubling discrepancies have surfaced among sailors' accounts of the land beyond the Western Sea. Their research becomes intrigue when an eyewitness account turns up missing and a scholar is found dead in his study. Is the murder the work of an academic rival? A jealous lover? A Spanish spy? Scholarly trickery and New World scandal come to light as Susanna's sleuthing skills are put to the test. Face Down Across the Western Sea is a potent concoction, brimming with the qualities that have made the Susanna, Lady Appleton, series a favorite among mystery lovers: rich period detail, first-rate suspense, and at the center of it all, Susanna-a headstrong and beguiling heroine.

Shortly before a royal visit to Leigh Abbey, the home of sixteenth-century sleuth Susanna Appleton, a man dies in a fall from a banqueting house. Is his death part of some treasonous plot against Elizabeth Tudor? Or is it merely murder?

Are the nude spies lolling in the ancient Roman communal baths of Elizabethan England plotting the return of Mary Queen of Scots? Once again Susanna, Lady Appleton, encounters murder and treason, and only she can unravel the crimes in the intriguing year of 1575.

The year is 1577. Mary Queen of Scots is a prisoner in England, and Scotland is in upheaval. Does this political unrest tie in with a murder involving Susanna Appletons friend Catherine, who has disappeared in the company of a notorious spy, and is now under suspicion of treason?