The sequel to Garden of Sins, coming January 10, 2023
Award-winning author Laura Joh Rowland is back with the seventh in her critically acclaimed Victorian mystery series. Sarah Bain Barrett is pitted against a true-crime serial killer who may have ties to Jack the Ripper.
London, April 1891. When the severed torso of a woman washes up on the bank of the river Thames, London believes a serial killer from the past has struck again. Crime photographer and investigator Sarah Bain Barrett is on the scene with her friends Mick O'Reilly and Lord Hugh Staunton. This is their chance to solve a grisly cold case and deliver a monster to belated justice, with help from Sarah's husband Detective Sergeant Thomas Barrett; her sister Sally Albert, an intrepid newspaper reporter; and Hugh's psychologist, Dr. Joshua Lewes, who's a pioneer in the new science of criminal profiling. But the opportunity brings troubles galore: Sarah and her husband can't agree on what direction their inquiries should take. Barrett favors concentrating on two shady characters he knows from his days as a patrol constable in Whitechapel, while Sarah suspects the charismatic leader of a polygamous religious sect from which at least one woman has gone missing. Their discord threatens not only the investigation but their marriage.
To complicate matters, Sarah's bitter enemy, Inspector Reid, is leading the police's hunt for the killer they're calling the Torso Murderer. Obsessed with the Ripper case and his own failure to solve it, he thinks the Ripper and the Torso Murderer are one and the same personÑa notion that could steer the police investigation disastrously off course. Hot in pursuit of the killer, Reid is also hell-bent on discovering what Sarah and company have been hiding about the Ripper.
The Torso Murder case threatens to expose a dangerous truth, tear apart Sarah's close-knit band of comrades, and send them to the gallows before they can put the killer out of action.
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The sequel to Portrait of Peril, coming January 11, 2022
London, November 1890. Crime scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett faces a perfect storm of events. She and her husband Detective Sergeant Barrett are riding on a train that crashes. While rescuing other passengers, they find a woman who's been strangled to death. Their search for her identity and her killer leads them to Cremorne Gardens, a seedy riverside pleasure park that's a combination carnival, theater, freak show, and museum of oddities. It's among the most challenging cases that Sarah, Barrett, and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly have ever undertaken. The suspects include a dwarf, a female acrobat, and a member of the Royal Family. Due to the royal connection, the police commissioner declares the case top-secret. Sarah and company must investigate on the quiet, keeping the suspects, the press, and the public in the dark. That's easier said than done. The investigation is complicated by the injury Hugh sustained during their last case, Mick's romance with a woman who has psychic powers, and Barrett's old flame.
Meanwhile, Sarah's father Benjamin Bain goes on trial for a rape and murder that happened more than two decades ago. The victim was a teenage girl named Ellen Casey. Is Benjamin Bain as innocent as he claims? Sarah has serious doubts. The trial is the scandal of the year, a media blitz. The outcome--and the truth about the murder on the train--are beyond Sarah's wildest imaginings. What dangerous secrets are hidden behind the tawdry glamor of Cremorne Gardens? Is Benjamin Bain wrongly accused, or a guilty sinner who deserves to be hanged?
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Victorian London is a city gripped by belief in the supernatural—but a grisly murder becomes a matter of flesh and blood for intrepid photographer Sarah Bain.
London, October 1890. Crime scene photographer Sarah Bain is overjoyed to marry her beloved Detective Sergeant Barrett—but the wedding takes a sinister turn when the body of a stabbing victim is discovered in the crypt of the church. Not every newlywed couple begins their marriage with a murder investigation, but Sarah and Barrett, along with their friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly, take the case.
The dead man is Charles Firth, whose profession is "spirit photography"—photographing the ghosts of the deceased. When Sarah develops the photographs he took in the church, she discovers one with a pale, blurred figure attacking the victim. The city's spiritualist community believes the church is haunted and the figure is a ghost. But Sarah is a skeptic, and she and her friends soon learn that the victim had plenty of enemies in the human world—including a scientist who studies supernatural phenomena, his psychic daughter, and an heiress on a campaign to debunk spiritualism and expose fraudulent mediums.
In the tunnels beneath a demolished jail, a ghost-hunting expedition ends with a new murder, and new suspects. While Sarah searches for the truth about both crimes, she travels a dark, twisted path into her own family's sordid history. Her long-lost father is the prime suspect in a cold-case murder, and her reunion with him proves that even the most determined skeptic can be haunted by ghosts from the past.
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London, June 1890. Sarah Bain and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly are crime scene
photographers for the Daily World newspaper. After solving a sensational murder, they're under pressure
to deliver another big story. On a foggy summer night, they're called to the bank of the river Thames.
The murder victim is an unidentified woman whose face has been slashed. But as Sarah takes photographs,
she discovers that the woman is still alive.
The case of "Sleeping Beauty" becomes a public sensation, and three parties quickly come forward to
identify her: a rich, sinister artist who claims she's his wife; a mother and her two daughters who
co-own a nursing home and claim she's their stepdaughter/sister; and a precocious little girl who
claims Sleeping Beauty is her mother. Which party is Sleeping Beauty's rightful kin? Is someone among
them her would-be killer?
Then Sleeping Beauty awakens—with a severe case of amnesia. She's forgotten her name and everything
else about herself. But she recognizes one of the people who've claimed her. Sarah is delighted to reunite
a family and send Sleeping Beauty home—until one of the claimants is murdered. Suddenly, Sarah, her
motley crew of friends, and her fiancé Detective Sergeant Barrett are on the wrong side of the law.
Now they must identify the killer before they find themselves headed for the gallows.
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Photographer Sarah Bain and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and sometime street urchin Mick O'Reilly are private detectives with a new gig—photographing crime scenes for London's Daily World newspaper. The Daily World is the latest business venture of their sole client, Sir Gerald Mariner, a fabulously wealthy and powerful banker.
One cold, snowy January morning, Sarah, Hugh, and Mick are summoned to the goriest crime scene they've ever encountered. A pub owner named Harry Warbrick has been found hanged and decapitated amid evidence of foul play. His murder becomes a sensation because he was England's top hangman and he's met the same fate that he inflicted on hundreds of criminals.
Sir Gerald announces that the Daily World—meaning Sarah and her friends—will investigate and solve Harry Warbrick's murder before the police do. The contest pits Sarah against the man she loves, Police Constable Barrett. She and her friends discover a connection between Harry Warbrick's murder and the most notorious criminal he ever executed—Amelia Carlisle, the "Baby-Butcher,"" who murdered hundreds of infants placed in her care.
What deadly secret did Harry Warbrick know, and who hanged the hangman?
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A photographer in 1889 London, Miss Sarah Bain runs a private detective agency with her friends, Lord Hugh Staunton and former street urchin Mick O'Reilly. Their sole credential is that they solved the Jack the Ripper case, a secret they can never tell because they did it outside the boundaries of the law. Their new big case arises when a wealthy banker, Sir Gerald Mariner, posts a handsome reward for finding his missing infant. All of London joins in the search. But Sarah has an advantage--a photograph she took during a routine surveillance job, which unexpectedly reveals a clue about the kidnapping.
After Sir Gerald hires Sarah, Hugh, and Mick to find his son, they move into his opulent mansion, where they discover a photograph of baby Robin. It eerily resembles postmortem photographs taken of deceased children posed to look as if they're alive. Was the kidnapping real, or a cover-up for a murder? Is the perpetrator a stranger, or someone inside the troubled Mariner family? The case hits close to home for Sarah as it intertwines with her search for her father, who disappeared after he became the prime suspect in a murder twenty-three years ago. She finds herself on the wrong side of the law, which threatens her budding romance with Police Constable Barrett. But Sarah must uncover the truth about Robin's kidnapping, and her own family, before her past catches up to her in A Mortal Likeness, the gripping follow-up to award-winning author Laura Joh Rowland's The Ripper's Shadow.
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It's 1888, the year of Jack the Ripper, the most famous serial killer in history. Modern forensic science hasn't been invented yet, and the police are powerless to stop the Ripper as he haunts the foggy streets, brutally slays one prostitute after another, and terrifies all of London. Enter Miss Sarah Bain, a photographer in Whitechapel, a solitary, independent woman with dark secrets. One of her secrets is that she supplements her meager income by taking illegal "boudoir photographs" of prostitutes. Sarah is the only person who knows that the Ripper isn't choosing his victims randomlyÑhe's targeting her models. As she conducts her own private investigation into the murders, she clashes with Police Constable Barrett, who has his own personal reason for wanting to catch the Ripper. She acquires a motley crew of friends: Lord Hugh Staunton, a gay nobleman; Mick O'Reilly, a street urchin; Catherine Price, a budding young actress; and Abraham Lipsky, a Jewish butcher, and his wife Rachel. They band together with Sarah to solve the Crime of the Century. In the process, Sarah embarks on a personal journey that teaches her the meaning of friendship and uncovers clues to the mystery of her own past.
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