Book excerpt: A Spartan Murder: When Cassie Pengear is summoned to Oxford as a suspect in a murder, she assumes it’s by one of the Scotland Yard Inspectors who don’t appreciate her occasional help. She’s surprised to learn it’s from her friend Inspector Burrows and even more startling, he actually begins to give her information on the case of a murdered Oxford don. Startling until she realizes his two best suspects are committing a crime Inspector Burrows would rather overlook simply by being together. Now she’s keeping suspects' secrets while investigating blackmail and murder. approx. 53,000 words or 200 pages The Body in the Box Room: When Cassie Pengear agreed to spend the evening with her cousin Milly, and Milly’s latest gentleman caller and his mother, it was with the promise that Milly and her gentleman would not trouble her again unless there was an impending marriage. She did not expect Milly to stumble over a body in her prospective mother-in-law’s box room, and she certainly did not expect Inspector Wainwright to draw the case. Now Milly is convinced they’re all suspects and Cassie is the only one who can figure out who murdered the body in the box room. In a Victorian England that almost existed, a steampunk London where tinkerers and clockwork devices exist alongside handsome cabs and corsets, murder is still solved by traditional observation and intuition. This is the London where American typist Cassandra Pengear finds herself stumbling over corpses and helping Scotland Yard detectives solve murders (although they inexplicably prefer to call it interfering). Follow her adventures in the Cassie Pengear Mystery series, beginning with The Killing at the Carnival. traditional mystery, cozy mystery, steammpunk London, amateur detective, female sleuth