Books By Biddle,Cordelia Frances
Deception s Daughter - Martha Beale Mystery #2
This second historical mystery featuring iconoclastic heiress Martha Beale zeros in on her relationship with Constable Thomas Kelman. When she and her newly adopted children, Ella and Cai, return to Philadelphia after a summer in the country, Martha is thrust into the doings of upper-crust society in the nineteenth century, but her attention is never pulled completely away from the uncommunicative Kelman. When the eligible young Dora disappears from her family s home, Thomas and Martha follow a trail of clues that takes them into the slums, where raggedy children watch a young mother push a baby basket into the river and drown herself and where, later, a body is found in a coal bin. A bewildering chain of coincidences follows, appearing to implicate a poorhouse father in the baby s death. Meanwhile, an eyebrow-raising romance commences between no-nonsense Martha and her working-class swain. Martha is a winning sleuth in the tradition of Jacqueline Winspear s Maisie Dobbs and Tasha Alexander s Lady Emily Ashton. --Jen Baker
The Conjurer - Martha Beale Mystery #1
When the father of one of Philadelphia's finest families disappears, Martha Beale once more joins forces with her secret beau, Thomas Kelman, to trace the heiress. But what appears to be a kidnapping takes a darker turn and complex clues implicate rich and poor alike.
The Conjurer - Martha Beale Mystery #1
Without Fear - Martha Beale Mystery #3
Critics have lauded Cordelia Frances Biddle's historical series featuring heiress Martha Beale. The indomitable heroine returns in Without Fear when a decapitated corpse is discovered at Joseph Bonaparte's palatial estate near Philadelphia. A vanished wife, a former actress with an agonizing secret, and a mill worker accused of murder reveal the dark and convoluted connections between wealth and poverty, and the tenuous link between grief and joy.
