M. Louisa Locke's Blog

Dear all,

I am hoping that you got the blog posts I sent out last spring and summer that explained that I wasn’t going to post from my website anymore and that told you about the two newsletters I set up to replace these posts.

However, since I’ve published two books since then, one a novella called Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime, and the fourth book in my science fiction Caelestis Series, entitled, Tides of Acerba, I thought this would be a good time to remind you all about these newsletters and in case you would like to give them a try.

The first newsletter, which has been going for over a year now, is called An Aging Author’s Daily Diversions, and it is the continuation of the daily diary I first started doing during Covid.  In these daily posts I not only talk about what I have been doing to age gracefully and how my writing is progressing, but I also publish information about the research I do, called Historical Tidbits, and I have recently started publishing a new Victorian San Francisco story, Dandy and the Dognapppers, scene by scene. For background information on this short story, check out this link.

The second newsletter, Mary Louisa Locke’s Monthly Newsletter, provides information on new publications, promotions of existing books, raffles for people to win a free code for my audiobooks, and links to other author’s books I think people might find interesting.

In short, I would love to see you subscribe to these newsletters (which are free) if you haven’t done so already.

M. Louisa Locke, May, 16, 2023

Dear Reader,

I have been delighted with the response to my decision to shift my blogs over to my new daily newsletter, An Author’s Daily Diversions, on substack.com.  I currently have over 360 subscribers, and I have enjoyed interspersing my general posts about my writing progress and attempts to maintain a good healthy balance to my life with little descriptions of the research I’ve done called Historical Tidbits, weekly posts of my father’s poetry, as well as periodic posts about my experience as an Indie Author. If you click link above, you can sample some of these posts and see if you would like to subscribe.

If you are only interested in getting news about new publications, hearing about ebook and audiobook discounts, or participating in my Audiobook Raffle, then you should subscribe to Locke’s Promotional Newsletter.

Sincerely,

M. Louisa Locke, July 6, 2022

I have a number of promotional deals to tell you about for the month of April (see below), but first I would like to discuss my new experiment with a more efficient and effective method of communicating with other authors and fans of my work—by setting up a newsletter I’ve called An Aging Author’s Daily Diversions on substack (you might be familiar with this as the site hosting Letters from an American by historian, Heather Cox Richardson.)

Currently, I have three primary methods of communicating with people—this blog, monthly promotional newsletters, and daily posts on my Author FaceBook page. There have been problems with all three.

For example, this blog has become less and less effective. I used to post 2-3 articles per month, and many of my subscribers were other authors who were interested in hearing about my journey as an indie author and fans of my mystery series who were interested in the historical research I had done for each book. However, in the past few years, most of the entries have been posts about promotions (and my infrequent new publications.) Not surprisingly, fewer and fewer of you comment or even open the email that goes out.

Recently, I have been finding a real connection with readers and other authors has been my facebook author page. When Covid started, and I was looking for a greater sense of connection with people, I started doing a daily diary post that talked about my days, the research I was doing, the progress I was making on the latest book. That daily post has been immensely satisfying. The problem with this method of communication, however, is that FaceBook only shows these posts in the daily newsfeed of 10% of my two-thousand and more followers.

So, after being inspired by the newsletters of authors who had shifted from blogging or single purpose promotional emails, I decided to see if a similar shift on my part would satisfy both me and my various constituencies. To do so, last week I started sending out An Aging Author’s Daily Diversions, which is a free newsletter that shows up in subscribers’ emails daily.

In these emails, I will continue to describe how I am working on aging gracefully, report on my writing progress, and make recommendations of books I am reading/listening to or tv shows I am watching. Once a month, I will also provide details on promotional discounts on my books and audiobooks, and weekly, I will have newsletters that focus my experiences as an indie author, and report on interesting facts I’ve discovered in my research. Subscribers who are primarily interested in these topics will know to open those emails entitled specifically–New Deals, My Indie Author Journey, and Historical Tidbits.

What I hope you all will do after reading this post is go and check out An Aging Author’s Daily Diversions, subscribe for a month or two to see if you enjoy it. That way I won’t lose contact with you when I stop posting these blogs (and instead devote more time to writing!)

M. Louisa Locke

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$.99 on Chirp, $1.99 on AppleBooks

 $1.99 on Chirp, AppleBooks, B&N, GooglePlay

,

$2.99 on Chirp, AppleBooks, and GooglePlay

Find a new Victorian Novel to read HERE

or

Enter to Win a Bundle of Science Fiction/Fantasy Novels HERE

I am currently in the middle of a promotion of the audiobook editions of my Victorian San Francisco Mysteries: Books 1-4 ($1.99), Pilfered Promises ($1.99), Scholarly Pursuits ($2.99) and Lethal Remedies ($3.99).

I wouldn’t have been able to do this promotion if I hadn’t made the decision to shift my audiobooks from being exclusive to ACX (Amazon’s audiobook production and distribution arm) to being non-exclusive and distributing through Findaway Voices. This shift meant my audiobooks would still available on Amazon and Audible, but they would now be available on a whole host of additional venues. Findaway Voices currently distributes books to over forty partners, including Audible. Three years ago, I discussed the reasons for making this shift in this blog piece and this seemed like a good time to provide an update on how this shift has worked out for me.

While I had a number of reasons for making this shift, I knew that it represented a financial risk since it meant the royalty percentage on all my audiobooks distributed by Audible would go from forty percent to twenty-five percent. Therefore, I’m pleased that my sales through Findaway Voices the past three years have more than made up for the loss in revenue with Audible. In addition, distributing through Findaway Voices has helped me achieve a number of the goals I set for myself when I made the shift.

First, I am no longer dependent on ACX to get my books to listeners, and my sales to libraries are now a significant part of my sales.

In the three years since I stopped being exclusive with ACX and started distributing through Findaway Voices, only twenty-nine percent of my total audiobook sales were Audible sales. Instead, I now sell to a variety of stores, including AppleBooks, Bookmate, Chirp, eStories, GooglePlay, Nook, Scribd, and Storytel. In addition, twenty-five percent of my sales through Findaway Voices have been to libraries through Bibliotheca, Overdrive, and Hoopla.

Audible sales still make up fifty-one percent of my audiobook revenue. This is due, in part, to the higher prices Audible charges for audiobooks and also the number of my non-Audible sales that are to libraries and through discount promotions, which generally garner me lower revenue per sale. As I experiment more with tweaking my regular prices and looking for additional promotional opportunities, I believe the proportion of my revenue from non-Audible sales will continue to increase.

For those interested in the problems that can be caused by dependence on a single source of audiobook sales, check out what has been called AudibleGate, when a change in policy by ACX about returns had a sudden profound and negative effect on author revenue.

Second, I can now determine the prices for my audiobooks (except for Audible, which still insists on setting prices for all audiobooks they distribute.) This has opened up a number of promotional opportunities through Findaway Voices, especially through their partnership with Chirp.

On Audible, all my full-length novels cost $24.95. In contrast, I have priced my novels with the other retailers at $11.95. More importantly, I have been able to make the first books in my two series cost only $4.99 for non Audible sales. In this way they are acting as loss leaders for these series.

Findaway Voices also provides 100 free codes for each of the audiobooks I sell. For the past two years I have raffled off two of these codes with each of my newsletters. This is a simple method of adding value to my newsletters and encouraging my existing fans to give my audiobooks a try.

Even better, Findaway Voices makes it easy to temporarily discount audiobooks for up to thirty days at a time through Chirp, AppleBooks, and, as of this week, Barnes and Noble. Findaway Voices handles lowering then upping the price, which makes the whole process very smooth. I have been doing these discounts every month for the past year, and I do see a spike in sales for the books temporarily discounted. – primarily through Chirp. For example, in this past November, my revenue from sales of my novel, Pilfered Promises, tripled from the previous month when I discounted its price from $11.45 to $1.99, and my revenue for Maids of Misfortune quadrupled when I discounted it from $4.99 to $0.99 in December.

Third, the partnership between Findaway Voices and Chirp, the audiobook promotion arm of BookBub, has opened up new opportunities for indie authors to market their audiobooks to a broader audience.

As with Bookbub’s success with ebook promotion, the success of Chirp appears to be, in large part, due to the size of their pool of people who have signed up to get a daily email listing a selection of discounted audiobooks in specific categories.

Unfortunately, this success makes it more difficult to get your book chosen if you are an indie author, since books by traditionally published authors—often from their back lists—appear to be predominant.

For example, in 2019, when Chirp was first rolled out, I had two books immediately accepted. Then, in the next year and a half, I got eleven rejections in a row. I didn’t get a book accepted for promotion until I submitted boxed sets. I had a Chirp featured deal in August, 2021 of Caelestis Series, my science fiction boxed set, and the second deal I got is the one I am currently running with my boxed set, Victorian San Francisco Mysteries: Books 1-4.

I have heard similar experiences from other indie authors.

In fact, as I write this post, of the top ten books in the mystery/thriller featured deal category on Chirp, five were single books by traditionally published authors (Louise Penny, Nora Roberts, Harlan Coben, Lisa Gardner, Sandra Brown, and Janet Evanovich).The three books on that top ten by indies, mine included, were boxed sets.

On the other hand, I assume that the fact that Chirp has been able to offer great deals on books by well-known, best-selling authors, has been one of the primary reasons it has been so successful in attracting listeners. None of the other audiobook promotions I have tried with other sites have garnered near the number of sales I have gotten on Chirp. It might be frustrating to have to compete with traditional publishers, but I really can’t complain when my book shows up prominently featured next to mysteries by authors like Louise Penny or Janet Evanovich.

Until this January, while Chirp was still building its membership, it didn’t charge to run these featured deal ads (just taking its regular cut of the royalties.) I had three featured deals with Chirp under this earlier arrangement, making from between $540 to $1073. The lower amount was for a 99 cent deal, the higher amount for a $1.99 deal.

This current deal, however, is under a new arrangement, whereby Chirp charges the author by taking an additional percentage from each sale. As a result, instead of making $0.90 on each sale of my featured deal, I am making $0.70. Personally, I like this arrangement better than the BookBub featured deal for ebooks where you have to pay a set amount ahead of time, with no guarantee that you will break even, much less make a profit.

So far, with 18 days left in my featured deal, the boxed set has already sold 1222 copies, making me $855.40 in revenue. In addition, with this promotion, I experimented by discounting the next three books in the series: Pilfered Promises ($1.99), Scholarly Pursuits ($2.99) and Lethal Remedies ($3.99). I used the regular marketing tool through Findaway Voices I described above to temporarily discount them for the same 30 day period (at no additional cost.) So far, I have sold 344 copies of these three audiobooks, with an additional revenue of $495.00. I am also experimenting with running occasional paid ads through Bookbub, targeting Chirp listeners, to see if that will help maintain my sales of the discounted books for the remainder of the promotion.

Summary: One of the key reasons I wanted to shift from being exclusive with ACX/Audible was the same reason I chose to be an indie author…it gave me more control. Now I can determine where my audiobooks are sold, at what price. I can also experiment with different marketing strategies, the goal always being to attract new listeners. Given that audiobooks are currently the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry, it is worth it to me to spend the money and time to ensure my books are available in this format.

Before I shifted from selling exclusively with ACX/Audible, audiobooks were only 7% of my total book revenue. In the past three years, when I have been non-exclusive and distributing through Findaway Voices and using Chirp as a promotion tool, that percentage has risen to 10%. That might not seem like a large jump, but it is certainly going in the right direction, and I am satisfied that making the shift was the right decision for me.

I would love to hear from readers who have used Chirp, or other non-Audible retailers, as well as from authors who have made a similar decision to mine, to sell their audiobooks widely.

M. Louisa Locke, March 28, 2022

As I finished writing Entangled Threads, my latest novel in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series that came out last week, I realized with some regret that I hadn’t found a way to bring Dandy, the Boston Terrier, into the story.

At the same time, it occurred to me that a good number of people who read (or increasingly listen to) my full-length novels haven’t encountered my shorter works, which is where I have given Dandy the opportunity to play a more predominant role. So, I decided to put together the three shorter works that feature Dandy (and an excerpt from a longer work) in this collection (which represents a considerable discount from buying the stories separately). I hope you will take the time to get reacquainted (or acquainted for the first time) with Dandy and his young friends in the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse.

Here is the full description of this collection, which is available as an ebook on Amazon and most other retailers, as well as an audiobook on Chirp, AppleBooks, Kobo, and GooglePlay.

Dandy’s Daring Deeds: A Victorian San Francisco Boston Terrier Collection is a collection of already published stories featuring the Boston Terrier, Dandy, a recurring character in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. This collection consists of the short story, Dandy Detects, an excerpt from the novel, Uneasy Spirits, the novella, Dandy Delivers, and the short story, Dandy’s Discovery.

Dandy Detects: In the fall of 1879, San Francisco swelters under a heat wave. Meanwhile, Barbara Hewitt, a reserved school-teacher who lives with her son Jamie in Annie Fuller’s O’Farrell Street boardinghouse, uncovers a mystery with the help of her son’s dog, the Boston Terrier, Dandy.

Uneasy Spirits Excerpt: Annie Fuller takes a break from investigating a fraudulent trance medium in order to take a walk with two of her two boarders, Barbara and Jamie Hewitt, and their Boston Terrier, Dandy. Halloween is fast approaching and they have stopped to get some pumpkins when disaster strikes––an accident that, without Dandy’s intervention, could have been deadly.

Dandy Delivers: It’s January 1881, and while the grown-ups in the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse are busy with their own affairs, two boys and a dog find their own adventure. Ian Hennessey, a poor boy from South of Market, who is trying to shoulder a man’s responsibilities, gets in trouble, and his best friend, Jamie Hewitt, does what he can to help. But it is Jamie’s young Boston Terrier, Dandy, who saves the day.

Dandy’s Discovery: Something odd is happening at the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse, and Annie is worried that her new baby might be in danger. But never fear, Dandy, the Boston Terrier, will discover the culprit and all will be well.

Entangled Threads, the eighth full-length novel in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, is now available to purchase as an ebook and in print on all major retailers.

As most of you know, my goal in writing the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series has always been to feature those women who lived and worked in San Francisco at the end of the nineteenth century. I had done a statistical analysis of the 1880 United States manuscript census for my dissertation, and my intention was to illustrate the lives of these women through my mysteries.

This was the reason I came up with a female protagonist who would have a reason to investigate crimes that occur in different occupational settings. At the beginning of the series, this protagonist, Annie Fuller, is a widow who owned a boardinghouse and supplemented her income as a pretend clairvoyant who gave domestic an advice. I figured between the boarders and staff in the boardinghouse, and Madam Sibyl’s clients, I would have plenty of opportunities for mysteries to solve that would involve different jobs held by women in that period and place.

The first occupation I focused on was domestic service, because in 1880, nearly a third of all employed San Francisco women held this job, a proportion that went up to 44 percent if you looked just at single women under the age of 29, the largest group of women working for wages that year. Consequently, in Maids of Misfortune, the first book in the series, I had Annie go undercover as a servant to discover who killed one of Madam Sibyl’s clients.

Since Maids of Misfortune, I have continued to expand on the lives of domestic servants through storylines that describe the day-to-day tasks done by the boardinghouse servants––the cook, Mrs. Beatrice O’Rourke, and the two maids, Kathleen Hennessey, and Tilly Gallagher. See, for example, Beatrice Bests the Burglars, Kathleen Catches a Killer, and Tilly Tracks a Thief.

However, the rest of the full-length novels in the series have focused primarily on jobs that would be classified as white-collar or highly skilled work: spiritualists in Uneasy Spirits, public school teachers in Bloody Lessons, typesetters in Deadly Proof, department store clerks and skilled dressmakers in Pilfered Promises, university students in Scholarly Pursuits, and nurses and doctors in Lethal Remedies. This is why I decided that in my next book, which became Entangled Threads, I would use a setting that was more representative of the kind of semi-skilled jobs held by the working-class women who were not servants, in this case, manufacturing work within a factory setting.

In 1880, in San Francisco, a number of young, single women, primarily of Irish or British parentage, could be found working in factories that produced a variety of goods like canned fruit, boxes, cigars, and clothing-related products like gloves, boots and shoes, and wool cloth. After some preliminary research, I decided that I would focus on a woolen factory as my setting. Fortunately, I had already introduced a character in previous stories, Bridget O’Malley (Biddy), who had previously worked in a woolen factory, and Biddy became a major character is this novel as she helps Annie investigate what is going on in the Potrero Woolen Mills.

I do hope you will all enjoy Entangled Threads as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it!

Buy on Amazon, AppleBooks, Kobo, Nook, GooglePlay or other retailers.

M. Louisa Locke, January 25, 2022

Finally, I have completed Entangled Threads, the eighth novel in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, and it has gone up for pre-order, to be published January 25, 2022. I have also just put out a boxed set (as ebook and audiobook) of the previous three books in the series (Pilfered Promises, Scholarly Pursuits, and Lethal Remedies) in case you want to use the next month to get caught up and ready for Entangled Threads. See information below:

“Oh what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive.” –Sir Walter Scott

It is San Francisco in the summer 1882, and Annie and Nate Dawson have finally found a good balance between the demands of family and work. Nate has an interesting legal case defending a young woman who has been left out of her mother’s will. Annie is looking into whether the financial difficulties facing the Potrero Woolen Mills are caused by bad management or bad luck. For her own reasons, Biddy O’Malley is eager to help Annie with her investigation. What none of the three of them could anticipate was how secrets and unexpected entanglements would complicate their search for the truth.

Available for pre-order on Kindle, AppleBooks, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

Annie and Nate Dawson, joined by family and friends from the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse, investigate crimes in books 5-7 of the romantic and suspenseful Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. This boxed set includes Pilfered Promises, Scholarly Pursuits, and Lethal Remedies.

Pilfered Promises: The future looks promising for Annie and Nate Dawson. Nate’s law practice is taking off, Annie has made the transition from pretend clairvoyant to a successful financial consultant, and they are looking forward to spending their first Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays together. Then Robert Livingston, the owner of the Silver Strike Bazaar, hires them to figure out who is stealing from him, and they discover that behind the doors of his “Palace of Plenty,” nothing is quite what it seems.

Scholarly Pursuits: While Annie and Nate Dawson await a blessed event, Nate’s sister, Laura, who is attending the new university across the bay, encounters fraternity hazings, fraught romantic relationships, and fractious faculty politics as she investigates what caused the death of a young Berkeley co-ed. “Something is rotten in the state of Berkeley”–1881 University of California Blue and Gold Yearbook.

Lethal Remedies: Annie has a beautiful child, a loving husband, and a well-run boardinghouse, but she’s feeling restless and unhappy. When she is hired to solve the financial and legal difficulties facing the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children, San Francisco’s first female run clinic, she finds that getting back into the business of investigating crimes is exactly the remedy she requires.

Now available as ebook and audiobook on Multiple Retailers.

Happy Holidays,

M. Louisa Locke, December 6, 2021

Dear Reader,

I started this blog in December of 2009, nearly twelve years ago, when I published my first mystery novel, Maids of Misfortune. At the time, I had no idea if I was going to continue writing this blog, because I had no idea if this book was going to be the last book I published. I confess, my writing has been much more consistent than my blogging in the last few years, but both certainly out-performed my expectations.

I am currently writing the eighth full-length novel in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, Entangled Threads, which explores the female occupation of woolen textile factory workers. If all goes well, the book should be published by January, perhaps up for pre-order before that. This book, along with 8 short stories and 2 novellas, brings the total books in the series up to 19, plus I have written three novels, a novella, and a short story in my science fiction series, for a total of 24 stories–certainly more than I ever expected to write in this, my retirement career. In case you are interested, I recently did a podcast about my journey as an independent writer that talks about those early years.

As for this blog, I initially wrote most of my posts for other authors, especially those who were independent authors, sharing my experiences using this relatively new option for writers. My most successful blog pieces addressed some of the basics, like how to create keywords and categories that would make it easier for readers to find your books, how to use short stories and short term promotions to persuade readers to take a chance on unknown authors, and how to determine whether or not to enroll in KDP Select or “go wide,” by publishing in multiple ebook stores. For readers, I tried to write blog pieces about the history behind some of the books I was writing and, of course, mention when books were on sale or a new book came out.

As of late, the blog has dwindled to sporadic mentions of periodic promotions. My last substantial post was in the spring of 2019, when I wrote about new opportunities for creating and marketing audiobooks. The reason I don’t do advice blog pieces as much any more is that there are so many more sources of good advice out there, written by people who have devoted themselves to the subject. Now, if someone needs advice, I send them to places like David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital or Kristine Katheryn Rusch’s Business Musings, or the Alliance of Independence Authors. Instead, my marketing is done primarily through my monthly newsletters, and the main place I reach out to readers is with my daily FaceBook posts.

My point? I need to stop feeling guilty about the infrequency of my blog posts, knowing that most of you would prefer me to spend my time writing my fiction, and that you all, both as readers and other authors, can always reach out to me directly if you have a question, or sign up for my newsletter or follow my author facebook page for frequent updates.

For today, since I am posting, here are some of the discounts you would hear about in my newsletter, which comes out next week.

Every Fall, I like to discount Uneasy Spirits, the second book in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, because it is set during Halloween. So this year it is $2.99, on all eretailers. The audiobook edition of Between Mountain and Sea, the first book in my Caelestis series trilogy is also discounted all month to $1.99 on Apple Books and Chirp.

I also have books participating in month-long promotions of Historical Fiction and Audiobooks of all types.

Finally, here is a look at my current work in progress. I hope you will all stick around–or join my newsletter or FaceBook page–to hear when it is finally available to buy.

Entangled Threads: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery

“Oh what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive.” –Sir Walter Scott

San Francisco, 1882

Annie and Nate Dawson have finally found a good balance between the demands of family and work. Nate has an interesting legal case defending a young woman who has been left out of her mother’s will. Annie is looking into whether the financial difficulties facing the Potrero Woolen Mills are caused by bad management or bad luck. For her own reasons, Biddy O’Malley is eager to help Annie with her investigation. What none of the three of them could anticipate was how secrets and unexpected interconnections would complicate their search for the truth.

Entangled Threads is the eighth full-length novel in the USA Today best-selling author’s Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and it is due out in the winter of 2021-22.

M. Louisa Locke, October 11, 2021

This USA Today bestseller brings together the first four books in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series: Maids of Misfortune, Uneasy Spirits, Bloody Lessons, and Deadly Proof.

This boxed set of four cozy, historical mysteries, set in late nineteenth-century San Francisco, are appropriate for teens to adults, and it is a welcome companion to the Victorian San Francisco Stories Vol 1 and 2 and the Victorian San Francisco Novellas, which feature beloved minor characters.

99 cents on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Nook, GooglePlay until 7/20

For those of you who are into audiobooks, Maids of Misfortune is permanently discounted to $3.99 – $4.99 on most retailers, and for the rest of July the Victorian San Francisco Novellas collection of Violet Vanquishes a Villain, Kathleen Catches a Killer, and Dandy Delivers is only $2.99 on Apple Books and Chirp.

A reminder that the ebook editions of Maids of Misfortune and Between Mountain and Sea are both free, and you can find these books and a selection of other series start as part of this FREE FIRST IN SERIES PROMOTION through 7/25

I am slowly working away on Entangled Threads, book 8 in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. In this book, both Annie and Nate Dawson are busy working on separate cases. For Nate, it is a case where a woman is mysteriously missing from her mother’s will, and Annie is looking into possible criminal activity in a woolen textile factory. This time, it is the servant Kathleen’s friend, Biddy O’Malley, who is helping Annie with her investigation, by getting employed in the woolen mill. Biddy O’Malley was introduced in Uneasy Spirits, popped up again in Pilfered Promises, and the short story Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery was about her mother and family. I am about two-thirds of the way through the first draft of this, with a projected publication date for early Fall. As a preview, here’s the cover!

Hope you all have been staying safe and well in these trying times.

M. Louisa,
July 17, 2021

This USA Today bestseller brings together the first four books in the romantic and suspenseful Victorian San Francisco Mystery series: Maids of Misfortune, Uneasy Spirits, Bloody Lessons, and Deadly Proof.

Maids of Misfortune (over 3400 reviews, 4.2 stars) introduces Annie Fuller, a young widow who runs the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse and supplements her income by giving financial and domestic advice as Madam Sibyl. When one of Madam Sibyl’s clients dies in mysterious circumstances, Annie goes undercover as a domestic servant to find out the truth about his death. Against his better judgment, Nate Dawson, the Voss family lawyer, finds himself drawn into helping in her investigations, alternatively fascinated and frustrated by Annie’s independent nature.

Uneasy Spirits (over 1000 reviews, 4.4 stars) finds Annie Fuller and Nate Dawson, assisted by the boardinghouse maid, Kathleen, delving into the world of 19th century Spiritualism in order to expose a fraudulent trance medium. They will soon find there are as many secrets as there are spirits swirling around the séance table and some of those secrets will threaten the foundation of Annie’s career as Madam Sibyl and the future of her relationship with Nate Dawson, and, in time, they will threaten her very life itself.

In Bloody Lessons, (over 800 reviews, 4.4 stars) Annie Fuller has been asked by her beau, Nate Dawson, to find out who has been sending poison pen letters to tarnish the reputations of San Francisco public school teachers. The case becomes personal when they discover that Nate’s sister Laura may be one of the teachers being targeted.

In Deadly Proof, (over 800 reviews, 4.3 stars) first place winner of Chanticleer’s 2018 Mystery and Mayhem historical mystery award, Annie helps her fiancé, Nate Dawson, with a troubling case—defending a female typesetter who is accused of killing her employer. Complicating matters, Nate’s sister Laura decides to take the investigation into her own hands.

This boxed set is only  99 cents today and tomorrow at Kindle, Apple Books, Nook, Kobo, and GooglePlay