Unnatural Fire: A Countess Ashby de la Zouche Mystery - Couverture souple

Restoration London, 1699 -- Anastasia Ashby de la Zouche, Baroness Penge, Countess of Clapham, and former mistress to King Charles II, has astonishingly been jailed in debtors' prison. Joining forces with her loyal ex-maidservant, Alpiew, the formerly pampered and proper Countess sets out to make a living by working for the scandal sheets -- a line of work that inevitably leads her through some of the seamier byways of the city. She and Alpiew find a welcome additional source of income when they are approached by a stranger who asks them to gather evidence to prove her husband is committing adultery. But the uncomfortable job of trailing after the handsome merchant in the depths of winter ends abruptly in a Covent Garden churchyard with a brutal murder.

Implicated in the crime, the Countess and Alpiew find themselves drawn into a complex labyrinth of deceit, violence, and the mysterious world of alchemy. And the more they investigate, the more complex the picture becomes, involving everyone from the most decrepit back-alley criminals to some of the most influential people in all the land.

Fidelis Morgan is an actor and an expert in Restoration comedy. Acclaimed for her stage plays, Pamela and Hangover Square, she also collaborated with Lynda la Plante on England's Channel 4's tense pschological thriller Killer Net. She has written nonfiction studies of charismatic female figures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and contributed to the bestselling Virago anthology Wicked. In her first novel, Unnatural Fire, she combined historical interest with her life-long passion for crime fiction.