Please join me in congratulating Anna Castle on the publication of her newest historical mysteries, The Case of the Tangled Maypole and The Case of the Miscast Curse, books two and three in the Cunning Woman Mystery series! I had the pleasure of copyediting these novellas and designing the covers. Here are the book descriptions:
Jane and John Greenslade, local barrister, find plenty of conflict around Lucy’s death. The local Puritans wanted to stop May Day once and for all. Quirk wanted to stop his daughter’s gossip. Any number of townsfolk might have confided things to the cunning man worth killing to conceal. Worse, Jane’s every step is shadowed by troublesome fairies, especially the old river goddess protecting Roger Quirk. But is she trying to help the investigation or hinder it?
Jane risks her life to peel back the glamours confusing the case. She’s rescued in the end by the last person she ever expected to meet.
***
Jane Moone is hired to identify the witch who cursed a sheep. But her client, Kate Grazier, has already decided who did it -- Dorcas Whiting, the hedge witch who happens to be Jane’s father’s sweetheart. Dorcas would never harm an innocent sheep and everyone knows it, but she’s arrested before Jane can credit the accusation. Now she has to persuade the poorest farmers in the district -- Dorcas’s patients -- to stand before the magistrate in Greenslade Hall and testify on the witch’s behalf.
As if that weren’t enough trouble for one week, Jane hears stories about another old witch. She’s begging at kitchen doors and walking away angry as often as not. She flings curses everywhere she goes, most of them missing their mark. But some are truly dangerous.
Jane and her father, a powerful wizard, must peer into the heart of a near-fatal curse and find the wandering witch before an innocent dies.
