#1 - A Most Dangerous Woman
It was said that she had the good manners of a respectable upper servant but was far too young to have been pensioned; that she spoke as if she had received and education, but knew the costers' slang as if she were born-and-bred to it; and that she not only had no husband - which was a commonplace on Leather Lane - but seemed never to have possessed one...'
When the mysterious Sarah Tanner opens her Dining and Coffee Rooms on the corner of Leather Lane and Liquorpond Street, her arrival amongst the poor market-traders causes something of a stir. Few doubt that she has 'a past'; no-one could have predicted how it will return to haunt her...
When an old friend is brutally murdered, Sarah Tanner is the only witness. Unable to turn to the police, she finds herself drawn back into the dark underworld of the Victorian metropolis... Relying on her wits, and trading on her past, Sarah Tanner risks her own life on a desperate quest for justice and vengeance.
When the mysterious Sarah Tanner opens her Dining and Coffee Rooms on the corner of Leather Lane and Liquorpond Street, her arrival amongst the poor market-traders causes something of a stir. Few doubt that she has 'a past'; no-one could have predicted how it will return to haunt her...
When an old friend is brutally murdered, Sarah Tanner is the only witness. Unable to turn to the police, she finds herself drawn back into the dark underworld of the Victorian metropolis... Relying on her wits, and trading on her past, Sarah Tanner risks her own life on a desperate quest for justice and vengeance.
#2 - The Mesmerist's Apprentice
The second mystery for lady detective Sarah Tanner in L. M. Jackson's gripping series set in 1850s London.
A desperate plea from her former lover, the aristocrat Arthur DeSalle, turns Sarah Tanner's quiet life upside down.
Arthur needs Sarah's help. Suspicious of the hold that Dr Stead, renowned practitioner of the strange art of mesmerism, has gained on his aging parents, he hope to expose him as a fraud.
But Mrs Tanner is troubled closer to home by a series of increasingly violent confrontations with a gang of Lambeth youths intent, it seems, on putting her out of business. What is their interest in her humble Dining and Coffee Rooms? And what is the closely guarded secret which connects the sinister doctor to the young thugs, and threatens to destroy a family's honour?
Her very life at stake, her loyalty tested, Sarah Tanner sets out on a trail of murder and deceit, which stretches from the alleys of Leather Lane to the drawing-rooms of Mayfair...
A desperate plea from her former lover, the aristocrat Arthur DeSalle, turns Sarah Tanner's quiet life upside down.
Arthur needs Sarah's help. Suspicious of the hold that Dr Stead, renowned practitioner of the strange art of mesmerism, has gained on his aging parents, he hope to expose him as a fraud.
But Mrs Tanner is troubled closer to home by a series of increasingly violent confrontations with a gang of Lambeth youths intent, it seems, on putting her out of business. What is their interest in her humble Dining and Coffee Rooms? And what is the closely guarded secret which connects the sinister doctor to the young thugs, and threatens to destroy a family's honour?
Her very life at stake, her loyalty tested, Sarah Tanner sets out on a trail of murder and deceit, which stretches from the alleys of Leather Lane to the drawing-rooms of Mayfair...