Nancy Means Wright: 9 books

Mitchelstown Castle in County Cork, seat of the notorious Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family, fairly hums with intrigue. In 1786 the new young governess, Mary Wollstonecraft, witnesses a stabbing when she attends a pagan bonfire at which an illegitimate son of the nobility is killed. When the young Irishman...

After youve restored a hump-roofed, rump-sprung wreck of a Broken House, withstood the eccentricities of in-laws, willful kids, offbeat neighbors, obstinant hired hands, live-in ghost and established a craft shop, featuring Timothy, a wooden rocking horse with personality but who cant seem to hold onto...

Single mother-farmer Ruth Willmarth discovers her neighbor, Lucien, and his part-Indian wife Belle, bloody, beaten, and robbed of their life savings. When Belle dies, Ruth faces barn burnings and the disappearance of her son--as she and would-be lover Colm Hanna, who serves as Realtor, town mortician,...

When puppeteer Marion collapses during a performance, her friend Fay Hubbard promises to carry on. But Fay, a neighbor of Ruth Willmarth, already has her hands full with three demanding foster children. When an autopsy reveals that Marion had swallowed a dose of deadly crushed yew—and a friend finds...

Vermont dairy farmer Ruth Willmarth encounters beekeepers, Abenaki Indians, a dead male student, a strangled female professor, and devastating secrets from the past in this hair-raising tale. Romantic Times calls STOLEN HONEY "intricate and fascinating," while Kirkus Reviews find the mystery "penetrating,...

Drusie Valentini doesnt fit in with her arty family: her extravagant puppeteer father, his gypsy-like assistant Fey, who moved in when her mother leftor her pesky younger brother Punch. A party that a boyfriend talked her into ends in disaster, and getting her sent to a strict boarding school. In a year...

Dairy farmer Ruth Willmarth struggles with a mad cow plague, a squatter family of volatile Irish Travellers, a beautiful runaway woman--and Murder. According to Kirkus Reviews: "The masterfully evoked terror of Mad Cow makes Ruth's fifth her most sharply focused yet." Mystery by Nancy Means Wright; originally published by St. Martin's Minotaur

Second of the Northern Spy mysteries, following the Agatha winner The Pea Soup Poisonings. Who stole three red rail cars from Spences antique circus train? The hair-raising quest takes Zoe and Spence from a neighbors murky basement to the Quirkus Circus to help two wacky clownsuntil one of them disappears…...

Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft meets Henry Fuseli at her publisher’s circle of intellectuals, philosophers, and artists, and becomes obsessed with him and his erotic painting The Nightmare. When it is stolen, Fuseli accuses young painter Roger Peale, who is clapped into Newgate Prison. Escaping with...