If you’ve living in the UK, Germany, France, or anywhere outside of the United States or Canada, The Novice’s Tale is now available for the Kindle! It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using the free Kindle Reading Apps for those platforms.

Unfortunately, I don’t know when an e-book of The Novice’s Tale will be made available in the United States or Canada. I don’t control those rights, so it’s up to the publisher to make those decisions. This will also, unfortunately, limit your ability to buy the e-book from other booksellers. But The Novice’s Tale — like all the novels and short stories I control the rights to — is offered without DRM, making it very easy to convert to whatever formats you like best.

UNHOLY PASSIONS AND DEMONIC DEATH…

In the fair autumn of Our Lord’s grace 1431, the nuns of England’s St. Frideswide’s prepare for the simply ceremonies in which the saintly novice Thomasine will take her holy vows. But their quiet lives of beauty and prayer are thrown into chaos by the merciless arrival of Lady Ermentrude Fenner and her retinue of lusty men, sinful women, and baying hounds. The hard-drinking dowager even keeps a pet monkey for her amusement. She demands wine, a feast…

And her niece, the angelic Thomasine.

The lady desires to enrich herself and her reputation by arranging a marriage for the devout novice. She cares nothing for the panic and despair she leaves behind her.

But all her cruel and cunning schemes are brought to a sudden end with strange and most unnatural murder.

As suspicious eyes turn on the pious Thomasine, it falls to Sister Frevisse, hosteler of the priory and amateur detective, to unravel the webs of unholy passion and dark intrigue that entangle the novice and prove her innocence… or condemn her.

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PRAISE FOR THE NOVICE’S TALE

“Frazer uses her extensive knowledge of the period to create an unusual plot … appealing characters and crisp writing.” – Los Angeles Times

“A fast-paced and seamless story.” – St. Paul Pioneer Press

In helping to ready The Novice’s Tale for release as an e-book in the UK, I had to read it for the first time in almost twenty years.  I last read it in galley proofs not long before it was published.  My very first galley proofs!  For my very first published novel!  Sixteen more Dame Frevisse books have followed, as well as Joliffe’s series and a number of short stories – keeping me busy going forward rather than looking back. So reading The Novice’s Tale now, after so long, was a strange experience.  Here, when all those other books and stories were not even a glimmer in the back of my mind, was where all of them had begun.  It’s good to know that reviewers have declared the series started well but grew stronger and better as it went on, but that is not the same as going back myself to where it began – to find so much I had forgotten from a story not read in almost two decades, and how much was familiar from the days I had afterward spent with Dame Frevisse and in St. Frideswide’s.

If you are making Frevisse’s acquaintance for the first time, welcome.  If you have kept company with her for a long while and are now revisiting the beginning with me, welcome indeed.

– Margaret

(click for sample PDF)

I’ve put together a little booklet containing the first chapter from A Play of Heresy. If you click here you’ll get a PDF that you can read online; peruse on your Kindle, Nook, or other e-reader; or print out as a cute little pamphlet.

– Margaret

I was not entirely in error when I posted I was “slowly bettering”, but a more accurate report seems to be “getting along, yes, but taking a boringly long time about it” and it’s keeping me from doing nearly as much as I would like.

Meanwhile, having posted notice here of Joliffe’s next book, A Play of Heresy, I have to comment on the description of it offered on Amazon.com, beset with errors as it is.  To the good, the first sentence is only slightly misleading – if it’s understood that “only slightly” is in comparison to the second sentence which has a completely false statement in it.  Still, on the whole, the description is better than what my publisher originally had in mind for the cover.  For reasons best known to those who wrote it, it gave away every major plot point except the answer to the final mystery.  A masterpiece of its kind, it did everything in its power to completely spoil just about every surprise the story contained.  I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it; for obvious reasons, I’m not going to quote it here!

I’ve come to appreciate that what goes on a cover to describe a book is a finer art than you might think.  Ideally, what goes on the cover should give enough detail to interest a reader in trying the book without giving so much away that there’s no point in reading the book at all.  At the same time, in an attempt to rouse interest, it shouldn’t be so inaccurate that the reader is annoyed when he discovers how badly he’s been misled.

Before my editor began kindly letting me see the proposed cover copy and allowing me to make changes to it, I had two unhappy experiences with too much being revealed, spoiling carefully crafted plot points.  Only once since then – due to a confusion of circumstances – has cover copy gone without my seeing it, and so on the jacket flap of the hardcover The Traitor’s Tale there are at least eleven errors of fact, including the name of the title character.  An impressive display of inaccuracy, to say the least!

– Margaret

The year is on the turn. The first leaves are scattered on the driveway, fallen without even troubling to change color, tired and done before their fellows still holding to the trees. But even their green is dulled, tired with the weeks of summer, the brightness faded. And while the days are still warm, there’s a different coolness to the nights, promising that soon a blanket, neglected all summer, will be needed toward dawn.

I love the changing times of year, when the sense of time passing is so clearly before us. Someone once asked me why I have so much weather in my books. I said because weather is so integral to life that to leave it out of a story lessened the texturing I try for in my writing. The same holds true with seasons. The time of year often weighs heavily on how the characters live their lives.

That said, I’d like to claim that the terrible, cold, wet weather that permeated The Servant’s Tale, The Outlaw’s Tale, and The Bishop’s Tale was not my fault. Chronicles covering those years tell how bad the weather was, and so the weather was bad in my stories, too. I promise you that I greatly enjoyed setting The Boy’s Tale in warm, dry, sun-filled summer days!

A Play of Heresy is scheduled to arrive December 6th!

A FESTIVAL OF MURDER…

In the early summer of 1438, Joliffe and his fellow players have arrived in Coventry for the theatrical festival of Corpus Christi Day. Employed by one of the city’s rich and powerful merchant guilds, they plan to present two of the many plays which will extravagantly depict all of God’s Story in a parade of pomp and pageantry.

But even as they prepare to perform the Nativity, Joliffe may be called on to play a wise man off the stage as well. When the merchant Master Kydwa goes missing and is presumed dead, the cunning Bishop Beaufort calls on Joliffe’s skills as a spy to uncover the mysteries of Coventry’s elite. As suspicion falls on his own companions, Joliffe is drawn into the devilish machinations of a secret sect of heretics bent on destroying the Church. The players may be forced to present the harrowing of Hell, but will Joliffe be able to unravel a confession of corruption before Coventry’s dark enigmas unleash a medieval massacre of the innocents?

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PRAISE FOR THE JOLIFFE MEDIEVAL MYSTERIES

“If you are an historical mystery fan…you’ll want to rush out and get this wonderful series … Entertains and confounds with its intricately plotted mystery and richly detailed writing…” – The Romance Readers Connection

“Brings the period to lush life… Such richly imagined mysteries come around too rarely.” – Roundtable Reviews

A Play of Heresy will be the seventh Joliffe book (for a total of 10 appearances including those in the Frevisse novels).

– Margaret

A little while ago I saw someone post their bookmark graphics to Facebook. And I thought: “I have some of those!” So here’s a little Joliffe for your enjoyment…

The image of Joliffe here is taken from a 15th century painting by Carlo Crivelli — “The Virgin and Child With Saint Jerome and Saint Sebastian”. When I saw it in a book of period paintings, I immediately thought, “That’s Joliffe”. I pointed it out to my son, and he surprised me by putting together these very handsome bookmarks (which I’ve been handing out for the past several months).

– Margaret

The almshouses which feature in both “Heretical Murder” and “Lowly Death” were founded in 1424 as part of the Charity of Sir Richard Wittington. This is the same “Dick Wittington” of nursery tales and Roald Dahl’s poem “Dick Whittington and His Cat”.

Whatever the reality of the cat and of the bells of London bidding him return, the historical Whittington was indeed “thrice Lord Mayor of London town” and died an extremely wealthy man, leaving provision in his will for the endowing of a library in London and these almshouses connected to a college of priests at St. Michael Paternoster church, all of which was duly done by his executors.  Much disappeared in the next century, courtesy of the Tudors, and the church burned in the Great Fire of the century after that but was rebuilt on the same site and is still there; and although Whittington’s library is gone, his almshouses still exist. Here’s an engraving of them from 1850:

Another from 1827:

And a last from 1880:

In 1966, the charity rebuilt the almshouses, moving from Highgate to East Grinstead. They now provide 56 homes for elderly ladies and a few married couples. Although no longer in the center of London, they still serve their original purpose after almost 600 years.

– Margaret

Over the past few months I’ve gotten many e-mails from Nook owners all asking the same thing: When will your stories be available for the Nook?

And the answer to that is: Right now. We got the Frevisse e-books up a few weeks ago and I’ve just received word that the conversion process has been finished for all of my e-books and they’re now available for sale at the Barnes & Noble website. Going forward, the Nook and Kindle versions will be getting released simultaneously whenever that’s legally possible.

 

(click any cover for its Nook page)

Kobo Owners: I know many of you are also waiting for these titles to be available through the Kobo store. Unfortunately, we have no idea when that will happen. Although you can buy the e-books available from Berkeley, Kobo has not made the other Frevisse e-books available despite the fact that they were submitted weeks and/or months ago. I have no control over this, and I recommend writing directly to Kobo if you want to see any action taken on it. It is within their power to offer the books; they simply haven’t done so.

However, the older Frevisse e-books (the ones that I have control over) are currently available through Smashwords. And if you buy them through Smashwords, you’ll be able to download them in a wide variety of formats, including the ePub format which will allow you to read them on your Kobo. (In fact, the formats available on Smashwords should let you read the books on any e-reader you might own.)

We’ll be converting the rest of the novelettes and short stories to Smashwords in the near future, and I’ll post an update here when that happens.

My tech person also tells me that we do not use DRM at any of our digital outlets, which means that it should be relatively easy to convert file formats. (Although, honestly, I’d be lost if you asked me to do it.)

– Margaret

“Lowly Death” has been released for the Kindle and Nook. It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using the free Kindle Reading Apps for those platforms.

A CUNNING AND CLEVER GREED…

Come down the Paternoster Passage, cross the church’s yard, and knock on the doors of Master Whittington’s Almshouse. Master Pecock, a man of the cloth and the greatest detective of 15th century London, will answer your call.

Just as he answers Dick Colop’s call. The mother of young Colop’s friend has slipped, fallen, and died. But something doesn’t feel right about it. There’s a strange uneasiness creeping at the back of Colop’s mind.

And then there was the matter of the candle.

It was in the kitchen. A burned down stub of a candle. It had rolled under a table. And left a thick splattering of wax on the floor a foot or so away.

That was enough. Master Pecock was on the scent. The scent of lies. The scent of wrongs. The scent of murder.

Kindle Edition – Nook Edition

“Lowly Death” is the third tale of Bishop Pecock, coming after “Heretical Murder” and after “The Simple Logic of It”. It was first published in Murder Most Catholic, edited by Ralph McInerny. Master Pecock has advanced in his priestly career and is now head of the well-endowed Whittington Almshouses in London.  Rather than the tendrils of national crime, here he deals with a domestic matter.

The plot came – as so many of my plots do – from an actual medieval situation.  I will often be innocently reading some scholarly study or else the documents themselves, when something catches at the criminally-inclined corner of my mind and I suddenly ask, “Yes, but what if…” and away I’ll be, the twisty mind of a mystery writer turning what – in the document – was a perfectly straightforward business matter into a full-blooded (and usually bloody) convolution of human relationships and situations. And when I look back from the finished story to the innocent document that started at all, I’ll often be surprised at how far the transmutation of imagination has taken the original few facts.

One small but continually niggling thing stays with me from this story: The editor’s note at the beginning of the anthology.  There Mr. McInerny stated that, although the story “uses medieval setting for color, it remains a thoroughly modern deductive mystery”. In fact, the methods of deduction used in the story are perfectly medieval, drawn directly from the methods of deduction outlined by Master Pecock himself in his own works of circa 1450, wherein he urged people to seek truth through the use of reason and demonstrated how to do it, very much in the way he uses logic and reason in this story.

– Margaret