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  • Published: 18 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9780425282380
  • Imprint: Berkley
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $34.99

A Purely Private Matter



Rosalind Thorne has slowly but assuredly gained a reputation as "a useful woman"--by helping respectable women out of some less-than-respectable predicaments.

Her latest endeavor is a tragedy waiting to happen. Desperate Margaretta Seymore is with child--and her husband is receiving poisoned pen letters which imply that her condition is the result of an affair with the notorious actor Fletcher Cavendish. Margaretta asks Rosalind to find out who is behind the scurrilous letters. But before she can make any progress, Cavendish is found dead, stabbed through the heart.

Suddenly, Rosalind is plunged into the middle of one of the most sensational murder trials London has ever seen, and her client's husband is the prime suspect. With the help of the charming Bow Street runner Adam Harkness, she must drop the curtain on this fatal drama before any more lives are ruined.

The Rosalind Thorne Mysteries—inspired by the novels of Jane Austen—continue as the audacious Rosalind strives to aid those in need while navigating the halls of high society…

Rosalind Thorne has slowly but assuredly gained a reputation as “a useful woman”—by helping respectable women out of some less-than-respectable predicaments. 

Her latest endeavor is a tragedy waiting to happen. Desperate Margaretta Seymore is with child—and her husband is receiving poisoned pen letters that imply that her condition is the result of an affair with the notorious actor Fletcher Cavendish. Margaretta asks Rosalind to find out who is behind the scurrilous letters. But before she can make any progress, Cavendish is found dead, stabbed through the heart. 

Suddenly, Rosalind is plunged into the middle of one of the most sensational murder trials London has ever seen, and her client’s husband is the prime suspect. With the help of the charming Bow Street runner Adam Harkness, she must drop the curtain on this fatal drama before any more lives are ruined.

  • Published: 18 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9780425282380
  • Imprint: Berkley
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $34.99

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Praise for A Purely Private Matter

Praise for A Useful Woman

"Clever and witty. Wilde artfully portrays Regency London, from its ballrooms to Bow Street, in all its glory and hypocrisy, and provides readers with a heroine worthy of our attention. With its colorful cast and scandalous intrigue, A Useful Woman would surely have set the famed patronesses of Almack's atwitter."--Anna Lee Huber, national bestselling author of the Lady Darby Mysteries

"Wilde brings the haute monde of early nineteenth-century London to vivid life, and the characters she peoples it with are complex individuals whose basic decency, or lack of it, is carefully hidden behind a facade of manners and propriety."--Publishers Weekly

"Well-drawn characters and a perfect plot make this historical mystery a winner."--Nancy Haddock, national bestselling author of Basket Case