The Steam Packet Murders
A Victorian Cozy Mystery

About this book:

When the *S.S. Britannia* cuts away from a rain-slick Liverpool dock in October 1845, she carries two hundred souls toward New York—and a killer among them. Widowed governess Clara Fitzgerald has enough to manage: a turbulent crossing, two spirited charges, and the uneasy prospect of reuniting with a father she barely knows. She does not expect to find herself dining opposite a Pinkerton operative hunting a fleeing embezzler, nor the elegant English gentleman who may be his quarry. But when a passenger dies in a locked cabin and a second body turns up in the coal bunker, Clara's sharp eye for human nature makes her the only person aboard who can see through the fog of lies, class pretensions, and hidden identities.

Silas Vance didn't book passage for the sea air. He's tracking a thief who stole a fortune in Boston bonds, and every well-dressed man on the promenade deck fits the description. As the Atlantic grows rough and the suspect list narrows, Silas finds an unlikely ally in the governess who notices what the ship's officers miss: a forged letter in a reticule, a midnight meeting by the paddleboxes, the tell-tale tremor in a steward's hand. But the *Britannia* is a world unto herself—three thousand miles from law, jury, or escape—and the murderer has nowhere to run but deeper into the shadows.

Rich with the soot and gilt of early steam travel, *The Steam Packet Murders* launches a captivating Victorian cozy series where a determined woman and a quietly dangerous detective navigate a locked-room puzzle at sea. For readers who love *The Last Mrs. Parrish* meets *Murder on the Orient Express*—with the briny tang of history and a heroine who refuses to be seasick.