“A superb storyteller.” — Deanna Raybourn, New York Times bestselling author
“Shimmers like the finest salons in Vienna.” — Deborah Crombie
“Glittering balls, deadly intrigue, sexual scandals.. .the next best thing to actually being there!” — Lauren Willig
In dazzling Regency London, married spies Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch find their most challenging investigation may be uncovering the secrets of the cunning spymaster who shaped both their destinies.
Spymaster. Revolutionary. Master of disguise. Raoul O’Roarke remains an enigma even to those closest to him. By the age of three, Malcolm Rannoch knew enough of Raoul’s life that he wondered if every goodbye would be their last. Thirty years later, Malcolm, now a spy himself, understands a great deal more, but in many ways Raoul is still a mystery. Malcolm’s wife and fellow agent Mélanie has her own complicated relationship with Raoul, who was once her spymaster.
When a contact at a dockside tavern warns the Rannochs that powerful forces want Raoul dead, Malcolm and Mélanie are shaken to the core. They’ve barely had time to absorb the revelation when a nearby ship explodes. Rushing to help fight the ensuing fire, the Rannochs find the body of the powerful Duke of Bamford amid the charred wreckage.
Bamford, a Tory diplomat and Raoul, a revolutionary, knew each other far better than anyone realized. Their unlikely alliance leads from the French Revolution through Napoleon and Josephine’s glamorous court to the glittering Congress of Vienna, and the horrors of Waterloo. The clues from their past hold the key to Bamford’s murder. As Malcolm and Mélanie connect the pieces, they find as many questions as answers. Raoul has even more secrets than either of them guessed—secrets they need to uncover to prevent his meeting the same fate as the duke. But the process may shake their relationships with him to the core. And their next goodbye could be their final parting.
London, March 1821. Ralph Allam, a barkeep and thief from London’s notorious Seven Dials, finds his world upended when he learns he is the heir to an earldom. But proving his claim to the title is as complicated as any spy mission. Former agents Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch no longer live their lives at the heart of the beau monde. But neither can resist the call of adventure, and they are determined to help Ralph.
To uncover evidence that will support Ralph’s claim, the Rannochs go undercover at a musicale hosted by a duchess who rules Mayfair society. London’s most talked about composer (as notorious for his scandalous love affairs as for his compositions) is performing a new work at this glittering event, and everyone is vying for invitations. Amid the shimmering candlelight and strains of piano music, Mélanie and Malcolm face old and new enemies. As they uncover secrets and face betrayals, the Rannochs discover proving Ralph’s claim to the Ackerley inheritance is a twisted and deadly game.
London, 1821. Former spies Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch have been friends with Bow Street runner Jeremy Roth since they all met in the intrigues of the Peninsular War. Now settled in London, they frequently collaborate. On a chilly night, an urgent summons from Roth takes Malcolm to a tavern in the slums of Seven Dials. He finds Roth standing over the body of a murdered woman. Malcolm offers his assistance with the case, but Roth says Malcolm must investigate alone. When Malcolm asks why, Roth replies—because this is my wife.
Malcolm and Mélanie plunge into the secrets of Roth’s estranged wife Allegra. Why did she disappear from England? Where has she been for five years? And why did she return now to the husband she abandoned? Their investigation is a race against time as another Bow Street runner is all too eager to arrest Roth for the murder. And though Malcolm and Mélanie are both convinced Jeremy Roth is not a killer, his story keeps changing.
Secrets are nothing new for the Rannochs. But this investigation will force them to question everything they thought they knew about some of those closest to them. And to re-examine the secrets at the heart of their own marriage—before someone else they love falls victim…
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London, December 1820. Former spies Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch are hosting a small party and looking forward to an intrigue-free holiday season when their friend, Thomas Thornsby, turns up dripping wet on the doorstep of their Berkeley Square house.
Not only is Thomas clearly overwrought, his arrival is particularly awkward. Thomas is newly betrothed to an heiress. Edith Simmons, the woman he wished to marry — if not for lack of fortune — is one of the Rannochs’ guests that evening. But Thomas says he had no one else to turn to. His fiancée, the decorous Marianne Schofield, has vanished without a trace from a Mayfair holiday ball.
Always willing to help a friend, the Rannochs don evening attire and join the elegant gathering. Amidst the holiday revelry they find that Thomas’s seemingly perfect betrothed has secrets of her own. As they uncover layers of mystery, Mélanie and Malcolm realize some of the plots being hatched beneath the mistletoe may prove deadly.
London, October 1820. Queen Caroline’s divorce trial makes the House of Lords as crowded as a London ballroom—but far more deadly, as Mélanie discovers when she literally stumbles over a body while threading her way through the crush. More shockingly, she recognizes the victim as her friend Cordelia Davenport’s former lover, George Chase, who recently fled England in disgrace. Mélanie is unable to save him but hears him say “Cordelia” with his dying breath. No one knows why George returned to England. But just before he was killed, he was trying to get a message to the prime minister saying he had vital information about the royal divorce.
Mélanie and Malcolm plunge into an investigation that could shatter the lives of their closest friends and topple the British government. From hushed Whitehall council rooms to gin-soaked Covent Garden taverns, exclusive St. James’s clubs, and Mayfair masquerade balls, they follow a twisting trail of family secrets and royal intrigue. As former spies, they expect the unexpected. But nothing has prepared them for a cascade of revelations that forces them to question everything they know—including their own future.
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May 23, 2022
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November 10, 2021
Autumn 1820. From Mayfair to Covent Garden to Seven Dials, London is in an uproar over George IV’s (the former prince regent) attempts to divorce his wife Queen Caroline. And nowhere is the crisis more intense than in Westminster where the royal divorce is playing out in the House of Lords.
In this tense atmosphere, former spies Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch go on an undercover mission in a brothel that leads to a brawl–and the murder of the man they were tracking. The victim, Captain James Blayney, was selling the memoirs of a notorious courtesan, whose lovers may include Napoleon Bonaparte, the Duke of Wellington, and key noblemen involved in the royal divorce trial. The missing memoirs may also hold crucial information about the Elsinore League, the powerful organization the Rannochs have been battling for years.
As revelations mount, Malcolm and Mélanie uncover the secrets of some of the most powerful people in Europe. The future of the British monarchy hangs in the balance. But as the Rannochs unravel the clues in the memoirs, they realize that the consequences for the royal family may be nothing compared to the consequences for their own…
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May 19, 2021
June 1820. Britain’s former prince regent, now George IV, is determined to divorce his estranged wife, Queen Caroline, and the coming trial is the talk of London, from Mayfair to Westminster to Seven Dials, dredging up scandalous details and pitting Whigs against Tories in a battle for power. When former spies Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch learn their enemies in the mysterious Elsinore League are trying to sell letters that could prove key at the trial, the Rannochs are determined to intercept these vital papers before they can be used against Queen Caroline.
The exchange is to take place in the candlelit splendor of Carfax House, at the first ball Malcolm and Mélanie’s friends Julien and Kitty are giving in their new roles as Lord and Lady Carfax. But Malcolm and Mélanie aren’t the only ones determined to intercept the letters. Amidst a night of champagne and waltzing, Mélanie and Malcolm find themselves entrapped in an intrigue that may be as deadly as any they faced in the Napoleonic Wars…
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November 18, 2020
London, 1820. Britain and Continental Europe teeter on the edge of upheaval, but Mélanie Rannoch tells herself she’s left behind the dangers of the spy game and the sometimes equally-perilous intrigues of London society as she prepares for the premiere of her first play.
Until her children stumble upon the body of the Hon. Lewis Thornsby in the wings of the Tavistock Theatre. Suddenly, Mélanie and her husband, Malcolm, plunge into an investigation that cuts closer to their former life of espionage than they would have thought possible. Thornsby, a seemingly guileless young man about town, was part of the Levellers, a secret group of reformers whose leader is a friend of the Rannochs. A paper on Thornsby’s body hints at a plot to assassinate a member of the royal family.
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The Rannoch Fraser Mysteries #18
London, December, 1819. After their recent adventures, former spies Malcolm and Mélanie Rannoch are looking forward to spending a quiet holiday season with friends and family. The greatest danger seems to be Mélanie’s scandalous debut in a Christmas pantomime, which has shocked Mayfair’s elite. But when an old friend smuggles a fugitive from the Continent into the theatre on opening night, the Rannochs find themselves facing both government agents and a mysterious assassin. As they infiltrate secret meetings, intercept coded documents, and reunite estranged lovers, they quickly realize nothing is quite what it seems. At least, as Mélanie tells her husband, they are spending the holidays with those closest to them—even if they aren’t sure they can trust their nearest and dearest…
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Rannoch Fraser Historical Mysteries 17
Every spy has a past. But Mélanie Suzanne Rannoch is not prepared to meet her husband Malcolm’s past literally walking towards them across a candlelit Mayfair ballroom in the person of brilliant, stunning Katelina Ashford, Malcolm’s first love. Nor is she prepared to find that Kitty is a former agent herself, who has come to London seeking Malcolm’s help. Mélanie, who misses her own past as a spy, always relishes the intrigue of espionage. But even as Kitty’s secret mission unsettles London society, it leaves Mélanie questioning her own assumptions about the man whose name and bed she has shared for seven years.
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Former spies and London society favorites Malcolm and Mélanie Suzanne Rannoch are back home, and delighted that their dear friends, Raoul O’Roarke and Laura Tarrington, are finally free to marry. But what should be an occasion for joy is soon marred by a blackmail attempt. To aid an old friend, the Rannochs must resume a life of espionage and adventure, facing an attack at the London docks and infiltrating a Mayfair ball in disguise to retrieve stolen letters. They soon realize the stolen documents they seek could upend the British government—and the secrets Malcolm and Mélanie uncover hit unexpectedly—and dangerously—close to home…
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Former spies Malcolm and Mélanie Suzanne Rannoch return to Dunmykel Castle in Scotland in response to a secret summons from Malcolm’s grandfather, the Duke of Strathdon. The duke has a plan that will allow the Rannochs to resume their former life in Britain. Malcolm, worried that Mélanie could face treason charges for her past as a French spy, wants nothing more than to take his family safely back to Italy. But when Malcolm’s sister Gisèle disappears from Dunmykel, Malcolm instead find himself doing the one thing he didn’t want to do—risking a return to London in search of his missing sister.
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A Malcolm & Mélanie Suzanne Rannoch historical mystery novellaFormer spies Malcolm and Mélanie Suzanne Rannoch have fled Britain with their family to escape the exposure of Suzanne’s past as a French agent in the Napoleonic Wars. The news that Malcolm’s grandfather, the Duke of Strathdon, is dangerously ill makes them risk a secret voyage to Scotland in the depths of winter. But they arrive at the Rannoch castle on the Highland coast to find that all is not as expected. Dunmykel Castle holds dangerous mysteries beyond the sliding panel in the library, the hidden rooms, and the secret passage to the beach. As snow falls and the holiday season approaches, the Rannochs face smugglers and old enemies, and must race to uncover a deadly secret that could destroy their hard-won escape.
| Amazon, iBooks, Nook, and Kobo November 8, 2017 |
Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch have fled with their family from fog-drenched England to golden Tuscany as the secrets of Suzanne’s past unravel. On their way to their villa on Lake Como, they seek refuge with Suzanne’s friend, Hortense Bonaparte, daughter of the Empress Josephine, stepdaughter of Napoleon.
The Rannochs arrive at Hortense’s elegant château to find Hortense terrified and desperately in need of their services. And so, Suzanne and Malcolm find that even on the run from danger they are not done playing the spy game—or being drawn into intrigues that could affect the future of crowns and countries.
| Amazon, iBooks, Nook, and Kobo November 3, 2016 |
A Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch Historical Mystery 13
The secrets of Suzanne Rannoch’s scandalous past have forced Suzanne and her husband Malcolm— also a spy — to flee London’s intrigues and ballrooms. Suzanne fears they will go mad from boredom in their gilded refuge on Lake Como. But they soon encounter Italian revolutionaries, gun smugglers, an English nobleman living in self-imposed exile with a beautiful contessa, and Lord Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley, who have their own reasons for fleeing Britain. When a golden afternoon on the lake turns crimson with murder, Malcolm and Suzanne realize that boredom is the least of their concerns…but they may have to fear for their lives and the lives of those closest to them… .
| Amazon, iBooks, Nook, and Kobo May 15, 2017 |
On a moonlit London night, Suzanne Rannoch slips away from a glittering Mayfair party to assist a wounded man who has escaped Paris one step ahead of Royalist pursuit. That same evening, Suzanne’s husband Malcolm, himself a former spy for Britain, is summoned to the warehouse of a shipping company where a thief has been knifed to death. These two seemingly unconnected incidents prove to be the opening gambit in a deadly game that will test the Rannochs’ skill, strain their divided loyalties to Britain and France, and entangle not only fellow agents and spymasters, but their friends and family. The stakes are their security, their marriage, their very lives.|
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For former spies, even entertaining is fraught with danger. In April 1818, the London Season is in full swing, but the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars lingers. Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch are hosting their first ball since the revelations about Suzanne’s past that nearly destroyed their marriage. The Rannochs are just learning to trust each other again.
But in the midst of the waltzing and champagne, old friends from the spy game slip in through the window of the Rannochs’ Berkeley Square house, bringing a message from Suzanne’s past. While their guests dance and flirt, Malcolm and Suzanne confront old dangers and new enemies that could upend their fragile peace.
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In the elegant environs of Mayfair…
Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch live a seemingly charmed life. Malcolm, a former diplomatic attaché and intelligence agent, is a rising Member of Parliament. Suzanne is fast becoming one of London’s most sought hostesses. But even their closest friends don’t know that the Rannoch’s marriage is still reeling from the revelation that Suzanne was a French spy when she met British agent Malcolm and that she married him to gather information on British plans
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazon May 15, 2015 |
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A year and a half after entering her unusual marriage of convenience to British attaché and intelligence agent, Malcolm Rannoch, Suzanne Rannoch pays her first visit to her husband’s home. England: the country her husband fled for reasons she does not fully understand; the country Suzanne has secretly spent the last five years fighting against as a French spy.
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazon March 18, 2015 |
In the fallout of one of history’s bloodiest battles, a personal war is waged…
Paris in 1816 is reeling from the Battle of Waterloo, and relations between the British and French are uneasy at best. So it’s hardly a surprise to British attaché and Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch when he and his wife Suzanne, soon to give birth to their second child, become the target of violent threats. Malcolm is certain that the secrets of his past have caught up with him—but he’s unaware that Suzanne has more than a few secrets of her own…
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazon e-novella January 28, 2014 |
A stolen treasure may hold the secret to a ghastly crime. . .
Ensconced in the comfort of their elegant home in London’s Berkeley Square, Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch are no longer subject to the perilous life of intrigue they led during the Napoleonic Wars. Once an Intelligence Agent, Malcolm is now a Member of Parliament, and Suzanne is one of the city’s most sought-after hostesses. But a late-night visit from a friend who’s been robbed may lure them back into the dangerous world they thought they’d left behind. . .
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazonXXXXXXIndiebound March 25, 2014 |
From the ashes of war rise the secrets of its darkest hearts. . . .
In the wake of the Battle of Waterloo, Paris is a house divided. The triumphant Bourbons flaunt their victory with lavish parties, while Bonapartists seek revenge only to be captured and executed. Amid the turmoil, British attaché and intelligence agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, discover that his murdered half sister, Princess Tatiana Kirsanova, may have borne a child—a secret she took to the grave. And Malcolm suspects there was more than mere impropriety behind her silence. . . .
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazonXXXXXXIndiebound Kensington March 26, 2013 ISBN: 0758283938 |
A novella about Malcolm and Suzanne’s marriage
When Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch proposes to Suzanne de Saint-Vallier, the tumult of the Peninsular War recedes-if only temporarily. For their union may have shattering consequences for the more fragile partnership between Britain and Spain. But meanwhile, let the celebrations begin . .
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazon eKensington November 23, 2012 ASIN-B008R9VPUU |
Removed to glamorous Brussels in the wake of Napoleon’s escape from Elba, intelligence agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, warily partake in the country’s pleasures. The festivities are cut short when the demure Lady Julia Ashton is killed in an ambush at the château where Malcolm and a fellow British spy are meeting. As the conflict with Napoleon marches toward Waterloo and Brussels surrenders to bedlam, Suzanne and Malcolm plunge into the search for the truth—uncovering an intricate labyrinth of sinister secrets and betrayal within which no one can be trusted…
Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazon XXXXXXIndieBoundXXXXXXMore InfoKensington Books March 2012 ISBN-10: 0758254245 ISBN-13: 978-0758254245 |
Europe’s elite have gathered at the glittering Congress of Vienna – princes, ambassadors, the Russian tsar— all negotiating the fate of the Continent by day and pursuing pleasure by night. Until Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful and talked about woman in Vienna, is found murdered. Young diplomatic wife Suzanne Rannoch discovers her husband, Malcolm, who is rumored to be among Tatiana’s conquests, kneeling over the princess’s body. An intricate dance in the search for the truth ensues. No one’s secrets are safe and the future of Europe may hang in the balance.
| Barnes & NobleXXXXXXAmazonXXXXXXIndieBoundXXXXXXMore Info Kensington Books April 2011 ISBN 13-978-0-7582-5423-8 ISBN 10-0-7582-5423-7 |
A glittering ball, a whisper of intrigue, and a couple with secrets…
Regency London’s most glamorous couple, Mélanie and Charles Fraser have hidden their pasts from aristocratic society– and each other — to become the envy of the ton. But, when attending a 12th night masquerade, a mysterious masked man is found stabbed to the heart, and all their misdeeds and secrets may be dragged into full, merciless light. Mélanie’s previous ties to the Empress Josephine — including a promise to her desperate daughter Queen Hortense–and Charles’s secret work for the British government thrust them both into the search for the killer, taking them from Seven Dials to Mayfair, from viperous thieves’ dens to candlelit ballrooms, where the glitter of diamonds can mask the gleam of a knife…
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Adam Durward is an outsider in both his mother’s India and his father’s England. Too much of an outsider for his childhood sweetheart, Caroline, who turned her back on their forbidden love to marry the wealthier, safer Jared Rawley. Taught a bitter lesson about not belonging, Adam left England as a diplomat and spy in the Peninsular War. But even then he could not escape Caroline. When he learned her husband, Jared, had betrayed crown and country, he exposed Jared as a traitor despite Caroline’s pleas.
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Tracy Grant - Novelist 