Latest Jane Austen Mystery:
Jane and the Final Mystery
Book 15 now available
The final volume of the critically acclaimed mystery series featuring Jane Austen as amateur sleuth
March 1817: As winter turns to spring, Jane Austen’s health is in slow decline, and threatens to cease progress on her latest manuscript. But when her nephew Edward brings chilling news of a death at his former school, Winchester College, not even her debilitating ailment can keep Jane from seeking out the truth. Arthur Prendergast, a senior pupil at the prestigious all-boys’ boarding school, has been found dead in a culvert near the schoolgrounds—and in the pocket of his drenched waistcoat is an incriminating note penned by the young William Heathcote, the son of Jane’s dear friend Elizabeth. Winchester College is a world unto itself, with its own language and rites of passage, cruel hazing and dangerous pranks. Can Jane clear William’s name before her illness gets the better of her?
Latest Nantucket Mystery:
Death on a Winter Stroll
Book 7 now available
No-nonsense Nantucket detective Merry Folger grapples with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and two murders as the island is overtaken by Hollywood stars and DC suits.
Nantucket Police Chief Meredith Folger is acutely conscious of the stress COVID-19 has placed on the community she loves. Although the island has proved a refuge for many during the pandemic, the cost to Nantucket has been high. Merry hopes that the Christmas Stroll, one of Nantucket’s favorite traditions, in which Main Street is transformed into a winter wonderland, will lift the island’s spirits. But the arrival of a large-scale TV production, and the Secretary of State and her family, complicates matters significantly.
Praise for Francine Mathews / Stephanie Barron
“The author excels at both period detail and modern verve…. Sparkling.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Barron writes a lively adventure that puts warm flesh on historical bones.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Mathews writes well, keeps the pace brisk and has great fun re-creating historical personages.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“…intelligent, passionate, and unceasingly entertaining.”
—Author Stephen White
“Mathews writes appealingly, making her characters human, fallible, and thoughtful…”
—Library Journal
About
Francine Mathews/Stephanie Barron was born in Binghamton, New York, the last of six girls. She attended Princeton and Stanford Universities, where she studied history, before going on to work as an intelligence analyst at the CIA. She wrote her first book in 1992 and left the Agency a year later. Since then, she has written 30 novels, including the critically acclaimed Nantucket Mystery series, the Jane Austen Mystery series, and a number of historical fiction and thriller novels. She lives and works in Denver, Colorado.
