Welcome, I'm Beatrice Ashby, a lover of caramel coffee, candlelit rooms, locked-room puzzles, and the restless spirits who refuse to stay quietly buried between the pages.
I write cozy mysteries for readers who like their murders tidy, their manners impeccable, and their ghosts thoroughly ill-behaved. My stories unfold in the Regency spa town of Wexcombe, where the living guard their secrets, the dead air their grievances, and a clever woman with an uncanny gift is forever caught somewhere in between.
The series follows Henrietta "Hetty" Crewe, a sharp, warm, modern-minded spinster of good name and reduced means, and the most sought-after matchmaker in Wexcombe. She can read a ballroom in a glance, broker a betrothal before the second dance, and smooth the path of true love for half the county.
She can also see the dead. Which is dreadfully inconvenient, because the dead of Wexcombe have a tiresome habit of being murdered, and of refusing to cross over until someone is decent enough to name their killer. Standing in that gap, it turns out, is precisely what Hetty was made for. If only the maddeningly upright magistrate, Mr. Frederick Hartley, would stop asking how she always knows.
New here? The best place to begin is Book One, Till Death Do Us Match, or wander the streets of Wexcombe to meet the cast first.
Join my mailing list and I'll send you The Unquiet Gentleman, the untold tale of Sir Crispin's very first haunting, free. Plus new-release news and a little mischief from Wexcombe.
