In 1592, Sir Robert Carey, a handsome courtier fleeing his creditors, his father's wrath, and the close scrutiny of his Queen, came north to Carlisle to take up his new post as Deputy Warden of the West March. The presence of his true love, the married Elizabeth Widdrington, was no mere coincidence. Before long, Sir Robert was up to his ruff in horse rustling and treason (A Famine of Horses), but he sorted that out with dispatch. 
Now he's in trouble again. The rowdy Grahams plan to kidnap Elizabeth as she journeys home to her husband. While Sir Robert storms out to stop them, someone murders the man he has just sacked from his post of paymaster to the Carlisle garrison. When Sir Robert returns, he finds his servant Barnabus slung into the castle dungeon, accused of the crime, and his arch enemy Sir Richard Lowther scheming to have Carey arrested for masterminding the murder.... 
When even faithful Sergeant Dodd is prepared to believe he did it, the courtier finds his hands full--while ruin stares him in the face--as he juggles the murder inquiry and untangles a skein of love and greed that reminds him most uncomfortably of how carefully he must conceal his love for Elizabeth. 
A Season of Knives, based on the real Sir Robert Carey's tumultuous life, is not only a keenly plotted detective story, it's an innovative police procedural and historical writing at its rousing best. 
The other works in this series are A Plague of Angels (Introduction by Diana Gabaldon), A Famine of Horses (Introduction by Sharon Kay Penman), and A Surfeit of Guns (Introduction by Barbara Peters). The author is at work on a fifth Sir Robert Carey.

A Season of Knives

P.F. Chisholm

Patricia Finney

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

London Corgi 1995

In 1592, dashing courtier Sir Robert Carey took up his northern post as Warden of the West March in order to escape the complications of creditors and court life. Trouble, however, dogs his heels wherever he goes. And where he goes in autumn, after the summer's misadventures in Carlisle, is back to London upon a summons from his father.Carey is on difficult terms with his powerful sire, Henry, Lord Hunsdon. Hunsdon, son of Anne Boleyn's elder sister, Mary -- and probably of a young King Henry VIII -- swings a lot of weight as ""cousin"" to Queen Elizabeth. But Hunsdon needs his ingenious younger son, Carey to sort out the difficulties his elder son has got himself into as an innocent party in a plot to discredit the family.Accompanied by the shrewd Sergeant George Dodd, who's like a fish out of water as he copes with the strange Londoners, Carey tackles Catholics, treachery, and such persons known to history and students of literature as George Greene and Christopher Marlowe who are working as spies and double agents. Most arresting is a portrait of a love-sick, snivelling hanger-on named Will Shakespeare....

A Plague Of Angels

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Hodder&Stoughton

Find out how Jack meets a Beautiful Girl Dig, goes on a Big Food Hunt, copes with some "very" superior cats, braves the fearsome Garage Dog - and has to stand alone against Big Huge Metal Monsters...

I, Jack

Corgi Yearling

The Firedrake's Eye

Contemporary

St.Martin's Press

Unicorn's Blood

orion#

The year is 1587. The Spanish are preparing to launch the Armada against the English and Queen Elizabeth. Ex-soldier David Becket, now responsible for the Queen's Ordnance discovers that large quantities of gunpowder are going astray. Can someone in the heart of the English government be selling it to the Spanish? Unaccountably he is plagued by vivid dreams of England invaded, an alternative story where the Armada is victorious. Patricia Finney's brilliant reworking of the Armada legend is an imaginative tour de force. Thrilling, intricate, and inspiring, this is a tale of courage, of love, and, ultimately, redemption

Gloriana's Torch

Orion Pub Co

Patricia Finney's outstanding literary thriller plunges into the vivid and deadly world of the 16th century: from the torture chambers of the Tower to the elegant artifice of court life; from the bawdy-houses of Southwark to the Queen's own bed. Why are the Jesuits, the Queen's Puritan councillors and even the Queen herself searching for the mysterious Book of the Unicorn? What ancient scandal threatens Elizabeth Tudor as she fights to avoid executing her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots? And what of the man waking up in the dungeon with no memory of who he is? David Becket and Simon Ames, the two mismatched heroes of FIREDRAKE'S EYE find themselves unwillingly in the thick of the struggle to unravel the plot.

Phoenix Paperbacks

Featuring books 1, 2 and 3 in the Sir Robert Carey Mysteries: A Famine of Horses , A Season of Knives and A Surfeit of Guns . 'I love P.F. Chisholm's mysteries! Robert Carey is irresistible, a swashbuckling courtier who is cousin to the Tudor queen, impulsive, courageous, too clever by half, in love with an unhappily married woman, and best of all, it is all true' Sharon Penman . 'Sir Robert Carey is real a swashbuckling, chivalrous dandy. He's cousin to Queen Elizabeth I and related to almost everybody at Court. He's good at war and investigations, a serious fashion-victim with a quick temper and an ingenious imagination. I have lifted him pretty much unchanged from the pages of his memoirs. As G.M. Fraser said, "If Sir Robert Carey hadn't existed, it would have been necessary to invent him"' P.F. Chisholm .

Guns in the North (The Sir Robert Carey Mysteries Omnibus)

Mystery

Head of Zeus

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Books by Patricia Finney