Showing results by author "Anne Arrandale" in All Categories

February, 1920. Prohibition went into effect a month before. Prohibition agents are political hacks, most having bought their positions, and more apt to make more in graft from the bootleggers than from their salaries. At the same time, the Governor of the State of Maryland declared his state would remain as "wet as ever". Police were told to stand down on all matters regarding enforcement of the Volstead Act or the 18th Amendment. Gabby Lane Pennington is no longer running a patent medicine mail order business. Now she has a full blown distillery, making not just Pennington's Tonic, but ...

The eleventh month, the eleventh day, the eleventh hour, the eleventh minute. Armistice Day. The end of the War to End All Wars. The toll in lives was tremendous. Spanish flu brought an even greater toll. Men who came through the war unscathed succumbed to the plague. In the end, no one was left untouched. This was especially true for the families of Zofia's Cakes and Tarts.

April 4, 1917: The United States enters The Great War. Young men are being drafted, while young women volunteer to serve in auxilary positions, freeing "A Man to Fight." Rhys Shay has his draft notice, and is preparing to report any day now. Lucy Goodheart, the young woman his brother rescued from a sex trafficker five years before, has learned the art of telegraphy from her foster father. Now that she is out of school, she joins the U.S. Navy in the only capacity available, as a Yeoman (F). Not only does being a Yeomanette enable her to make use of her telegraphy skills, it lets her feel ...

1914: England has entered the War to End All Wars.. Germany seems determined to force the British to split their forces and to fight against the Irish rebels in the north. Mounted Police Officer Tadhg Nagel has become somewhat of a local hero. First he was instrumental in breaking up a peonage operation for the Bureau of Investigation. Then he foiled a major theft at a society fashion show. That wasn't enough for Officer Nagel. He needed to do something to stop the Germans from destroying his homeland. Joining the Britsh Army would most likely mean coming home in a pine box. Nagel didn't ...

Lily Barnett, a failure in medical school through no fault of her own, enters the new nursing program at St Joseph's Hospital. At the very beginning of the War to End All Wars, she steps up and joins the British Medical Corps.

Gabrielle Lane Pennington has a great grift. She's running tent revivals all over the east coast, and preaching the Gospel as it is convenient.. On the side, her roustabouts are snatching young girls from their revivals and shipping them off to brothels run by a notorious madam. The fledgling Bureau of Investigation has a new agent,. Still with only forty-three agents in the country, Dylan Shay was accepted on the force. The BoI's mandate still includes sussing out violations of the Mann Act, as well as investigating acts of espionage. Newly minted Agent Shay is called upon to surveille ...

July 1935: An oddly dressed young woman is found wandering a country road, bloody and covered in ants. Later, a body is found in a wrecked car about two miles away. The question is, what happened to the woman, and is the blood hers? Follow the continued drama of the families in Tennessee Valley Blues Mysteries.

in 1913, the fledgling Bureau of Investigation was tasked wtih apprehending human traffickers. Not only were they hunting violators of the Mann Act, but they were tasked with ending peonage. As today, new immigrants were taken by unscrupulous people and sold into what virtual slavery. A young police officer in Baltimore City receives an urgent message from his cousin, newly arrived from Ireland. Declan Nagel has been fooled into such a sitution, and is being held at a forced labor camp laying rails and building trestles. The BoI investigates the camp, in order to end the traffic in human ...

Now that Landry Glass is a memory, Sophia Davies O'Fallon finds herself in need of a new situation. The pawnbroker, deGroot, puts her together with an ersatz German count, Gerhardt Weissmann. Weissmann and Sophia cut a wide swath through Baltimore's elite, managing to empty safes and jewel cases, and dodge the police at the same time.

1931: Mary Faith and Declan Dougherty are leaving home for college in Baltimore. Considering both their families consist of working women and law enforcement officer, their formative years have involved more than their share of intrigue. Faith thought going to nursing school would be calmer than living with people who thought nothing of discussion autopsy results over the dinner table. Boy was she wrong.

With Rory O'Fallon history, Sofie Davies O'Fallon is in search of a new partner in crime and protector. She finds Landry Glass. A former calvelry officer, world traveler and ladies man, Landry moves in on Sofie and shows her all the things she's been missing in life, while helping her find bigger and better scores. Meanwhile, the police are trying to catch Glass and Sofie doing something they shouldn't. Tomas Ribiero goes undervocer, and finds way more than he ever expected.

Everybody's two-stepping. They're dancing to Jazz, the new music performed so well at Gans Goldfield, the first "black and tan" club in Maryland, where the races can mix. Politicians are two-stepping, making money hand over fist, and spreading it around amongst their constituents. The cops are two-stepping, too, trying to catch up with the usual suspects, and to prosecute crooked politicians. The women who own Zofia's Cakes and Tarts are doing their own version of the two-step, when the Archdiocese demands they give up their bakery so a church may be built on its location. The fledgling ...

Baltimore City. 1910 Police hunt across the strata of society for a murderer. His victims seem to be from all social levels.

Why Are You Weeping, Sister? Gwendolyn Graham's last happy day was just before her 15th birthday, the day before her beloved father died. Her mother forces her to abandon everything she has ever known, including the young man she loves and hopes to wed, and drags her from their farm to Baltimore, where she throws her daughter into the path of every man who shows an interest. Unfortunately, one of those men is a brothel owner. When Gwendolyn disappears, Detective Shay has to find her before it's too late. The House That Jack Built Baltimore City. 1910 Police hunt across the strata of society...

Baltimore City Police Detective Sergeant Dylan Shay has been seconded to the fledgling Bureau of Investigation Baltimore Field Office. One of their first mandated investigations is the pursuit of people in active violation of the Mann Act. Their hunt takes them through multiple states by rail, as they pursue the kidnappers of three young girls destined to be trafficked to a brothel. Will they catch up with the procurer in time?

Baltimore City, 1911: For the first time in its history, prostitution has been made a crime. Brothels are being closed, inmates tossed onto the street. Two young women, forced into "the life" as young teens, manage to break free of their past and open their own business, a small bakery. The man responsible for trafficking them comes back, trying to insinuate himself into their lives.

Gwendolyn Graham's last happy day was just before her 15th birthday, the day before her beloved father died. Her mother forces her to abandon everything she has ever known, including the young man she loves and hopes to wed, and drags her from their farm to Baltimore, where she throws her daughter into the path of every man who shows an interest. Unfortunately, one of those men is a brothel owner. When Gwendolyn disappears, Detective Shay has to find her before it's too late.

Marcel Duprey and his family are moving south to Tennessee when the unthinkable happens. And because the victim is a person of color, the local police refuse to really investigate. Marcel calls upon his brother-in-law and friend to take over the investigation. Meanwhile, Danny Shay, the former Marine, gets his first taste of police undercover work, when he braves the seamy underbelly of one of Baltimore's marginalized communities.

Monument City Mysteries ended in 1925. Now, in 1934, share the lives of the next generation. Declan Dougherty, Mary Faith Shay and her sister Chiara are returning home after finishing college. They step off the train and right into a family tragedy. Just when they think things can’t get worse, Declan’s step-father is called to the police station to stave off a lynching. It is the fledgling attorney’s opportunity to take on his first case as he tries to decide between opening his own practice or going to work for the District Attorney’s office. A young man's life hangs in the balance...

It's late 1934. The German American Bund is on the rise along the East Coast. A few months before, Til Duprey had managed to infiltrate some of their meetings for the FBI. Things didn't go quite as he expected. In Tennessee, young attorney Declan Dougherty has his first big case, defending a woman accused of casting spells on her neighbor. The young attorney manages to impress not just his client, but opposing counsel and the judge. Meanwhile, Declan's twin brother Donagh returns from university in London. The newly minted horse doctor is anxious to establish himself, much to Chiara Shay's ...