John Shakespeare Mysteries

The Elizabethan Bond is back . . . Under the threat of a second Spanish Armada, John Shakespeare is sent to Lancashire to guard over England's secret weapon and its inventor, the maverick magician Dr. Dee. But nothing is so simple when the country is a hotbed of secret loyalties and civil unrest. During his mission, Shakespeare stumbles upon Catholic priests in hiding, a mysterious Bohemian seductress, and-of course-murder. Between facing off with a nefarious witch hunter and attending one of the first performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the intrepid John Shakespeare fights to stay alive while on the hunt for a deadly traitor.

An exorcism … a siege … a stealthy killer … What else could go wrong? John Shakespeare-intrepid private detective and brother to a rising young playwright in Elizabethan London-is approached by a condemned Jesuit priest with an unusual proposition: the Father is haunted by the memory of Thomasyn Jade, a teenage girl subjected to brutal exorcism rites a decade past. He wants Shakespeare to track her down and offer reparations for her treatment. As Shakespeare begins his investigation, a plot to assassinate the Queen is underway, and rumors of a papist conspiracy begin swirling from Seville. And when, one by one, Shakespeare's trusted spies are horribly murdered, all clues seem to be linked to the mysterious Thomasyn Jade … Heart-pounding and packed with fascinating historical detail, The Heretics is a thriller to rival the best of C. J. Sansom and Alex Grecian.