The fourth novel in the fascinating series featuring Ursula Blanchard, loyal subject of Queen Elizabeth I and sleuth extraordinaire, finds our heroine torn between love and duty as she investigates treason of the highest order. To Ruin a Queen Desperately missing her young daughter and bitterly...
A quiet life at Withysham with her young daughter is all that widowed Ursula Blanchard desires. But as the waiting woman and spy for Queen Elizabeth I, she forfeits her needs for the sake of those she is pledged to protect -- even at her own peril.... Ursula's relatives enlist her help when her ...
This was a nice change in the series. Ursula is getting tired of intrigue and the fact that her spy work is not only keeping her from her husband, but also eroding her belief in her own goodness. At the end of the last book (and really, why are you reading this one if you didn't read that one), s...
What originally began as a three-star book quickly became a four-star book as Fiona Buckley plunged me into a wonderful, immersive mystery set in Elizabethan England. This is my first Ursula Blanchard mystery, but I definitely want to read more. It has everything one could demand from a mystery...
The novel begins as Ursula Blanchard, waiting woman to Queen Elizabeth I, is having a lesson in picking locks under the watchful eye of her majesty's secretary of state. An unusual lesson indeed for a respectable woman of the court, but Blanchard is no ordinary lady in waiting. She does have the ...
FABULOUS! Possibly four and a half stars!!"Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court" drew me in like a moth to a light. Historical mystery?! LOVE it! Buckley weaves a tapestry of characters together in a wonderfully gossipy way. It's like your best friend, whom you haven't seen in forever, has sa...
To Shield The Queen is an Elizabethan mystery but unlike my previous read (The Poyson Garden) the detective here is one of the queen's lady's in waiting. Ursula Blanchard is a young widow, when she finds herself almost destitute after the death of her husband a post is found for her as lady in wa...
3 and a half stars for the fifth novels starring Ursula Blanchard and crew. While this novel wasn't anything spectacular, I felt like it finally sets up the coming books for something good. The whole Elizabeth I vs. Mary Queen of Scots drama is building (we all know how that ends) and Ursula is f...
It was in poor repair, with warped window frames and old thatch as tufty as though it had been clawed by a giant cat. The garden was fairly neat, but no garden is much to look at in November. The man who opened the door to us was surprisingly old. The Easton tragedy had ha...
‘He has a sweet nature but a ferocious appetite. He’ll eat anything! What will you call him?’ she added, with laughter in her dark eyes. ‘Must it begin with an H? Herod?’ ‘Certainly not!’ I looked across the stretch of grass to where a trio of half-grown dogs, respectively black, brown and sandy ...