When Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey is summoned to her childhood home for "a matter of life and death," she expects to find her foster mother, Lady Susanna Appleton, at death's door. What she finds instead is far more dangerous--a childhood friend, accused of a murder she did not commit, with nowhere else to turn. Godlina Walkenden stands accused of murdering her brother-in-law in order to avoid an arranged marriage to a loathsome Italian silk merchant...

1564: Catholic herald William Harley, known as Clarenceux, guards a highly dangerous document. It's a manuscript he'd rather not have--destruction and death have followed in its wake. But things get much worse when the document is stolen, and he plunges into a nightmare of suspicion, deception, and conspiracy. As England teeters on the brink of a bloody conflict, Clarenceux knows the fate of his country and countless lives hang in the balance. The...

"June, 1584. On hearing news of the sudden death of her stepfather, Sir Walter Pendennis, Rosamond Jaffrey must leave London for Cornwall to look after the interests of her young half-brother and try to mend her strained relationship with their mother. However, on arriving in Cornwall, Rosamond makes the shocking discovery that Sir Walter was in fact murdered, and reluctantly she agrees to work with an agent of the queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham,...

"November, 1583. Desperate not to let the Netherlands fall into the hands of Catholic Spain, the Queen's spymaster orders Cambridge scholar and novice spy Christopher Marlowe to go there to assist its beleaguered leader, William the Silent. However, travelling in disguise as part of a troupe of Egyptian players, Marlowe encounters trouble even before he leaves England. When the players make a detour to perform at the home of Dr John Dee, one of their...

"In Elizabethan England, the queen's chief spymaster, Francis Walsingham, and his team of agents must maintain the highest levels of vigilance to ward off Catholic plots and an ever-present threat of invasion from Spain. One agent in particular - a young Cambridge undergraduate of humble origins, controversial beliefs, and literary genius who goes by the name of Kit Marlowe - is relentless in his pursuit of intelligence for the Crown. When he is killed...

In 1582 thirteen-year-old Emilia Bassano is a lute player and aspiring playwright who stumbles on a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth, and is recruited by Sir Francis Walsingham to go to the castle where Mary Queen of Scots is being held and discover who is responsible for the plot.