medieval

With the untimely death of her beloved husband, Edward, Cristiana Helyngton is now a widow.  She and her daughters, eight-year-old Jane and twelve-year-old Mary, are grateful for the help and guidance of Cristiana’s brother, Gerverys.  But Gerverys is no match for Edward’s cousin Laurence Helyngton, who is determined to have all the Helyngton land and properties as well as Jane and Mary under his control.

The first step in Laurence’s plan is to whisk Cristiana to a convent where the sisters are told she is mad with grief and has taken to indecent behavior, no longer fit to mother her children

The king's mistress is dead. Who killed her? A jealous queen? A scheming noble hoping to foment civil war? Or was it an unfortunate accident? The stakes are high, and so the King sends his foremost medical investigator to unravel the mystery: an investigator who just happens to be not only a doctor and forensic scientist but also, most unusually for 12th-century England - a woman.

What sets The Serpent's Tale most vividly apart from other historical mysteries is the main character: the Italian-trained female doctor Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar who heals the sick and solves crimes