I have the great pleasure of writing Regency-set historical mysteries for Kensington Publishing under the Catherine Lloyd name and book three of The Kurland St. Mary mysteries Death Comes To Kurland Hall just came out. They are quite different to write than my romances, move at a slower pace and require a lot more upfront plotting than I am used to.

It is nice to write Major Robert Kurland, a less romantic and more realistic heroic kind of hero who has a bad temper, is an invalid after the Battle of Waterloo and a bit of an all round grump. Likewise, my heroine Miss Lucy Harrington is neither beautiful nor malleable, and is rather too strong-willed to settle for a lifetime in service to the men in her family.

I grew up in England so I also get a great deal of pleasure in writing about places I am familiar with including London, my home town, Brighton, Bath and various local villages. On a trip back for a wedding this summer I had a lovely time jotting down the names of various villages we passed through on our way through Suffolk for future reference.

Even more thrilling, for a history nerd was the chance to actually sit down and eat lunch (gammon, eggs, chips and peas) in the actual inn The Swan in Thaxted that appears in my third book! I always try and use the real pub names because an amazing amount of them have survived for centuries.

So if you enjoy cozy Regency mysteries, give the Kurland St. Mary series a try. As an incentive, I’ll be giving away 3 copies, (print or digital) of Book One, Death Comes to the Village.

What’s your favorite place to visit in England?

About Death at Kurland Hall

As wedding bells chime in Kurland St. Mary, a motley group of visitors descends on the village—and with a murderer on the prowl, some of them may not be returning home…

Lucy Harrington has returned to Kurland St. Mary to help with her friend Sophia Giffin’s wedding. But her homecoming is made disagreeable by the presence of Major Robert Kurland, whose bungled proposal has ruffled Lucy’s composure, and a meddling widow who has designs on her father, the village rector.

Wary of the cloying Mrs. Chingford from the start, Lucy has doubts about the busybody’s intentions with her father. But everyone else seems to think they make an ideal match—until the courtship is curtailed when Mrs. Chingford is found dead at the bottom of a staircase. It’s clear that it wasn’t an accident, and in hopes of finding the culprit, Lucy and Robert call a truce and begin scrutinizing the wedding guests.

But the widow left behind plenty of enemies, and when one of them is the next to turn up dead, Lucy and Robert discover that the truth is far more scandalous than anyone could have imagined…

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About the Author

Catherine Lloyd was born just outside London, England into a large family of dreamers, artists and history lovers. She completed her education with a master’s degree in history at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and currently lives in Hawaii with her husband and fourth child.

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