More Ash and Juliana!

 

The second Ash and Juliana book is out this week!

Here's the blurb:

From glittering ballrooms to London’s dark underbelly, Ash & Juliana are back on the hunt for a murderer in the second installment of this thrilling historical mystery series from L.C. Sharp.

The London ton protect their own. Even when it comes to murder.

“There’s been an incident.”

In the finer circles of 1749 London, incident is apparently the polite way to describe discovering a body with a gruesome wound and no sign of the killer. But for newlyweds Lady Juliana and Sir Edmund “Ash” Ashendon, it’s a chance to track down the culprit and right a wrong—something they are both intimately familiar with.

Indeed, it is the only thing they are intimately familiar with. For the moment.

Though their marriage may be one of convenience, there’s nothing convenient about learning the victim has ties to a name from their past: the dreaded Raven. And the Raven isn’t the only danger they face. The aristocracy protects its own, and in London’s darkest corners, no one wants to be unmasked.

With Juliana’s life on the line, time is running out for Ash to find the killer before their marriage comes to an inconveniently bloody end.

Ash & Juliana

Book 1: The Wedding Night Affair
Book 2: The Sign of the Raven

The reviews are astonishingly good, and I'm thrilled to bits. To be honest, I was thrilled while I was writing it, because I know this series is one of the best things I've done. Everything is coalescing in this series - my love of the period, my love of the characters and the work I've done on this slow-burn of a series.

Slow burn to you, the reader, that is. I wrote the first version a few years ago, and my agent helped me hone it, but I already had a long vision for this series. I know where it is going to go, for the most part.

The characters, Ash, Juliana, their family and their friends and colleagues have a lot of story to come. In this book one situation is resolved, but another rears its head, and there will be a lot of trouble to come. Ash and Juliana have to stand firm to overcome it all.

In this book, Juliana confronts her parents, Ash confronts his feelings for his wife of convenience and they meet new friends, and allies. Meet Dr. Parrish, a surgeon who also lectures at the only surgeon's college at the time. A slave for the first few months of his life, Dr. Parrish is clever, modest and harshly kind. You might even love him as much as I do!

The enigmatic and dangerous Duke of Abercrombie makes an appearance, as does the journalist Ransom, who sticks Ash with a new nickname. He's set to make a fortune off his recounting of Ash and Juliana's exploits. Their Dr. Watson, you might say. And his sister, his guilty secret, the woman who made a new life for herself after escaping her abusive husband.

Not forgetting the scoundrelly duo of the child Col, and Cutty Jack, pickpocket, con man, and link-boy, who is heading for greater things. But not quite yet.

They're all there. After a murder of a man in the highest ranks of society, they all pitch in to help solve the crime, along with the king of London's underworld, The Raven. Ash learns more about The Raven, a secret that will rock his world.

I base the books on a real incident in history, this time the rehearsal of a grand fireworks show for which Handel wrote the music. The rehearsal went brilliantly (apart from the murder, which is my contribution to the story), but the real event, a week later, was a farce. Rain and fireworks don't do well together.

Anyway, here is the link to the book, and I really hope you enjoy it! The Sign of The Raven at Carina Press

 

New Book – New Name!

May 18, 2021 Lynne ConnollyLeave a comment

An unlikely pair explores the darkest corners of London society in this thrilling historical mystery.

The year is 1748, and Lady Juliana Uppingham awakens in a pool of blood, with no memory of how her new husband ended up dead beside her. Her distaste for her betrothed was no secret, but even so, Juliana couldn’t possibly have killed him…could she?

Juliana’s only hope is Sir Edmund Ashendon, a dashing baronet with a knack for solving seemingly unsolvable crimes—and a reputation for trouble. A man as comfortable in the rookeries of St. Giles as he is in the royal court, Ash believes Juliana is innocent, though all signs point to her as the killer. He doesn’t expect to develop a soft spot for the spirited widow, one that only grows when escalating threats against Juliana force Ash to shelter her in his home.

When another body is found, it becomes clear that Juliana has been dragged into something much, much bigger than simply her husband’s murder. With a collection of deadly black-tipped feathers as their sole clue and a date at the end of a hangman’s noose looming, they’ll have to find the real killer—before it’s too late.

Buy the book here

Harlequin : Carina Press : Amazon : Apple Books : Barnes and Noble : Google Play : Kobo

Ash & Juliana
Book 1: The Wedding Night Affair
Book 2: The Sign of the Raven

All right, this is a bit different to my usual posts. But here we are.

I have a new book out, under a new name! Why a new name? Because Lynne Connolly writes romance, and L.C. Sharp writes historical mystery! These books are mystery/detective stories with a hint of romance, rather than romance with a touch of something else.

New look, too! Check out the website, lcsharp.com to see what I mean.

I didn’t want my romance readers expecting something from the book that isn’t there, so I took a lesson from others, and created a new name for the mystery books. Still set in the eighteenth century, where my heart is, mostly in London, but the same couple feature as central characters in every book. They meet and marry in the worst of circumstances, and build their lives over the following books, collecting new members of their team along the way.

Of course, I’ve written books like that before, but Richard and Rose turned into a deeply romantic pair, with family problems that dominated their stories. And I don’t usually write “pure” romance, there is usually another story attached. I’m thrilled to bits with this new series, so here we go!

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce Ash and Juliana to you! He is a lawyer who, unusually for the time, works on criminal cases. She is the sheltered daughter of a wealthy and influential aristocrat, who is married off to a brute, and widowed shortly after. Ash steps into the breach.

In writing this series I became aware that there was so much different to our legal system today, and I want to write a series of articles and blog posts about that, as time goes by.

Here’s the official details of the first book in the series. It’s published by Carina Press, who have been really helpful and supportive all the way through this enterprise.

I love this pair, and I love this series. I will most certainly be continuing with it. The second book, The Sign Of The Raven is out later this year.

April News(?)

 

I’ve been working on a new project, but it’s not romance, or not entirely romance, so that’s a new name. And I’m working on some proposals for my current publishers. Sadly, that doesn’t include Kensington. Although I don’t plan to reclaim the books I have there just yet, I won’t be active with them. Various reasons, but you do run your course with a publisher, or so I’ve found. I loved being there, especially in the early days, but things changed drastically in the last couple of years.

So the Society of Single Ladies is done at three books, but never fear, I have more stories planned, including a series I’ve wanted to write for ages now.

I also have a contemporary romance series that is a few years old, but I want to see it out in the public domain once more, so I’ll read it through and get it out again. It’s hotter than my historicals, some of the books bordering on the erotic, and it was great fun to write. At the time I wrote it, people were concentrating on BDSM as if it was the be-all and end-all. But I wanted to show there was much more to erotic romance than that!

Well, although I’m beavering away, there isn’t a great deal of actual news. I suspect most of us are in the same boat. We’ve been locked down for so long that our days are restricted to what we can do in our houses and locally. But I have discovered breadmaking, which I’ve been enjoying. So has my family, so I don’t have a picture to show you! Not banana bread though, because I don’t particularly like it.

I’ve had my first vaccine, and I get the second in May. So looking forward to this virus being done, although I don’t think it’s the last one we’ll see, sadly. I’d love to be wrong about that. I’m so looking forward to all the things I used to take for granted – a nice lunch in a beer garden, visiting my friends and actually going into their houses, the wine and board games parties my friends and I used to enjoy, so long ago, it seems!

 

Sorry about the brevity of this newsletter, but really, I don’t want to waste your time talking about things that you are probably doing yourselves. Except – please look after yourselves and be kind!