Tessa Harris – författare

"CSI meets the Age of Reason with a well-drawn, intriguing cast of characters" (Karen Harper) in Tessa Harris'' superbly plotted historical mystery series, featuring eighteenth-century anatomist and pioneering sleuth Dr. Thomas Silkstone.

In the notorious mental hospital known as Bedlam, Dr. Thomas Silkstone seeks out a patient with whom he is on intimate terms. But he is unprepared for the state in which he finds Lady Lydia Farrell. Shocked into action, Thomas vows to help free Lydia by appealing to the custodian of her affairs, Mr. Nicholas Lupton.

But when Silkstone arrives at the Boughton Estate to speak to Lupton, he finds that sweeping changes threaten to leave many villagers destitute. After a man dies in the woods, it appears that someone has turned to murder to avenge their cause. But for Thomas, a postmortem raises more questions than answers, and a second murder warns him of his potentially fatal situation. Soon he discovers a conspiracy far more sinister than anything he has ever faced.

Eighteenth-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone travels to the English countryside to unravel a tangled web of mystery, medicine, and murder in this captivating new novel from Tessa Harris.

A man staggers out of his cottage into the streets of Oxfordshire, shattering an otherwise peaceful evening with the terrible sight of his body shaking and heaving, eyes wild with horror. Many of the villagers believe the devil himself has entered Joseph Makepeace, the latest victim of a "great fog" that darkens the skies over England like a biblical plague. When Joseph''s son and daughter are found murdered—their heads bashed in by a shovel—the town''s worst suspicions are confirmed: evil is abroad, and needs to be banished.

A brilliant man of science, Dr. Thomas Silkstone is not one to heed superstition. But when he arrives at the estate of the lovely widow Lady Lydia Farrell, he finds that it''s not just her grain and livestock at risk. A shroud of mystery surrounds Lydia''s lost child, who may still be alive in a workhouse. A natural disaster fills the skies with smoke and ash, clogging the lungs of all who breathe it in. And the grisly details of a father''s crime compel Dr. Silkstone to look for answers beyond his medical books—between the devil and the deep blue sea.

London, 1782. The sole survivor of an ill-fated expedition to Jamaica has gone missing upon his return home. Dr. Thomas Silkstone had been entrusted to catalog all the New World specimens and therefore feels compelled to investigate the disappearance. Meanwhile, a rumor circulates that a potion with the power to raise the dead is afoot, and the formula is thought to be in the missing botanist''s journal.

As he investigates, the good doctor is drawn into a world of trafficking in corpses for profit. When a headless corpse is discovered, Silkstone uncovers the sinister motives of those who would stop at nothing to possess the Lazarus potion.

Inspired by true-life physician Dr. William Shippen Jr., this delightful series has been hailed as "CSI meets The Age of Reason" (Karen Harper, New York Times bestselling author).

Within the mysteries of the body, especially those who have been murdered, eighteenth-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone specializes in uncovering the tell-tale clues that lead toward justice.

Newly released from the notorious asylum known as Bedlam, Lady Lydia Farrell finds herself in an equally terrifying position—as a murder suspect—when she stumbles upon the mutilated body of Sir Montagu Malthus in his study at Boughton Hall.

Meanwhile, Dr. Thomas Silkstone has been injured in a duel with a man who may or may not have committed the grisly deed of which Lydia is accused. Despite his injury, Thomas hopes to clear his beloved’s good name by conducting a postmortem on the victim. With a bit of detective work, he learns that Montagu’s throat was slit by no ordinary blade, rather a ceremonial Sikh dagger from India that may be connected to the fabled lost mines of Golconda.

From the mysterious disappearance of a cursed diamond buried with Lydia’s dead husband to the undying legend of a hidden treasure map, Thomas must follow a trail of foreign dignitaries, royal agents, and even more victims to unveil the sinister and shocking secrets in the stones.