• Revised 2020 edition. Nominated for Reader's Choice Awards as Best First Novel and Best Historical Mystery (LIM, Feb 2003)
• For fans of cozy mysteries, amateur sleuths, and gilded age chicago history

Gilded Age Chicago Mystery Series

Chicago in the 1890s is the fastest growing metropolis in America. It rivals New York as the City of the Century and the epitome of the Gilded Age. This melting pot of thieves and corrupt politicians, and robber barons and immigrants, is rife with scandal and social injustice. An eccentric heiress and a cub reporter find themselves repeatedly drawn into the hidden world of intrigue and murder that lurks within the shadows of the White City.

Volume One - The Fall of White City

Wealthy spinster Evangeline LeClair leads a paradoxical life. By day, she fends off marriage-minded suitors. By night, she teaches English to factory workers at a social settlement in the slums. Evangeline is quite satisfied with the status quo until murder disrupts her routine. One of her students, a penniless immigrant, has been stabbed to death in Chicago's most exclusive hotel. The girl's brother, a known anarchist, is accused of the crime.

Evangeline wheedles her admirer, Freddie Simpson, into helping her track down the real killer. Their list of possible suspects is long: a captain of industry, a denizen of the slums, a shady doctor who mixes his own drugs, and a teenage prostitute from a sporting house in the Levee District. The gleaming surface of the World's Fair casts many shadows and The Fall of White City exposes the darkness at its core.