The Hartsmere Mysteries

A dead trainer. A drugged Thoroughbred. In the high-stakes world of Victorian horse racing, the truth lives under the skin...

Newmarket Heath, 1887.

To the public, the fatal gallop of legendary trainer Henry Ashmore was a tragic accident. A horse spooked by a drainage ditch, an aging rider losing his seat. Case closed.

But Henry’s daughter, Nell Ashmore, doesn't read the public form book; she reads the horse. With a ledger behind her eyes and a unique, ancestral gift for reading an animal’s pulse by touch, Nell examines the four-year-old colt Domine's Pride. The horse's pounding heart and dilated pupils tell a terrifying story: her father’s horse was systematically poisoned before he ever put his foot in the iron.

A Deadly Conspiracy in the Betting Ring

Inheriting the honest yard but facing a wall of skepticism from the elite Jockey Club, Nell must manage the stable while hunting a killer. With the help of the methodical Inspector Thomas Kell, she uncovers a brilliant, cold-blooded betting coup running right through her own tack room. Someone has been falsifying work-watch logs and placing dark money across distant rings, keeping a champion horse dark to strike a fortune.

The numbers don't lie, but the people do. As the Queen's Golden Jubilee approaches, the field of suspects narrows to those closest to home. To secure her father's legacy and save her yard, Nell will have to out-handicap a mastermind who has already proven that a human life is a price worth paying to fix the odds.