Emily, Lady Hardcastle, is a widow with a mysterious and unconventional past. When she moves from London to rural Gloucestershire in 1908, she has her heart set on a quiet life in the country. But when she and her maid come upon a body in the woods, they become entangled in a murder mystery that sets them on an entertaining new path as amateur sleuths. In these, the first of Lady Hardcastle's adventures, she and Florence Armstrong, her faithful lady's maid, fumble their way through four mysteries. The Body in the Woods sets them on their new path when a supposed suicide turns out to be more than it appears. When The Circus Comes to Town, the amateur sleuths meet an old friend and must track down a multiple murderer who has turned the lives of the travelling entertainers upside down. The Case of the Missing Case sees a musician murdered at a country house party, but once again all is not as it seems and our heroines work with the Bristol police to solve the murder before the trail goes cold. In The Half Death of Gunther Ehrlichmann, Emily finally uncovers the truth of her husband's death and seals her own fate when an assassin tracks her down. "