WHO IS GWEN ARMSTRONG?

The Pilgrim Road to Death is Book 1 of a new series featuring Gwen Armstrong, a young woman living in northern England and coping, not only with the changing world of 1928, but with heavy family responsibilities. The Great War had left her father with gas-damaged lungs, unable to work more than a few hours a week as a lowly schoolmaster. Her mother had died in the flu epidemic, and her two younger brothers were still apprentices, leaving her to manage the household and support everyone on the wage from her secretarial job at Seathorne College.

It was all supposed to be so different. Growing up, her father had nurtured her love of history, taught her Latin and Greek, and promised that money would be found to send her to university, to pursue her dream of becoming an archaeologist. That dream had disappeared with the pre-war world that now seemed an impossible mirage.

And then, a miracle. At the College, Professor Emily Temple took Gwen under her wing and promised to help her achieve her abandoned dream. Just as quickly as hope dawned, it was brutally killed along with Emily, struck down in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

In The Pilgrim Road to Death, Gwen is determined to track down the truth about Emily’s demise, even at the risk of her own life.

BOOK 2: WHERE DOES GWEN GO FROM HERE?

The dramatic events in Spain change Gwen’s life forever, in a way she finds exciting but deeply unsettling. A year later finds her in Mesopotamia, working with a famous archaeologist excavating an ancient Sumerian city. In The Mask of the Moon God, Gwen is starting to realize her dream when the discovery of a mysterious treasure leads her straight into intrigue and danger. The next burial they dig up is not 3,000 years old, but horribly recent – the body of her friend. Even worse, evidence emerges that makes Gwen the prime suspect.

BOOK 3: GWEN RETURNS TO HER ROOTS

History and legend intertwine in The Sinning Sword, when Gwen returns to the North of England to explore the site of a supposed Arthurian relic near Hadrian’s Wall. Invited for a weekend house party, to the home of ‘the most eccentric man in Britain’, Gwen finds herself in a latter-day version of Camelot, where chivalry and courtly love are no match for murder.