Cocktails & Chloroform/Schemes & Scandals

Contains Two Novellas

Cocktails & Chloroform

For modern-day detective Mallory Atkinson, being trapped in the body of a Victorian housemaid means overcoming endless obstacles. Her current challenge is winning over the suspicious young parlormaid, Alice. Mallory’s plan starts with teaching the girl to make Molotov cocktails, which is a perfectly valid science experiment and not at all a desperate ploy to gain Alice’s attention. Before the lesson can begin, though, Alice receives a letter that has her slipping off in the night. Concerned for her safety—and naturally curious—Mallory follows.

Mallory finds Alice at what seems like a simple dance hall, watching young men and women flirting and whirling in pretty dresses and dapper suit-coats. But nothing here is what is seems, and what starts as a simple surveillance exercise turns into a full-scale spy mission with Mallory’s boss, Dr. Duncan Gray, at her side. Before the evening is done, those Molotov cocktails are probably going to come in handy.

Schemes & Scandals

It’s Mallory Atkinson’s first Christmas in Scotland, but as the twenty-first-century detective learns, Christmas really isn’t a thing in Victorian Scotland. It’s all about Hogmanay.

Her boss, Dr. Duncan Gray, treats her to an early gift of tickets to the event of the season: a Charles Dickens reading. There, they bump into Lady Inglis—the lovely widow who has sent Gray sexy letters trying to entice him back to her bed.

Lady Inglis introduces Mallory to Dickens, but in return she wants their help. She’s being blackmailed. Someone stole letters she wrote to another lover and threatens to publish them.

Mallory isn’t sure what to make of Lady Inglis, but no woman deserves that, so she insists on taking the case with or without Gray’s help. Growing tension between them soon tells Mallory that Gray is hiding a secret of his own. She has until Hogmanay to uncover the blackmailer…and, hopefully, to put things right with Gray so they can enjoy the holiday together.