Nell Bray Books In Order

Publication Order of Nell Bray Books

Nell Bray series by Gillian Linscott
Author Gillian Linscott writes the “Nell Bray” series of historical mystery novels. The series began publication in the year 1991, when “Sister Beneath the Sheet” was released. There are eleven books in the series, with the final one being released in the year 2003, when “Blood on the Wood” was released.

The series stars Nell Bray, a suffragette and amateur sleuth, that lives in England. The series is set between 1910 and sometime after the First World War.

In 2000, “Absent Friends” (the eighth novel of the series) won the Herodotus Award for the Best International Historical Mystery Novel.

“An Easy Day for a Lady” is the fourth novel in the “Nell Bray” series and was released in the year 1994. The year is 1910 and the energetic and nosy Nell Bray, a British suffragette and part-time sleuth is vacationing at the resort town in the French Alps called Camonix. Nell’s climbing up a mountain slope when the corpse of Arthur Mordiford is freed out of the ice close by thirty years after he and his guide were lost to some avalanche.

Showing up to claim the body are Gregory (the victim’s wealthy brother and a member of the original climbing party) and brought his daughter, son, and nephew along. He hires Nell to interpret and cut through the red tape. They stay with Marie, the guide’s widow, and Sylvie, her daughter.

A diary is found on Arthur’s corpse and it raises some questions about Sylvie’s parentage and some tensions abound. It reaches a climax once Gregory, who’s leading a family pilgrimage to where the body was found, gets poisoned. Marie is the one arrested for his murder. Nell joins forces with Arthur’s ex-fiancee, for many years a contented recluse in the area, so that they can find out the truth about the deaths of the brothers, both past and present.

“Crown Witness” is the fifth novel in the “Nell Bray” series and was released in the year 1995. Detective heroine Nell Bray finds herself once more in the middle of a mystery while she and fellow suffragettes organize their procession. The movement’s decided to take full advantage of the cheery atmosphere that surrounds George V’s coronation to promote their cause with a peaceful five mile long march that culminates in a rally at the Royal Albert Hall.

Everything goes well, at first. Until Nell spots one strange float at the taller end of the procession. While she and Simon Frater, her hapless buddy move into look closer, there’s a fire. This causes chaos before a shot is heard. Simon, once the crowd clears, is left holding the gun and examining the victim’s body while the real killers escape.

“Dance On Blood” is the seventh novel in the “Nell Bray” series and was released in the year 1998. Gillian Lincott uses a real event which she knows about through some of her detailed knowledge about the period, the attempted bombing of Lloyd George’s home, to launch Nell into another adventure.

Trying to keep her friends in the suffragette movement safe from inquiries from the cops, she agrees to help expose this blackmailer. Somebody, maybe the manager of some fashionable dancer, has attained some indiscreet correspondence between Asquith and his mistress.

One visit by the dancer to perform “Salome” to a private audience appears to offer up a chance to reclaim the letters. Before anybody can act, the principal artist gets murdered. Nell ends up surrounded by the people she hates the most. Misogynist businessmen, politicians, and the cops.

“Absent Friends” is the eighth novel in the “Nell Bray” series and was released in the year 1999. The First World War has ended, despite a victory England is struggling to come to grips with its aftermath and society’s never going to be the same. Another battle that’s been won is by the suffragettes, women don’t just have the vote but can also stand for Parliament. Nell Bray, flushed with success of their campaign, now searches for somebody or a party to support her for election.

Out of the blue, she is approached by the widow of a recently dead Conservative MP whose husband was killed by some firework. Although this widow is certain that he was murdered by a political opponent. When she offers to cover Nell’s election costs in exchange for her looking deeper into his death, she is worried of taking the woman’s money for political gain at first, however when she starts to look closer at the circumstances of the former MP’s death she is sure it wasn’t quite an accident.

In between pamphlet printing and hustlings, Nell finds more likely suspects than the guy’s erstwhile political foe. This includes somebody that’s trying to undermine Nell’s own campaign. While the votes are being counted, she reveals who the real killer is.

“Dead Man Riding” is the tenth novel in the “Nell Bray” series and was released in the year 2002. During the last summer of Queen Victoria’s reign it was considered unproper for a group of unmarried women to travel with members of the opposite sex. However Nell cannot comprehend why she and a mixed group of her student buddies shouldn’t stay with one of their uncles, and they choose to risk their colleagues’ wrath.

Their intention is to discuss literature and philosophy and to walk on the fells of the Lake District. But when they show up they find that Alan’s uncle, the ‘old man’, who spoke out against the Boer War, has been ostracized by the village and is suspected to have murdered the son of the local magistrate. And this is despite no body being found.

Nell’s curiosity is piqued by this story, and the old man’s unconventional household, Nell determines to figure what is truth from the myth. First of all, love gets in the way, and then the old man is found dead. First it appears that he picked an outstanding way to kill himself to avoid ill health and scandal. However Nell then pieces together that he couldn’t have killed himself in this method without having help. She suspects that a member of their group is a murderer.