Sara Sheridan

'Brighton Belle' is the first in a planned series featuring strong female characters and a fascinating look at austerity Britain. 'Brighton Rock' meets 'Charlotte Gray', with a hint of Agatha Christie and Catherine Macpherson's 'Dandy Gilver Murder Mystery' series.

Set during the summer heatwave of 1953, 'England Expects' finds Mirabelle and Vesta investigating the seemingly unrelated murders of a racing journalist and a cleaning woman. Their searches lead them through Brighton Pavilion's crumbling passageways to the quad of a Cambridge college and finally into the shady underworld of Brighton freemasonry. And, while not on the murder trail, Vesta has to make some difficult decisions about her personal life....

Brighton 1956. When Mirabelle's on-off boyfriend, Superintendent Alan McGregor, is taken off a gruesome murder case because the key suspect is an old school friend, Mirabelle steps in to unravel the tangle of poisoned gin, call girls and high stakes gambling that surrounds the death. It isn't long before McGregor's integrity is called into question and Mirabelle finds herself doubting him. So when a wartime hero's body turns up on the Sussex Downs,...

Glasgow, 1846, the second city of the British Empire is expanding rapidly and Ellory McHale, a working class woman receives an unexpected bequest which allows her to leave her job as junior assistant to a famous male photographer in Edinburgh to set up Glasgow's first professional photography studio, in a glass-roofed top floor within sight of the Clyde. There, Ellory crosses paths with wealthy heiress Annis Buchanan, and the two strike up a friendship...

1955. When Mirabelle Bevan is rescued from a fire at her home on the Brighton seafront she's lucky to escape unharmed - but the blaze takes the life of her neighbour, Dougie Beaumont, a dashing and successful racing driver living in the flat above. It soon becomes clear that this was arson, raising questions about the young man's death that Mirabelle can't resist investigating further. With her curiosity piqued and on the trail of a potential killer...

Brighton, 1957: Mirabelle Bevan can't resist a cry for help, be it the little girl at a seaside sanatorium who is getting bullied or the strange behaviour of Uma, the Indian nurse who is looking after her. Intrigued, she soon finds herself drawn into a spider's web of connections between an upmarket brothel, local priest Father Grogan, a man's body washed up on Brighton beach and a missing nursing sister. But very soon it becomes apparent Mirabelle...