Judgment of the Grave
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Authors: Sarah Stewart Taylor
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NTHUSIASTIC
P
RAISE FOR
S
ARAH
S
TEWART
T
AYLOR AND
H
ER
S
WEENEY
S
T
. G
EORGE
M
YSTERIES
JUDGMENT OF THE GRAVE
“Engaging…[A] richly textured tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A tale that will keep you reading…A complicated plot with many twists and turns, red herrings awaits the reader…. Talented Sarah Stewart Taylor writes a well-constructed tale with realistic characters set in a well-drawn background.”
“Unlike a number of mystery writers who seem to have been reared on television and forget often that a setting must be described, Taylor gives the reader a real sense of what Concord and its graveyards look like. And enough false leads appear to keep the reader guessing and reading on.”
—Washington Times
“Well-paced and well-plotted, with plenty of twists and revelations…[A] complex, interesting, historically-flavored novel…A nice, tight puzzle.”
MANSIONS OF THE DEAD
“Taylor is the perfect guide, and Sweeney is a marvelous companion for our journey.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Sarah Stewart Taylor has a deft touch with atmosphere, especially if you like graveyard trivia.”
—Charlotte Observer
“Taylor’s is one of those mystery series where readers are educated as well as entertained….
Mansions of the Dead
is agreeably tricked out with red herrings and jarring switches in mood: Just as readers settle in for an academic cozy, the atmosphere changes, and disaster that has the coarse feel of reality intrudes.”
—Washington Post
“Spooky séances, ouija boards, nights spent cavorting in Mount Auburn Cemetery, and mourning jewelry made of human hair take center stage in
Mansions of the Dead
…a story of grief and remembrance, and its pleasures include the explication of the ‘cult of mourning’ that overtook America in the wake of the Civil War, and grief as we experience it today.”
—Boston Sunday Globe
“With three possible love interests for Sweeney and strong secondary characters, this is very compelling reading. The graveyards, antique shops and historical societies of Boston and Newport are artfully sketched, and the invisible social boundaries of both cities are well drawn.”
—Romantic Times
“Sarah Stewart Taylor has written an exciting mystery featuring characters that are so easy to like…. The heroine…is spunky, sweet, and sparkling, and readers will want to read more books featuring this dynamic character.”
—Midwest Book Review
“An intelligent tale, leaving readers begging to know more.”
—Booklist
“This moody, atmospheric novel will appeal to fans of darker cozies.”
—Publishers Weekly
O’ ARTFUL DEATH
“Taylor does a lovely job of setting an atmospheric scene and luring us inside.”
—Marilyn Stasio,
The New York Times Book Review
“[
O’Artful Death
] rings subtle—and enormously satisfying—changes on the venerable tried-and-true.”
—Newsday
“A strikingly atmospheric debut. The writing is crisp and the characters all quite forcefully alive, especially Sweeney.”
—Denver Post
“An elegantly wrought first mystery with layers within layers like carved ivory balls…rich and rewarding reading.”
—Booklist
“A nicely puzzled plot, a closely confined rural setting, remarkable characterizations, and eminently readable prose.”
—Library Journal
“[Taylor] has an eye for the details of rural New England…. Pull up an overstuffed chair and drift away.”
—The Boston Globe
“A compelling mystery about a dark subject. One can hope she’ll bring Sweeney for more sleuthing.”
—Sunday Oklahoman
“An academic cozy set in rural Vermont’s Byzantium, a bygone artists’ colony replete with a Victorian mansion, rumors of murder plots past and present and a surfeit of oddballs marooned there for the winter.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Pithy assessments of the Pre-Raphaelites, Tennyson, and Victorian mores, along with Christmas-card pretty scenes of winter in Vermont.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“I could not put it down…. Sweeney is a very human and appealing protagonist, and Sarah Stewart Taylor has a lovely, lyrical style.
O’ Artful Death
will be one of the year’s best first novels.”
—Deborah Crombie, author of
And Justice There Is None
“Literate and lyrical,
O’ Artful Death
by Sarah Stewart Taylor is a stunning debut novel. Art Historian Sweeney St. George, Taylor’s protagonist, is quirky, appealing, and intelligent.
O’Artful Death
vaults Sarah Stewart Taylor into the select company of Amanda Cross and Jane Langton.”
—Carolyn Hart, author of
Engaged to Die
“Sarah Stewart Taylor’s debut mystery is an absolute delight. Sweeney St. George is the most intelligent, erudite, and sympathetic narrator to grace the academic mystery genre since Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler, and Taylor's complicated and multilayered plot is the perfect vehicle for her.”
—Ayelet Waldman, author of
A Playdate with Death
Mansions of the Dead
O’ Artful Death
AVAILABLE FROM
S
T
. M
ARTIN’S
/M
INOTAUR
P
APERBACKS
of the
GRAVE
S
ARAH
S
TEWART
T
AYLOR
APRIL 19, 1775
John Whiting sat in his father’s workshop, looking up at the night sky through the open door. It was a clear night, the blue-blackness filled with stars, and he looked for the ones his father had taught him to recognize, the pinpricks of light making out patterns in the night as surely as his father’s chisels etched patterns on stone.
His father liked stars, liked carving them on his gravestones, and one of John’s favorite border designs was the one with the little starbursts along the edge. His father used stars in various ways as ornaments, and John remembered when he’d realized that his father found inspiration for his work everywhere around him—the leaves he brought back from his walks in the woods, the summer flowers John’s mother collected from the fields and placed in pots around the house. Even seashells and the very waves of the ocean, which his father remembered from his childhood in Plymouth. All of these things ended up on the grave markers made in the workshop of Josiah Whiting of Concord.
John knew that his father was one of the best stonecutters in the area. He knew this because of the way people talked about his work and because his father was always busy. Lately, it seemed he’d hardly had time to complete one order before another came in. He’d joked to John that people must be dying in greater numbers than usual, for he never seemed to have a moment to spare.
“Once I have you trained, once the sign on the shop reads, ‘Josiah Whiting and Son,’ then we’ll be able to take on even more work,” he’d said only a few days before. Josiah had been training John, but John knew it was only wishful thinking that they’d be able to take on much more work. It was true that there were things he could do in the shop, the fine carving work and some of the lettering, but stonecutting was hard, backbreaking labor, and with his bad leg, there was no way John could be much help. There were days when the pain was so bad that he could barely stand.
He shifted in his father’s chair, feeling the leg talk back to him. He’d learned to handle this kind of discomfort. The best thing was to keep moving, so he lifted himself out of the chair, found the cane his father had carved for him leaning up against the wall, and hobbled out into the night air.
As he passed the stable, he heard Monteroy whinnying nervously in his stall, and the anxiety he’d been feeling ever since the horse had come barreling into the yard that afternoon, still wearing his saddle and saddlebags, the reins trailing and muddy, returned in force.
Where was he? He should be back by now. It must be nearly midnight and his father had been gone since almost this time the night before. The alarm had been raised that the Redcoats were on the march and all of the men from the Minuteman companies were to meet at the tavern to take orders. John had watched his father as he’d dressed by the fire. By all rights, he should have gone too. He was sixteen, more than old enough, but he wasn’t able to fight any more than his six-year-old sister was.
“You take care of things, John. I’m depending on you,” Josiah had said as he’d slipped out into the night. He’d taken John’s hand and held it for a moment, a strange, sentimental gesture, and then he was gone.
They’d heard news of the shooting on the green in Lexington, and then had heard the shots fired at the bridge. John’s brother Daniel had run down through the woods and seen shots being fired. He said he’d even seen a dead Redcoat lying on the ground and the Minutemen chasing the regulars out of town, shooting at them from behind trees and stone walls. But he hadn’t seen Josiah, he said.
John tried to calm himself. His father was an excellent marksman, one of the best in Concord, and he was surely with John Baker, his closest friend, whom John himself had been named for. Nothing bad could happen to Josiah if John Baker was there. But then, where was he?
John heard a rustle in the trees and he hobbled out onto the path. “Father?” he called into the darkness. There was only silence and then a short yip as Jack, the family’s spaniel, came hurrying up, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling.
Beyond him, there was only the black and empty night.
