The Ash in the Azure: A Sister Ysenda Medieval Monastery Mystery
A murdered estate agent. A planted knife. A psalter that has learned to lie.
Autumn, 1148. As civil war frays the English borderlands, Sister Ysenda finds order in pigments, parchment, and the measured hours of Saint thelthryth's Abbey. But an unfinished psalter carries marks no ornament should contain-and the wounded knight seeking sanctuary at the abbey gate bears a cipher tied to her father's disgraced name.
When an estate agent dies in a charcoal-warmed drying loft, suspicion falls neatly upon the stranger whose knife lies beside the body. Too neatly.
Ysenda sees another story in the ash beneath the door, the azure-stained cord at the shutter, and a gathering of vellum altered by a hand skilled enough to imitate obedience. To expose the killer, she must outmaneuver a castellan eager for swift justice, protect a man who refuses to reveal his whole past, and read the secrets hidden inside a book meant to sanctify a lie.
But if the dead man discovered who had been stealing from the valley's poorest tenants, why does the trail lead back to the accusation that destroyed Ysenda's father?
The Ash in the Azure is Book One in The Vellum at Vespers, an atmospheric medieval monastery mystery series featuring Sister Ysenda, a Benedictine illuminator who reads the truth in manuscripts, pigments, and the lies powerful men leave behind.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
