Over six years ago, I put out a collection of the four short stories I had written in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, and since then, despite the fact that I give away this first volume of stories to anyone who signs up for my newsletter, I’ve sold over 4000 copies of the collection. At the time of publication, I wrote this post about why I enjoyed writing short stories. If anything, the reasons I listed are even more true now, when I have put out a second volume of short stories.

The stories in this second collection come between the events in my last two full-length mysteries, Scholarly Pursuits and Lethal Remedies. As with my other short stories and novellas, they feature secondary characters from the series. The first story, Beatrice Bests the Burglars, finds Mrs. O’Rourke, the O’Farrell Street boarding house cook, home alone and in danger. In Dandy’s Discovery, something odd is happening at the boarding house, but Dandy, the Boston Terrier, discovers the culprit and all is well. In Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery, a poor widow’s determination to investigate the strange behavior of her neighbors has unexpected consequences. In the fourth short story, Tilly Tracks a Thief, it’s Christmas, and the young Irish boarding house servant decides to find out who’s stealing from houses in the neighborhood before the thefts ruin the holidays for everyone.

The collection also includes a Historical Tidbits essay that discusses some of the key historical research I did for each story. The ebook edition, at $3.99, is half the cost of buying all four stories separately, but it is also in print at $7.99 and in audiobook form (ranging from $5.49 to $6.99).

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Hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did writing them.

M. Louisa Locke, January 25, 2021