“Madness can be seen as an intuitive probing into true reality.”–R. D. Laing Women were, among others, misdiagnosed as insane by alienists in the 1800s. My plot will involve a female child who has been institutionalized in 1887, but the aunt of this child comes to Clara Foltz to say she believes the child was admitted to the Stockton State Insane Asylum (the first such institution in California) because she knew about a murder that was committed on her wealthy parent’s estate. Clara solicits the help of Elizabeth Packard, the crusading (real) activist who was committed in the 1860s by her husband. It took Mrs. Packard three years to earn her freedom. Together with Ah Toy, they contrive a way to go undercover to gain admittance into the Women’s Building at Stockton to find the child and determine what happened to have her institutionalized. Children were regularly institutionalized, as were the elderly and the feeble-minded. Five of these characters will be readers who won a raffle held by the author. They will be suspect asylum patients inside the Stockton State Insane Asylum, the first public mental hospital in California. The author will be working with each reader, using their photos, descriptions and “personal idiosyncrasies” to craft the characters used in his mystery. BookLife Prize, 2018: ​​"A thrilling adventure, perfect for whodunit fans and historical fiction buffs." Kirkus Review: "An entertaining mix of fact, fiction, feminism, and the occult."

Eadweard Muybridge pioneered the field of the movie picture--it's because of him that we have movies today. He also got away with murder ‒ literally. In 1874, he shot and killed his wife's lover and got away with it for essentially saying the guy had it coming. But murder was only part of Muybridge story. He was brilliant. Creative. And eccentric. And because he got away with murder, we have Hollywood. This book tells his bizarre, yet fascinating, life story—a story that involves scandal, violence, and…flying horses!

The picturesque vineyards of California's Napa Valley, one of the world's premier tourist destinations, disguise a tangled history of lawlessness, depravity and frontier justice. Some crimes were committed over debts, some for retribution and others in the name of love. Famed photographer Eadweard Muybridge killed a man for seducing his wife but was acquitted. Other criminals were not so lucky and met the gallows, like murderer William Roe, the state's final public execution. From the Pomo massacre--the first criminal case heard by the California Supreme Court--to the cold cases that continue to haunt the region, Napa Police Detective Todd Shulman decants the crimes of the Napa Valley, memorializing the victims and honoring the efforts of local law enforcement.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

An 1887 Handmaid Gets Her Revenge in This Superb Historical Legal Thriller and Mystery Abraham Lincoln was shot inside Ford's Theater, Washington D.C. In 1887, the investigation team of attorney-detective Clara Shortridge Foltz visits the same theater, which has now been converted into an Army Medical Museum for tourists. But, the same mysterious "vibes" are circulating among the skulls, surgical instruments and garishly frightening scenes from the Civil War battlefield. Lincoln's ghost, it is rumored, is also wandering about. And below the creaky floors, there is a secret that cannot be revealed until the final act in this unique mystery and political satire. "James Musgrave's The Angel's Trumpet is one of those rare historical mysteries that is both entirely plausible and yet truly original. A richly researched adventure into the complex social web of Gilded Age Washington, featuring deeply-realized and re-imagined luminaries including actress Sarah Bernhardt and President and Mrs. Cleveland, the novel is also surprisingly modern in its sensibilities, a compelling romp into an earlier era's struggle with addiction and vice and secrecy and race relations, and, most of all, hidden sources of power. You will read this book in one sitting--and you will be very glad that you did. A meticulously-plotted gem from a master of the genre." Jacob M. Appel, author of the Dundee International Book Award winner, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up.

When Abortion was Against the Law, Attorney Clara Foltz Confronts the EstablishmentMa In the fifth mystery of the Portia of the Pacific series, Attorney and Detective Clara Shortridge Foltz and her partner, Attorney Laura de Force Gordon, become involved in two trials. One, an administrative case, Clara defends the accused, an abortifacient merchant, who is allegedly the incestuous father of a child by his sixteen-year-old daughter, who dies during an abortion attempt. But since this is 1887, no criminal charges can be made on the father, so the San Francisco police go after the midwife, a Chinese-American who treated the deceased, a half-Navajo girl, with acupuncture. Clara and Laura call in witnesses from the past, including a Medicine Man from the victim’s mother’s tribe in the Arizona Territory, the famous Claflin sisters, suffragists who live in England, and the State Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior. The supernatural curse of the tribe’s Skinwalker witches, in the form of a coyote, which allegedly can run on two legs like a man, and the strange practices of the Navaho Medicine man and his deaf assistant, cause this mystery to evolve into a much bigger conundrum than merely that of abortion. The search for truth will end on the Navaho Nation’s land, under less than ideal circumstances.

This collection of fifty outlaw tales includes well-knowns such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Frank and Jesse James, Belle Starr (and her dad), and Pancho Villa, along with a fair smattering of women, organized crime bosses, smugglers, and of course the usual suspects: highwaymen, bank and train robbers, cattle rustlers, snake-oil salesmen, and horse thieves. Men like Henry Brown and Burt Alvord worked on both sides of the law either at different times of their lives or simultaneously. Clever shyster Soapy Smith and murderer Martin Couk survived by their wits, while the outlaw careers of the dimwitted DeAutremont brothers and bigmouthed Diamondfield Jack were severely limited by their intellect, or lack thereof. Nearly everyone in these pages was motivated by greed, revenge, or a lethal mixture of the two. The most bloodthirsty of the bunch, such as the heartless (and, some might argue, soulless) Annie Cook and trigger-happy Augustine Chacón, surely had evil written into their very DNA.