Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery by Sarah Woodbury (# 0.5-12)
Requirements: .ePUB Reader, 8.2 MB
Overview: With two historian parents, Sarah couldn’t help but develop an interest in the past. She went on to get more than enough education herself (in anthropology) and began writing fiction when the stories in her head overflowed and demanded she let them out. Her interest in Wales stems from her own ancestry and the year she lived in England when she fell in love with the country, language, and people. She even convinced her husband to give all four of their children Welsh names. She makes her home in Oregon.
Genre: Fiction > Mystery > Historical Mystery
0.5 The Bard’s Daughter
The Bard’s Daughter is a 22,000 word prequel to the Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mysteries:
As a bard’s daughter, Gwen has spent her life traveling from castle to castle and village to village with her family, following the music. In the winter of 1141, Gwen’s family is contracted to provide the entertainment for the coming-of-age celebration of a lord’s son. But before the celebration can begin, Gwen’s father is found over the body of his friend, with a harp string as the murder weapon and blood on his hands.
With the lord of the castle uninterested in finding the true killer, it is up to Gwen to clear her father’s name before her father’s music is silenced … forever.
1. The Good Knight
Intrigue, suspicion, and rivalry among the royal princes casts a shadow on the court of Owain, king of north Wales…
The year is 1143 and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride’s brother tasks his two best detectives–Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of the court bard–with bringing the killer to justice.
And once blame for the murder falls on Gareth himself, Gwen must continue her search for the truth alone, finding unlikely allies in foreign lands, and ultimately uncovering a conspiracy that will shake the political foundations of Wales.
2. The Uninvited Guest
It is the winter of 1143 and all is not well in the court of Owain, King of north Wales. His future in-laws are untrustworthy, the Norman lords on his eastern border are restless, and among his wedding guests lurks a cold-blooded killer. Gareth and Gwen have marriage plans of their own, but their love will have to wait while the pair race to separate truth from lies, friends from foes, and unravel the mystery before King Owain—and his new bride—fall victim to their uninvited guest.
3. The Fourth Horseman
May 1144. Newly wedded, Gareth and Gwen travel across the border into England on a diplomatic mission with Prince Hywel of Wales. Within moments of their arrival, however, the mission goes awry and a murder case drops (literally) at their feet. Hindered at every turn by a climate of civil war and constantly shifting political alliances, Gareth and Gwen race to solve the murder and expose a plot that threatens not only their lives, but the life of the future King of England himself.
4. The Fallen Princess
Hallowmas 1144. With the harvest festival approaching, Gareth has returned from fighting in the south, hoping for a few months of peace with Gwen before the birth of their first child. But when an innocent foray to the beach turns up the murdered body of Prince Hywel’s long lost cousin, a woman thought to have run away with a Dane five years earlier, it is Gareth and Gwen who are charged with discovering her killer.
The trail has long since gone cold, or so Gareth and Gwen think, until their investigation threatens to expose dangerous truths that everyone else from king to killer would prefer to keep buried.
No secret is safe, and no man, whether lord or peasant, can escape the spirit of Hallowmas in The Fallen Princess, the fourth Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery.
5. The Unlikely Spy
August 1146. Prince Hywel has called all the bards of Wales to him for a music festival to mark the third anniversary of his rule over Ceredigion. He has invited all the lords of Wales too, including his father, his uncle, and his neighbor to the south, King Cadell. But with the highborn also come the low: thieves, spies, and other hangers-on. And when a murderer strikes as the festival starts, Gareth and Gwen are charged with discovering his identity—before the death of a peasant shakes the throne of a king.
6. The Lost Brother
November 1146. War has come to Gwynedd at the hands of Ranulf, Earl of Chester, who seeks to gain a foothold in Wales against the day peace finally comes to England. On the eve of King Owain’s counter-assault on Mold Castle, the body of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Gwen is discovered buried in someone else’s grave. Even in the midst of war, murder must be investigated, and it falls to Gareth and Gwen to bring the guilty to justice.When their investigation uncovers not only another body, but also treason at the highest levels of King Owain’s court, Gareth and Gwen must come to terms with unprecedented treachery—and a villain whose crimes can never be forgiven.
7. The Renegade Merchant
March 1147. Determined to escape the gloom that has descended on Aber, Gareth and Gwen travel to Shrewsbury in an attempt to find answers about Rhun’s death, about the whereabouts and plans of Prince Cadwaladr, and about Gwen’s family ties to England.But when John Fletcher, now Deputy of Sheriff of Shrewsbury, asks Gareth to help him investigate a pool of blood for which he has no body, Gareth can’t refuse. And when the investigation points to a conspiracy involving some of the leading citizens of Shrewsbury, Gareth and Gwen find—as always seems to be the case with Gwynedd’s foremost investigators—that when they go looking for answers, trouble is never far behind.
8. The Unexpected Ally
March 1147. Assassination, espionage, betrayal. King Owain has ridden east to confront King Madog of Powys with the attempt on the life of his son. Rhys, now abbot of St. Kentigern’s monastery, hopes for peace and calls both Madog and Owain to the negotiating table. Peace, however, is the last thing on Madog’s mind. Recalcitrant, righteous, and angry, he sees King Owain’s recent weakness as his opportunity and knows that Owain’s own barons are circling like wolves, waiting for the chance to overthrow him.With the throne of Gwynedd in the balance, Abbot Rhys is desperate to broker a deal. And when the body of a royal spy is found within hours of King Owain’s arrival at St. Asaph’s, it is up to Gareth and Gwen to find the killer before the wrong man is hanged—and a country lost.
9. The Worthy Soldier
May 1147. Gareth and Gwen have traveled to Deheubarth in the retinue of Prince Hywel. The Prince of Gwynedd has temporarily allied himself with King Cadell and his Norman relations in order to finally evict the hated Flemings from south Wales. But while the battle goes well, the celebratory feast afterwards does not, leaving Gareth and Gwen among the few left standing. And it is to them, as always, that the investigation falls and on whom peace in Wales may well depend.
10. The Favored Son
November 1147. Gareth and Gwen have again been called to a castle belonging to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, this time by Prince Henry, who insists his uncle was murdered. Allying with Normans doesn’t come easily to Gareth and Gwen, but initial doubts are swept aside as more losses come to light. Because Robert’s death has upended the balance of power in England, friends and foes alike have a vested interest in keeping the truth from coming out, and it is up to Gareth and Gwen to stop the killer before he claims another victim—and maybe a country.
11. The Viking Prince
May 1148. All Dublin is shocked by the murder of a prominent merchant, but only Prince Godfrid knows that the dead man was also a co-conspirator in his brother’s plan to take the throne of Dublin. With death stalking his every move, Godfrid must call upon new friends and old to find the killer – and with their help uncover a conspiracy stretching beyond Dublin’s walls to every kingdom in Ireland.
A note about Godfrid the Dane: Godfrid makes his first appearance in the Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mysteries in the first book, The Good Knight. He comes to Anglesey at the behest of Prince Cadwaladr but quickly realizes that the deal he’s made is not quite what he thought, and Cadwaladr is not worthy of his allegiance. He takes it upon himself to keep Gwen safe and gives her up to Gareth when he comes to Ireland in search of her.
He and Gareth grow to respect each other, and Godfrid returns to Gwynedd in The Fallen Princess, on a quest to find the Book of Kells, which has been stolen, and again in The Lost Brother, in search of allies in his conflict with Ottar of Dublin. In both instances, he ends up aiding Gareth and Gwen in their investigations.
It is the dispute with Ottar that, in the late 1140s, drives Godfrid and his brother, Brodar. They seek to overthrow Ottar, whom they believe usurped their father’s, and now Brodar’s, throne.
With the approach of the summer solstice and the coming thing, the great meeting of the Danes in Dublin, Godfrid is faced with a mystery of his own, which he must solve if his brother’s victory is ever to come to pass….
The Viking Prince is his story.
12. The Irish Bride
August 1148. The wedding of Godfrid and Cait promises to be the event of the year, and even Gwen has made the journey across the Irish Sea to celebrate. Weddings can be moments around which tensions and resentments pivot, however, so when a monk turns up dead within moments of Gareth and Gwen’s arrival in Ireland, the pair put on their sleuthing hats and get to work, racing to solve the mystery before it ruins Godfrid’s big day.
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