June 1900

“Are you still going to ride in the park when you’re a Duchess?”

“The Duke’s too smart to try and stop me!” I assured my friend Hetty MacNaughten, as we hopped off our velocipedes after a summer-morning spin in Washington Square Park. We both have a great deal on our schedules at the moment, but there was no way either of us would let a dry June day go to waste.

“Good thing.” Hetty took off her straw hat, and some of her red hair fell out of its knot. “I need to clean up before I go to the news office. I’m hoping to pitch a story on woman suffrage in the Western states, so I’d better look serious.”

“You’ll do fine. That’s definitely an ‘Important and Interesting’ story for women,” I assured her. Since Hetty returned from her spring reporting stunt of driving cross-country in a motor car, her editor had moved her from hats to what he called “women’s news.”

Patronizing of course, but still a major move forward.

“My day’s surely better than yours. Yet another dress fitting?”

“With a corset.” I sighed. “Ugh. I swore I’d never-”

“You’re doing a lot of things you swore you’d never do lately.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” I bid Hetty a fond farewell and started for my townhouse, a few blocks away.

No question my life had taken unexpected turns.

Starting with my impending wedding. About two weeks from now, I was set to marry my beloved, Gil – known to the world as Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith – after a courtship marred, or perhaps driven, by any number of misadventures. After we’d solved our third murder, and I saved him from becoming the next victim, we reached terms on a marriage contract that enables me to keep my career and property – no small thing, even in the supposedly enlightened twentieth century.

Before the wedding, however, came another unexpected development: my Metropolitan Opera debut. Until now, I’d had a very happy life with tours and New York homestands as the name artist in the Ella Shane Opera Company, singing the trouser – male soprano — roles for which I’m known. The Met had always seemed too precious and pretentious, but now, their demands and limitations seemed a fair trade for the money and settled family time.

So here I was, a poor Irish-Jewish girl from the Lower East Side accomplishing every romantic heroine’s dream of marrying a Wicked Duke. Not that my unpretentious Northern England man is especially wicked or ducal. Trained as a barrister before epidemics and Imperial skirmishes cleared his way to the title, he’s no one’s mental picture of a Duke. Though he’s quite easy on the eyes.

All the wedding nonsense could wait. Right now, I had to get to that fitting, and finish final preparations for my debut concert at the Met. I had a bad feeling about it. My Irish Aunt Ellen would say the Second Sight was trying to tell me something. I don’t believe in the Second Sight, but I absolutely did sense trouble just outside my line of vision.

But the altar with my beloved was there, too, so it couldn’t be all bad…could it?

A Fatal Reception, An Ella Shane Mystery Book #4
Genre: Historical Mystery
Release: April 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Gilded Age trouser diva Ella Shane and her Duke are at long last headed for the altar…but they’ll have to handle a murder, a shipwreck, a questionable Polish prince, and any number of other complications on the way. Continuing the highly-praised series featuring an Irish-Jewish Lower East Side orphan who found fame and fortune as a singer of male soprano roles, the latest installment follows Ella and her surprisingly diverse cast of family and friends through mystery and misadventure…and into the greatest challenge of all for an independent-minded woman and her Victorian swain: matrimony!

About the author
Kathleen Marple Kalb describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes short stories and novels including A Fatal Reception and the Old Stuff series, both from Level Best Books. As Nikki Knight, she writes the Grace the Hit Mom and Vermont Radio mysteries. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and others, and been short-listed for Derringer and Black Orchid Novella Awards. She’s currently the Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and a co-VP of the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

Connect with Kathleen at her website at kathleenmarplekalb.com, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.