The Ambitious Stepmother

by Fidelis Morgan (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $5.46

  Next in Fidelis Morgan's hugely entertaining series featuring the irrepressible Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her stupendously bosomed former maid, Alpiew. It is the silly season. News is thin on the ground. Newspapers are proliferating and there are even rumours that a woman is trying to start a daily paper. The Cues are desperate to hook in new readers for The Trumpet. As luck would have it the new wife of an old friend of the Countess wants her to chaperone her beautiful step-daughter, Virginia, to France, and so, to kill two birds with one stone, the Countess proposes that she and Alpiew write their Trumpet column from the Royal Courts. Almost as soon as their feet touch French soil, a recent spate of poisonings at the Courts proves fatal, and the Countess and Alpiew are once again plunged into a murder hunt. All this while they struggle valiantly to protect the young girl's virginity from a string of rampant Frenchmen. Their trail leads through Huguenot plots against the king and Catholic plots against the English, through the intricacies of the new French Cuisine, bigotry, decadence, sexual depravity, grand living and burly men whose hobby is embroidery.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.29

  Next in Fidelis Morgan's hugely entertaining series featuring the irrepressible Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her stupendously bosomed former maid, Alpiew The Countess Ashby de la Zouche would not be every parent's choice of chaperone for a beautiful teenager, and still fewer would entrust her with finding the girl a suitable husband - in France, of all places. The second Mrs Alderman Franklyn-Green, however, is willing to go to any lengths to get rid of her unwanted stepdaughter Virginia. And the promise of 100 guineas and a sojourn in the land of gay balls and all-night gambling is sufficient to secure the Countess's services, even if the girl is a complete shrew. Sadly, the exiled English Court at St Germain is far from the den of iniquity the Countess and her maidservant Alpiew were hoping for. Worse, any hopes of enjoying fine French cuisine are dashed when a fellow guest is poisoned. Once more the Countess and Alpiew are plunged into a dangerous investigation In addition to unravelling plots against three kings and negotiating the culinary eccentricities of the Court of Versailles, our sleuths encounter the Bastille's most mysterious prisoner, and discover - among other depravities - the peculiar employment Lord Whippingham has devised for young women with strong teeth.