A pair of gripping mystery novellas dealing with crime and punishment from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. In The Assize of the Dying, a defendant in an English courtroom is sentenced to death for a terrible slaying he insists he did not commit. Rising to his feet, Louis Stevenson places a medieval curse on the prosecutor, the judge, the jury foreman, and the actual killer—the four men responsible for his fate. Profoundly shaken by the condemned prisoner’s words, a young couple looking on believes Stevenson’s declaration of innocence. And their determination to uncover the truth only intensifies when two more deaths follow in quick succession. In Aunt Helen, the seemingly civilized residents of a stately English country house keep secrets about love, marriage, adulthood, and desire hidden behind closed doors—until the “perfect murder” threatens to expose them. Two chilling tales of murder and revenge in one volume from the Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author of the Brother Cadfael historical mysteries, who “writes with undiminished skill” (The Times, London).