Murder's a pain in the neck! Madame Tussauds, London's extravagant wax museum, reopens in 1928 to much fanfare. The horrific fire of '25, which had destroyed the wax figurines of famous and sometimes infamous characters, was news of the past. Ginger Reed and her good friend Haley Higgins are intrigued and eager to visit the museum which promises new and exciting exhibits. Of particular interest is the one on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Hailed by some as effective literary horror and by others as unnecessarily frightening, the exhibition about the book attracts all kinds. Haley Higgins, with her forensics knowledge, is the first to notice that something is amiss, and that the beautiful figurine with two bloody holes in her neck isn't made of wax at all, but is indeed made of flesh and bone! When a series of women are found dead in the streets of London in a similarly eerie fashion, it's up to Scotland Yard, with Chief Inspector Basil Reed at the helm, to solve the case. Can Ginger and Haley work behind the scenes to bring this repeat killer to a stop, before one of them becomes the next victim with a deadly bite? ★★★★★ Researching for the Ginger Gold Mysteries has been so much fun. I hope you sense that as you read. Ginger Gold is smart, savvy, and delightful. The fashions, the dances, the CRIME. The Ginger Gold Mysteries are COZY, so no scary, graphic on-stage violence. You'll find these books to be clean reads, with no swearing or sex. I hope you enjoy the Ginger Gold Mystery series! Hop aboard the 1920s! THE GINGER GOLD MYSTERY SERIES Murder on the SS Rosa (Book 1) Murder at Hartigan House (Book 2) Murder at Bray Manor (Book 3) Murder at Feathers & Flair (Book 4) Murder at the Mortuary (Book 5) Murder at Kensington Gardens (Book 6) Murder at st. George's Church (Book 7) The Wedding of Ginger & Basil (Book 7.5) Murder Aboard the Flying Scotsman (Book 8) Murder at the Boat Club (Book 9) Murder on Eaton Square (Book 10) Murder by Plum Pudding (Book 11) Murder on Fleet Street (Book 12) Murder at Brighton Beach (Book 13) Murder at Hyde Park (Book 14) Murder at Royal Albert Hall (Book 15) Murder in Belgravia (Book 16) Murder on Mallowan Court (Book 17) Murder at the Savoy (Book 18) Murder at the Circus (Book 19) Murder at the Boxing Club (Book 20) Murder in France (Book 21) Murder at Yuletide (Book 22) Murder at Madame Tussaud's Murder at St. Paul's Cathedral

London, 1896. Madame Tussauds opens to find one of its nightwatchmen decapitated and his colleague nowhere to be found. To the police, the case seems simple: one killed the other and fled, but workers at the museum aren't convinced. Although forbidden contact by his superior officer, Scotland Yard detective John Feather secretly enlists 'The Museum Detectives' Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton to aid the police investigation. When the body of the missing nightwatchman is discovered encased within a wax figure, the case suddenly becomes more complex. With questions over rival museums, the dead men's pasts and a series of bank raids plaguing the city, Wilson and Fenton face their most intriguing and dangerous case yet.

1895. When the newly dubbed 'Museum Detectives' are asked to investigate deliberate damage to a dinosaur skeleton at the Natural History Museum, there is evidence that the fossil-hunting mania of the notorious Bone Wars in America may have reached their shores. But for Daniel Wilson, famed for his involvement in the Jack the Ripper case, and renowned archaeologist Abigail Fenton, events soon take a sinister turn. A museum attendant is found dead in an anteroom by none other than the infamous theatre manager Bram Stoker, who it seems may have had a personal connection with the deceased. Facing pressure both from an overseas business and local celebrity, Wilson and Fenton must rely on their talents and instincts to solve their most puzzling case yet.

In 1789, with the starving French people on the brink of revolution, orphaned Celie Rosseau, an amazing artist and a very clever thief, runs wild with her protector, Algernon, trying to join the idealistic freedom fighters of Paris. But when she is caught stealing from none other than the king's brother and the lady from the waxworks, Celie must use her drawing talent to buy her own freedom or die for her crimes. Forced to work for Madame Tussaud inside the opulent walls that surround Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Celie is shocked to find that the very people she imagined to be monsters actually treat her with kindness. But the thunder of revolution still rolls outside the gates, and Celie is torn between the cause of the poor and the safety of the rich. When the moment of truth arrives, will she turn on Madame Tussaud or betray the boy she loves? From the hidden garrets of the starving poor to the jeweled halls of Versailles, Madame Tussaud's Apprentice is a sweeping story of danger, intrigue, and young love, set against one of the most dramatic moments in history.

1895. A senior executive at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is found in his office with a bullet hole between his eyes, a pistol discarded close by. The death has officially been ruled as suicide by local police, but with an apparent lack of motive for such action, the museum's administrator, Gladstone Marriott, suspects foul play. With his cast-iron reputation for shrewdness, formed during his time investigating the case of Jack the Ripper alongside Inspector Abberline, private enquiry agent Daniel Wilson is a natural choice to discreetly explore the situation, ably assisted by his partner, archaeologist-cum-detective Abigail Fenton. Yet their enquiries are hindered from the start by an interfering lone agent from Special Branch, ever secretive and intimidating in his methods. With rumours of political ructions from South Africa, mislaid artefacts and a lost Shakespeare play, Wilson and Fenton soon find themselves tangled in bureaucracy. Making unlikely alliances, the pair face players who live by a different set of rules and will need their intellect and ingenuity to reveal the secrets of the aristocracy.

This is a fascinating book and its fascination consists in two things attaching to its subject: first that the famous collection of modelled portraits which has become a sort of national institution in England under the name of “Madame Tussaud’s” has its roots in the greatest period of modern history, the French Revolution; second, in that the complete and growing record has passed through so many changes and has yet survived. Even though the famous collection had dealt with nothing more than the main figures of the Revolution and of the great wars that followed it, it would have been a possession of permanent and lasting historical value. I am not sure that if it had so remained, stopped short at the effigies of those now long dead, it would not now receive a greater respect. It might well in that case have become something recognised as a national possession, protected and preserved by the national government. For the prolongation of the record right on into our own time, while it very greatly increases the real value of the collection as a piece of historical evidence, yet deprives it of that illusion which men cannot avoid where history is concerned: the illusion that things thoroughly passed are in some way greater and of more consequence than contemporary things. This continuity of the great collection—so long as it is maintained with judgment in selection and without too much yielding to momentary fame is none the less a thing to be very thankful for. Already those of us who, like the present writer, are well on into middle age, can judge how the younger generation is beginning to regard as historical these simulacra, which, when they were first modelled, seemed in our own youth insignificant because they were contemporary. To our children (who are now grown and are young men and women), Disraeli, Gladstone, Bismarck—all the group that were old but living men in the eighties (Disraeli died at the beginning of them, Bismarck long after their close)—are what to us were Louis-Philippe, Garibaldi, Palmerston, and the process properly continued will be invaluable. We have already more than 130 years of record. There is no reason why it should not extend to the two centuries.