A Mystery Series Set in Geoffrey Chaucer’s England
Hoosier author Ellen Foster is writing a new historical mystery series. The first novel in the series is Effigy of the Cloven Hoof that provides an overview of the life of its leading character and sleuth, Lady Apollonia of Aust, from her childhood years after 1347 through her fifty-third year in 1400. Its images of English medieval people share with her readers some of the realities of chivalry, the role of women, and the class bound hopes of common folk.
The second novel of this West Country trilogy is Plague of a Green Man, set in Exeter, Devon, twenty years earlier. The year is 1380 and Lady Apollonia is living with her affinity and three younger sons in Exeter House at the end of summer while her husband is away in London. The images of English medieval people here shift to the emerging towns. In Exeter, the lady encounters a growing merchant class who struggles against gang culture organized by the local nobility.
The third novel in the Lady Apollonia Series is entitled Memento Mori and set in Gloucester in 1392. The Lady is living in the home of her third husband a wealthy merchant. She is forced to cope with death within her own family as well as serious threats to the people of her household. She must protect members of her affinity from a vicious gang leader of Gloucester who is obviously enabled to avoid the law because of powerful protection.
The fourth novel in the series is entitled Templar’s Prophecy. Its Prologue opens in the year 1350 in the Christian Kingdom of Makuria of ancient Nubia. We learn of an extraordinary friendship between an English pilgrim to Banganarti and a surviving English Knight Templar. The scene changes to Cirencester, England, in 1395 where the grandchildren of the pilgrim and Knight Templar meet. The tension between the large Augustinian abbey and the town provides the dramatic conflict leading to murder.
The author has turned to writers of the period, chiefly Geoffrey Chaucer and Mother Julian of Norwich, to transport her readers into the presence of good and evil people recognizable to the communities of the high Middle Ages. The characters speak to her readers in voices of the period, not Chaucer’s English, but the language of courtesy within one’s household, the growing middle class of the towns and the powerful, medieval Christian Church.
In the United States, paperback versions of Lady Apollonia books may be ordered online from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Ebooks may be ordered for the Kindle, Nook, Apple devices or Kobo ereaders. Paperbacks may also be ordered online from Amazon sites in Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Submit comments or questions to ellen-foster@hotmail.com .