Becker, Mally Revolutionary War Mystery. #bk. 1

Read by Nathaniel Priestley, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Ruairi Conaghan

Recently widowed, Rebecca Parcell is too busy struggling to maintain her farm in Morristown to give a fig who wins the War for Independence. But rumors are spreading in the winter of 1780 that she's a Loyalist sympathizer who betrayed her husband to the British-quite a tidy way to end her disastrous marriage, the village gossips whisper. Everyone knows that her husband was a Patriot, a hero who died aboard a British prison ship moored in New York Harbor. But "everyone" is wrong. Parcell was a British spy, and General Washington-who spent that winter in Morristown-can prove it. He swears he'll safeguard Becca's farm if she unravels her husband's secrets. With a mob ready to exile her or worse, it's an offer she can't refuse. Escaped British prisoner of war Daniel Alloway was the last person to see Becca's husband alive, and Washington throws this unlikely couple together on an espionage mission to British-occupied New York City. Moving from glittering balls to an underworld of brothels and prisons, Becca and Daniel uncover a plot that threatens the new country's future. But will they move quickly enough to warn General Washington? And can Becca, who's lost almost everyone she loves, fight her growing attraction to Daniel, a man who always moves on? Mally Becker was born in Brooklyn and began her professional career in New York City as a publicist and freelance magazine writer, then worked as an attorney for more than 20 years and, later, as an advocate for children in foster care. She and her husband raised their wonderful son in New Jersey where they still live. Mally thought she'd be clearing trails when she volunteered at the Morristown National Historical Park but found herself instead sifting through the Park's archival collection of letters. That's where she found a copy of an indictment for the Revolutionary War-era crime of traveling from New Jersey to New York City without permission or passport. That document became the spark for The Turncoat's Widow, her debut novel. She is a winner of the Leon B. Burstein/MWA-NY Scholarship for Mystery Writing and a member of Sisters in Crime and the Historical Novel Society

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