Katharine Schellman Books In Order

Publication Order of Lily Adler Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Nightingale Mysteries Books

Publication Order of Cozy Case Files Mystery Sampler Books

Katharine Schellman is a historical mystery author who started her career in stage performance and political consulting. While she only got published recently she has been a storyteller for as long as she can remember.

Her novel “The Body in the Garden” which is a historical Regency mystery set in England was named a Best Book of 2020 by “Suspense Magazine.” The novel spawned several others in the series and Schellman has also written several other series including the Jazz Age New York City based “Last Call at the Nightingale.”

The author went to the Virginia based College of William & Mary from where she got her bachelors degree before moving to the DC area and Philadelphia. She now makes her home and writes her novels for the Virginia mountains.

She was on the list of 16 Women to Watch in 2020 by BookPage. Katharine is a voracious reader of all genres, which she usually does while drinking copious amounts of tea.

Schellman grew up reading mysteries and as a kid read all manner of mysteries. These were books that her mother had held on to from her childhood.
Katharine remembers reading Dorothy Maywood “Bird’s Mystery at Laughing Water,” which is the first book she ever fell in love with. She was also a huge fan of the “Hercule Poirot” and “Miss Marple” stories and would often watch “Masterpiece Theater” alongside her father and mother.
As she grew older, she got into Agatha Christie and this would ultimately lead her to modern crime fiction. As such, historical and traditional mysteries were something that she really loved and spent a lot of time with.

Still, it never occurred to her that she could write her own and she never even thought she could ever write fiction, especially not historical fiction. She usually starts by writing the characters followed by the plot.

For a few years, she had several characters telling stories in her head but was not too sure how to bring them together in the setting she had come up with. Everything clicked when she came up with the idea of a dead body and she began writing.

But writing and reading are two different things and one cannot translate to the other. She spent several drafts learning how to develop and structure a mystery but she found it an interesting and fun challenge.

While Katharine Schellman announced that she wanted to be an author as a six year old child, the path to publication was long and winding. She was fortunate enough to be born to parents who loved reading and they encouraged her to read.

By the time she was fifteen she had written her first novel but thought it terrible. But it was from this and several others that she would get the practice she needed to develop confidence in her abilities. The first manuscript of what would eventually become her debut had potential but she never believed it was good enough.

After several edits and five drafts she started querying publishers and agents. Surprisingly, she found it an encouraging and wonderful experience and within four weeks of sending her first query letter she had an agent. They spent the summer editing and revision and started sending submissions in the fall.
By April, the work was sold and overall the novel took about five years from the first draft to publishing. While it felt like such a long time then, she has now come to acknowledge that it is not so much time at all in the world of traditional publishing.

“The Body in the Garden” is the debut novel by Katharine Schellman set in 1815 London. Lily Adler the lead is a newly widowed woman coming back to a society that does not look kindly to independent women.

Even with no husband, she is determined to make something of her life. She knows how to navigate the luxurious world of the elite in London and attends high society balls.

At a party thrown by Lady Walter, her oldest friend, she expects secrets, gossip and scandal but never a dead body dumped in her friend’s garden. Lily had overhead the man a few moments before he was killed. He was a desperate young man attempting to blackmail her but she is willing to let the local police handle the matter.

But then Lord Walter steps in and offers a bribe to the magistrate to back off and Lily is left confused and stunned. She could be the only person left that cares enough to get to the bottom of the murder mystery.

Working with a West indian heiress full of mystery and a rogue like navy captain, she sets out to investigate if the magistrate could be mixed up in murder and blackmail. The motley crew intends to hide their investigation beneath the many activities of the social season in London.

It does seem that the murdered young man had come across some dark secrets that powerful people had. These are secrets that many would go as far as killing to keep hidden. It is now up to Lily to get to the bottom of the mystery before she can become the next target of the killer.

Katharine Schellman’s “Silence in the Library” continues to follow Lily Adler, a Regency widow who has finally got the hang of things in London. But then her father comes into town unexpectedly and tells her he intends to live with her while recovering from an illness.

He is disapproving of her life and fed up with his hounding, she decides to spend much of her time with the new wife of an old family friend named Lady Wyatt. She barely knows Lady Wyatt but she seems happy alongside Sir Charles, her new husband.

Things get interesting when she one day arrives at her friend’s house to find Charles dead. Initial indications are that he may have tripped and struck his head on a hard surface at night. However Simon Page, the Bow Street constable who comes to investigate thinks there could be foul play in the case.
It is not long before Lily finds some clues that indicate that her husband may have been murdered. Mr. Page was presnt when Lily solved the previous murder mystery and he trusts her instincts into the workings of the upper class world of London.

Working with Captain Jack Hartley, they are soon piecing together several reasons that point to Sir Charles’ family as being culpable in his death. The problem is that anyone that had something to benefit from Sir Charles’ death has an alibi.

But then she is mysteriously asked to speak with one of the dead man’s maids, only to arrive and find the woman murdered.