Mose Haley was an engineer, but in a few short months, he will have his FBI badge . . . and his revenge.

Two weeks ago, Mose was designing highway curves that safely carry minivans loaded with three kids and a dog doing 70 miles per hour. Now he is standing next to hot ammunition casings holding a standard issue Glock 23 handgun with the slide locked back and the barrel smoking. Two weeks ago—before the people he loved died—was a lifetime ago.

The attack on Manhattan, Kansas, dubbed Little 9/11 was the first. Officer Sam McGuire was there when it happened, shaken like everyone else on that day. The day he witnessed the collapse of a two-mile dam. Also, the day Sam saw the blonde in the park. The fit woman, jogging with an AR-15 and a pistol. He has questioned her and questioned her again. He has gone to ground zero and rummaged through the debris. Sam is a good cop, but he cannot piece it all together. He needs help. He needs an engineer.

Mose wants to believe he has the grit for the job, but he is a rookie. He has never had to face rooftop gunfire or defuse a bomb in a playground with sweaty hands and a paperclip. Mose Haley has never been tested . . . until now.

First book in the USA Today bestselling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series.

It’s the summer of 1879, and Annie Fuller, a young San Francisco widow, is in trouble. Annie’s husband squandered her fortune before committing suicide five years earlier, and one of his creditors is now threatening to take the boardinghouse she owns to pay off a debt.

Annie Fuller also possesses a secret. She supplements her income by giving domestic and business advice as Madam Sibyl, one of San Francisco’s most exclusive clairvoyants, and one of Madam Sibyl’s clients, Matthew Voss, has died. The police believe his death was suicide brought upon by bankruptcy, but Annie believes Voss has been murdered and that his assets have been stolen.

Nate Dawson wrestles with a difficult decision. As the Voss family lawyer, he would love to prove that Matthew Voss didn’t leave his grieving family destitute. But that would mean working with Annie Fuller, a woman who alternatively attracts and infuriates him as she shatters every notion he ever had of proper ladylike behavior.

Sparks fly as Anne and Nate pursue the truth about the murder of Matthew Voss in this light-hearted, cozy historical mystery set in the foggy, gas-lit world of Victorian San Francisco.

Maids of Misfortune is the first book in M. Louisa Locke’s USA Today bestselling Victorian San Francisco mystery series, followed by Uneasy Spirits, Bloody Lessons, Deadly Proof, Pilfered Promises, Scholarly Pursuits, and Lethal Remedies. Locke’s shorter works, collected in Victorian San Francisco Stories: Vols 1 and 2, and Victorian San Francisco Novellas, feature beloved minor characters from the series. There are also two boxed sets of the novels, Victorian San Francisco Mysteries: Books 1-4 and Victorian San Francisco Mysteries: Books 5-7.