Critics have lauded Cordelia Frances Biddle's historical series featuring heiress Martha Beale. The indomitable heroine returns in Without Fear when a decapitated corpse is discovered at Joseph Bonaparte's palatial estate near Philadelphia. A vanished wife, a former actress with an agonizing secret, and a mill worker accused of murder reveal the dark and convoluted connections between wealth and poverty, and the tenuous link between grief and joy. - (Booksurge)

Critics have lauded Cordelia Frances Biddle's historical series featuring heiress Martha Beale. The indomitable heroine returns in Without Fear when a decapitated corpse is discovered at Joseph Bonaparte's palatial estate near Philadelphia. A vanished wife, a former actress with an agonizing secret, and a mill worker accused of murder reveal the dark and convoluted connections between wealth and poverty, and the tenuous link between grief and joy. - (Createspace)

Booklist Reviews

She may be a nineteenth-century Philadelphia heiress, but Martha Beale is no ordinary society lady. In the course of "doing the business of men" (real estate), she discovers a decapitated female corpse on the premises of one of her properties, and her refined manners are no match for the darkness she faces. And this on top of the fact that her latest courtship ended abruptly when her suitor decided he was not good enough for her, at least in society's eyes. With the gumption readers have come to expect from her first two outings, Martha faces her conflict head-on in a sophisticated yet scrappy way: think Annie Oakley meets high society, and you'll have a sense of the attitude Biddle infuses into her leading lady. The setting is unfolded as vividly as the characters, from the "commoners" working the textile mills to the unseemly criminal types to the upper-crust elite—all of them milling about in the progressive City of Brotherly Love. A fine mix of history and mystery. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.