The Road To Newgate
Genre: Historical Fiction (crime/mystery)
Release Date: 16th July 2018
Publisher: Crooked Cat Books
What price justice?
London 1678.
Titus Oates, an unknown preacher, creates panic with
wild stories of a Catholic uprising against Charles II. The murder of a
prominent Protestant magistrate appears to confirm that the Popish Plot is
real.
Only Nathaniel Thompson, writer and Licenser of the
Presses, instinctively doubts Oates’s revelations. Even his young wife, Anne,
is not so sure. And neither know that their friend William Smith has personal
history with Titus Oates.
When Nathaniel takes a public stand, questioning the
plot and Oates’s integrity, the consequences threaten them all.
EXTRACT
“Mr. Thompson?”
At
my side is a skinny fellow that Henry sometimes employs to deliver our
pamphlets about the coffee shops. His sort often has a nose for news and will
know if an arrest has been made or a scandal is brewing. He knows something
now. I smell it on him, read it in the eager nod of his head. God knows, there’s
gossip aplenty in the city, with talk of a missing magistrate and arrests of
prominent Catholic Lords, so I turn my back on Anne, anxious for news. My
conscience may creak as I listen to the young lad’s tale, but that’s easily
ignored. Easily that is, until the sound of an altercation causes us both to
twist round.
A
woman, tall and sharp-featured, her lips pulled back from her teeth in bare
anger, has her hand on Anne’s arm and is screeching at her. For a moment, I’m
dumbfounded. I step towards them, but not quickly enough. In that split second,
the woman tilts back her head and hurls a plume of spit right into my wife’s
face.
No-one
moves. Then the woman disappears into the crowd and Anne does her best to make
light of it. She wipes her face, shows me her new bag, and insists on
continuing about the fair as if nothing has happened. All she will say is that
the woman was obviously deranged, some Bedlamite; quite a sorry case, in fact.
I squeeze her hand, proud that my young wife can be so composed. And then I put
it out of my mind.
In
my defence, there is little enough time to remember it or question Anne further
in the days that follow. The rumour whispered to me at the fair is the main
news on everyone’s lips by the next morning. A man has been found dead in a
ditch on Primrose Hill. He is identified as the missing magistrate, Sir Edmund
Godfrey.
BUY LINKS
AMAZON UK: https://goo.gl/b2Nmu6
AMAZON US: https://goo.gl/11AJS7
Kate
Braithwaite was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her first novel,
Charlatan, was longlisted for the Mslexia New Novel Award and the Historical
Novel Society Award. Kate lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and three
children.
Twitter:
@kmbraithwaite
Instagram:
katembraithwaite
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