The Sixth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew. Cambridge 1353. It is a damp, gloomy November day, and the body by the River Cam is just the beginning of the intrigue in store for Michaelhouse. Physician Matthew Bartholomew recognises the deceased as the book-bearer of the Michaelhouse Fellow John Runham. The death looks like suicide – and Runham’s servant was well known for his black moods – but before Bartholomew can reach a definite conclusion, a second tragic incident occurs. Meanwhile, at Michaelhouse, the Master announces his retirement. Everyone is astonished and dismayed – everyone, that is, except the ruthless Runham. Once he has contrived to have himself elected to the post, he moves to make his mark on the College: sacking the choir, building a courtyard the College cannot afford, and demanding that Bartholomew choose between his teaching and his medical work. But just as Bartholomew is agonising over such an impossible decision, the new Master is discovered dead …

The Seventh Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew. Cambridge, March 1354 , and the cause of murder is once more on the minds of physician Matthew Bartholomew and his colleague Brother Michael. It is a time of division and denomination at the great University. The Carmelites and the Dominicans are at theological loggerheads, so much so that the more fanatical members are willing to swap rational judgement for a deadlier form of debate. And no sooner is Carmelite friar Faricius found stabbed than a Junior Proctor is found hanging from the walls of the Dominican Friary. What was Faricius doing out when he had not been given permission to wander? How are the nuns at the nearby convent of St Radegund involved? And who is brokering trouble between Cambridge and its rival University at Oxford? The longer their enquiries go on, the more Bartholomew and Michael realise that the murders are less to do with high-minded academic principles, and more to do with far baser instincts.

Matthew Bartholomew, doctor of medicine and fellow of Michaelhouse, Cambridge, is travelling with a party from the college to accept the gift of the living of a parish in Suffolk. One of his companions, Unwin, an unworldly scholar, is to be installed as priest. Their journey is not without incident - they are chased by footpads, pass through an eery village abandoned after the recent plague and find a man barely alive on a gibbet - so they reach their destination with some relief. But their thoughts of recovering while enjoying the local Pentecostal Fair are soon curtailed, as they are immediately thrust into the machinations of local boundary disputes between three landowners. Then all such squabbles seem mere trivia when Unwin is murdered in the very church which was to have been his home. While trying to investigate a possible motive for his killing, Bartholomew discovers that this is not the first unnatural death in the village - deaths which everyone has put down to the curse of the plague dead village. He is of too practical a mind to believe the superstitions, but is he wily enough to work out the real motive behind the murders and who will gain from them?

The winter of 1353 brings new confusion to the people of Cambridge. Torrential rains spread fever to the poor, and make travelling hazardous along the town’s outlaw-infested roads. Then three members of the University die by drinking poisoned wine. Is this an attack by one College against another, or a new period of hostility between town and gown? The flasks of poisoned wine are circulating through both knowing and innocent hands. Matthew Bartholomew would rather not get involved in the investigation, but when his own life is threatened, he realises he has become a target for people who have more than robbery on their minds. As he is drawn deeper in to his enquiries, he stumbles upon criminal activities that not only implicate his relatives, friends and colleagues, but also mix commercial greed and academic intrigue into a deadly brew of evil intent …

In 1325, the terrible legacy of the Black Death still hangs over Cambridge. Fears of a future outbreak drive people to seek protection in the power of holy relics, while the University is once more the scene for violent clashes between students and townsfolk. Matthew Bartholomew, Michaelhouse teacher and public physician, has a professional interest in order returning to the streets – his enormous practice of paupers means he does not have time to deal with a lot of injuries resulting from riots and mayhem. With rumours spreading about the discovery of a skeleton reputed to belong to a local martyr, a skeleton that even the physician confirms as human, a young student’s brutal murder plunges the town into chaos, and Bartholomew must ask himself if the two corpses – and the rioting – are linked to something deeper than local enmities. When suspicion falls on a respected University Principal and his scholars, Bartholomew’s investigation becomes the source of conflict within the academic community. And there are personal rivalries and painful memories of his own to be exhumed before a chilling conspiracy can emerge, a nightmare of murder and revenge so terrifying that the whole town could be tainted with complicity.

Another excellent historical adventure from Susanna Gregory, featuring 17th-century spy Thomas ChalonerLondon in the spring of 1665 is a city full of fear. There is plague in the streets of St. Giles, the Dutch fleet is preparing to invade, and a banking crisis threatens to leave Charles II's government with no means of paying for the nation's defense. Amid the tension, Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate the murder of Dick Wheler, one of the few goldsmith-bankers to have survived the losses that have driven others to bankruptcy—or worse. At the same time, a French spy staggers across the city, carrying the plague from one parish to another. Chaloner's foray into the world of the financiers who live in and around Cheapside quickly convinces him that they are just as great a threat as the Dutch, but their power and greed thwarts him at every turn. Meanwhile, the plague continues to spread across the city, and the body count from the disease and from the fever of avarice starts to rise alarmingly.