The Gaslight Mysteries focus on midwife Sarah Brandt, who also is daughter of one of the richest men in the city, and is one of the founding Knickerbocker families in 1890s New York. Her somewhat unconventional life of supporting herself after the death of her late non-society doctor husband has Brandt now helping women in childbirth and occasionally helping Police Sgt. Frank Malloy solve crimes she may hear about or come across in her work. While fiction, the books do focus on realistic events of the time period.
It's a fascinating series, with each book (27 in the series) often featuring crimes related to different issues of the period and societal problems that are still relevant today. It's been interesting to read about the suffragettes, to the prejudice against the early Chinese settlers and mixed marriages, to drug abuse (opium/laudanum), other crimes, and more.
It's nice to read a multi-book series and I'm glad I have a ways to go until the end, though it's sad that it will end with book 27, A Murder in Rose Hill, which just came out in April. Unless.... I wonder if she did write another?
I'm just sorry I didn't email her to say how much I've enjoyed these books. A lesson: contact that author you love reading. I know I appreciate when someone lets me know they like something I've written.
