Bøker av Anne Arrandale

1922: Eugenics has taken hold. A woman of color gives birth to a biracial baby who is a light complexioned blond cherub. She is told the child was stillborn. She and her husband refuse to accept that. Meanwhile, evil is afoot in Baltimore City. Someone is kidnapping little girls. When they are found, they have been raped beaten and sometimes killed. The police feel as if they are running in circles.

A neighborhood grocery has been firebombed and the owner killed. Some woman is going around town selling "insurance" so the same thing doesn't happen to them. Baltimore City was really living up to its name of "Mob Town" in 1921. Will the police be able to stop the St. Louis Woman? And is she the only guilty party?

Lily Barnett, a failure in medical school through no fault of her own, enters the new nursing program at StJoseph's Hospital. At the very beginning of the War to End All Wars, she steps up and joins the British Medical Corps. While the regular army fights against the Germans, the doctors and nurses battle filth, disease, infection and ignorance.

The eleventh month, the eleventh day, the eleventh hour, the eleventh minute. Armistice Day. The end of the War to End All Wars. The toll in lives was tremendous. Spanish flu brought an even greater toll. Men who came through the war unscathed succumbed to the plague. In the end, no one was left untouched. This was escpecially true for the families of Zofia's Cakes and Tarts.

Gabrielle Lane Pennington has a great grift. She's running tent revivals all over the east coast, and preaching the Gospel as it is convenient.. On the side, her roustabouts are snatching young girls from their revivals and shipping them off to brothels run by a notorious madam. The fledgling Bureau of Investigation has a new agent, . Still with only forty-three agents in the country, Dylan Shay was accepted on the force. The BoI's mandate still includes sussing out violations of the Mann Act, as well as investigating acts of espionage. Newly minted Agent Shay is called upon to surveille Pennington's tent revival in a remote corner of rural West Virginia. Meanwhile, Sophia Davies and Gerhardt Weissmann are still taking the wealthy of Baltimore for a small fortune, and the wealthy are still thanking them for the privilege.

April 4, 1917: The United States enters The Great War. Young men are being drafted, while young women volunteer to serve in auxilary positions, freeing "A Man to Fight."Rhys Shay has his draft notice, and is preparing to report any day now. Lucy Goodheart, the young woman his brother rescued from a sex trafficker five years before, has learned the art of telegraphy from her foster father. Now that she is out of school, she joins the U.S. Navy in the only capacity available, as a Yeoman (F). Not only does being a Yeomanette enable her to make use of her telegraphy skills, it lets her feel closer to young Mr. Shay. One of the first thing Lucy does is intercept communications from a German spy ring.

A minister has been murdered along with his paramour, their bodies found in the basement of church's residence. The preacher's wife is missing. Gabrielle Walsh, a former traveling evangelist, knew both the preacher and his wife. A year after the man's demise and the woman's disappearance, a "man" surfaces in a neighboring community operating a "spiritualist camp", where "he" offers to contact dead loved ones. Gabby knows the medium is the missing wife. Gabby agrees to assist the police by going undercover to try and apprehend a murderess.

February, 1920. Prohibition went into effect a month before. Prohibition agents are political hacks, most having bought their positions, and more apt to make more in graft from the bootleggers than from their salaries. At the same time, the Governor of the State of Maryland declared his state would remain as "wet as ever". Police were told to stand down on all matters regarding enforcement of the Volstead Act or the 18th Amendment. Gabby Lane Pennington is no longer running a patent medicine mail order business. Now she has a full blown distillery, making not just Pennington's Tonic, but Maryland Rye Whiskey. They claim the whiskey is being sold only to pharmacies for prescription distribution. No one told the speakeasies who pull up every Sunday to take delivery on cases of the stuff. Newly minted police officer Rhys Shay is sent into the factory undercover. Not to investigate the making of illegal liquor, but the death of Barnaby Fogg, Gabby's former bed partner and partner in crime.

1914: England has entered the War to End All Wars.. Germany seems determined to force the British to split their forces and to fight against the Irish rebels in the north. Mounted Police Officer Tadhg Nagel has become somewhat of a local hero. First he was instrumental in breaking up a peonage operation for the Bureau of Investigation. Then he foiled a major theft at a society fashion show. That wasn't enough for Officer Nagel. He needed to do something to stop the Germans from destroying his homeland. Joining the Britsh Army would most likely mean coming home in a pine box. Nagel didn't know what else to do until he was sent on special assignment to the aerodrome in College Park to provide security for members of the Lafayette Escadrille. Gerhardt Weissmann is still on the loose. After his escape from the police, he's still not exactly honest. Teaching music isn't a bad way to earn a living, but it serves even better as a front for sabotage and espionage.

With Rory O'Fallon history, Sofie Davies O'Fallon is in search of a new partner in crime and protector. She finds Landry Glass. A former calvelry officer, world traveler and ladies man, Landry moves in on Sofie and shows her all the things she's been missing in life, while helping her find bigger and better scores. Meanwhile, the police are trying to catch Glass and Sofie doing something they shouldn't. Tomas Ribiero goes undercover, and finds more than he bargained for.

Baltimore City Police Detective Sergeant Dylan Shay has been seconded to the fledgling Bureau of Investigation Baltimore Field Office. One of their first mandated investigations is the pursuit of people in active violation of the Mann Act. Their hunt takes them through multiple states by rail, as they pursue the kidnappers of three young girls destined to be trafficked to a brothel. Will they catch up with the procurer in time?

Human trafficking is nothing new. In 1909, it was called "white slavery", even though women and children of all races were victims. A pamphlet was published at the time included some case histories, and one of those young, unnamed women was eventually called to testify before the joint houses of Congress, during the hearings on passage of the Mann Act. Why Are You Weeping, Sister? is the story of one of those young women, who I called Gwendolyn Graham. Kidnapped by a "cadet", a procurer for brothels and pimps, she is taken to a brothel. The title is from a poem, written in 1905, for a pamphlet which ultimately led to the passage of the Mann Act in 1910.