After being a professor of history for over 30 years, I am now retired and writing full time. The books in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series are based in part on my dissertation research on women who worked in the Far West at the end of the Nineteenth Century, and they feature Annie Fuller, a young widow who gives domestic and business advice as the clairvoyant, Madam Sibyl. She is aided in her investigations into crime by Nate Dawson, a local lawyer, and the residents in the boarding house she owns.

Maids of Misfortune, the first in the series, finds Annie investigating a murder by going undercover as a domestics servant. In Uneasy Spirits, she is asked to investigate a fraudulent trance medium, and in Bloody Lessons, she is asked to find out who is attacking local public school teachers. The fourth book, Deadly Proof is set in the printing industry in San Francisco, and in the fifth book, Pilfered Promises, Annie and Nate investigate theft and murder in a modern department store.

Book six in this collection, Scholarly Pursuits, takes Laura Dawson and her friends (introduced in Bloody Lessons) across the Bay to Berkeley to attend the university where unexpected skulduggery is afoot. In Lethal Remedies, Annie is tasked with uncovering who is trying to ruin a clinic run by and for women, and in Entangled Threads it is a woolen factory that is the site of her investigations.

Volume One of my collection of short stories about minor characters, Victorian San Francisco Stories, are free to anyone who signs up to my newsletter. (see my website for sign up at http://mlouisalocke.com)

Not content with just writing about the past, under the pen name Louisa Locke, I have now turned to the future with a new science fiction series set in the collaborative world of the Paradisi Chronicles.

As an indie author I absolutely depend on the readers who have read and liked my cozy historical mysteries and spread the word. This second career has turned out to be more fun and rewarding than i ever thought possible. So thanks to all of you!