Lynes & Mathey

2024 Midwest Book Awards Finalist!Mystery, Murder and Magic…When an old schoolmate with a well-earned reputation for bullying hires metaphysician Ned Mathey to investigate his father's murder, Ned turns to his friend and sometime lover, detective Julian Lynes, for help. Together, they must navigate a maze of deceit, danger, the pain of their past and a newfound chance to rekindle their relationship in an Edwardian London where magic is woven into the fabric of their daily lives. Can they solve the mystery at the heart of the first murder and the ones that follow to forge a new kind of partnership or will the past and society's disapproval send them off on separate paths?Winner of a Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ SF/F/Horror. Melissa Scott is from Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, where she earned her PhD in the Comparative History program. She is the author of more than thirty original science fiction and fantasy novels, most with queer themes and characters, as well as authorized tie-ins for Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Star Wars Rebels. She won Lambda Literary Awards for Trouble and Her Friends, Shadow Man, Point of Dreams (written with her late partner, Lisa A. Barnett), and Death By Silver, with Amy Griswold. She also won Spectrum Awards for Shadow Man, Fairs' Point, Death By Silver, and for the short story "The Rocky Side of the Sky" (Periphery, Lethe Press) as well as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She was also shortlisted for the Otherwise (Tiptree) Award. Her latest short story, "Sirens," appeared in the collection Retellings of the Inland Seas, and her text-based game for Choice of Games, A Player's Heart, came out in 2020. Her most recent solo novel, Water Horse, was published in June 2021. Her next solo novel, The Master of Samar, will be out in 2023. Murder, mystery and magic abound in an Edwardian London where partners in detection and romance, Julian Lynes and Ned Mathey, work together to unravel deadly puzzles.