Katharine Wright Mystery

December 1903: While Wilbur and Orville Wright's flying machine is quite literally taking off in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, with its historic fifty-seven second flight, their sister Katharine is back home in Dayton, Ohio, running the bicycle shop, teaching Latin, and looking after the family. A Latin teacher and suffragette, Katharine is fiercely independent, intellectual, and the only Wright sibling to finish college. But at twenty-nine, she's frustrated by the gender inequality in academia and is looking for a new challenge. She never suspects it will be sleuthing . . . Returning home to Dayton, Wilbur and Orville accept an invitation to a friend's party. Nervous about leaving their as-yet-unpatented flyer plans unattended, Wilbur decides to bring them to the festivities . . . where they are stolen right out from under his nose. As always, it's Katharine's job to problem solve-and in this case, crime-solve. As she sets out to uncover the thief among their circle of friends, Katharine soon gets more than she bargained for: she finds her number one suspect dead with a letter opener lodged in his chest. It seems the patent is the least of her brothers' worries. They have a far more earthbound concern-prison. Now Katharine will have to keep her feet on the ground and put all her skills to work to make sure Wilbur and Orville are free to fly another day.

Summer 1904. Katharine and her best friend, Margaret Goodwin Meacham, are thrilled to attend the St. Louis Exposition for the centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Not only is it a grand event, it's also the first time the young women have traveled together alone, and they are giddy with excitement-despite warnings from Katharine's family friend, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, to be careful. Undaunted, the girls have a lovely time-until the exposition turns from a girls' trip to a misadventure when they stumble upon a woman in distress. It's obvious that she has been attacked. Katharine and Margaret do their best to save her, but the woman dies. Yet just before her last breath, she utters the words Aeronautics Competition. Katharine's brothers, Wilbur and Orville, were asked to enter the competition with their successful 1903 flyer but declined. Katharine, of course, knows they would have won and has confidently said so to anyone who will listen. Now, unable to get the woman's face out of her mind, Katharine can't help wondering whether her death could somehow be connected to her brothers' flying machine. Katharine convinces Margaret to join her investigation-and it's soon clear that someone will stop at nothing to get the Wrights' invention to the masses. But with Katherine on the case, they may be in for a hard fall.