Skip to main content

Katharine Schellman

Biography

Katharine Schellman

Katharine Schellman is a former actor and one-time political consultant. When not writing about mystery, history and other improbable things, she can be found in her garden or finding new ways to skip steps while baking. She currently lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia in the company of her family and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering. Her books include LAST CALL AT THE NIGHTINGALE and THE LAST DROP OF HEMLOCK.

Katharine Schellman

Books by Katharine Schellman

The Last Drop of Hemlock
by Katharine Schellman - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Life as a working-class girl in Prohibition-era New York isn’t safe or easy. But Vivian Kelly has a new job at the Nightingale, an underground speakeasy. Things are finally looking up for her and her sister, Florence...until the night Vivian learns that her friend Bea's uncle, a bouncer at the Nightingale, has died. His death is ruled a suicide, but Bea isn’t so convinced. She knew her uncle was keeping a secret: a payoff from a mob boss that was going to take him out of the tenements and into a better life. Now, the money is missing. Vivian and Bea uncover more than they expected when rumors surface of a mysterious letter writer who's blackmailing Vivian's poorest neighbors for their most valuable possessions, threatening poison if they don't comply.

Last Call at the Nightingale
by Katharine Schellman - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

New York, 1924. Vivian Kelly's days are filled with drudgery, from the tenement lodging she shares with her sister to the dress shop where she sews for hours every day. But at night, she escapes to The Nightingale, an underground dance hall where illegal liquor flows and the band plays the Charleston with reckless excitement. With a bartender willing to slip her a free glass of champagne and friends who know the owner, Vivian can lose herself in the music. But then she discovers a body behind the club. With too many people assuming she knows more about the crime than she does, Vivian finds herself caught between the dangers of New York's underground and the world of the city's wealthy and careless.