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Tessa Harris is a British author of mystery, thriller and historical fiction novels.

She is best known or writing the Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery Series.

Born in Louth, Lincolnshire, England, Tessa studied History at Oxford University before launching her career as a journalist.

She started with working for a newspaper in her hometown of Louth before proceeding to work as the women's editor of a London newspaper.

Tessa also worked as a feature writer for Best magazine, an editor of a regional arts and listings publication, a deputy editor of Heritage magazine, and as a freelance thanks to motherhood.

Her journey as a novelist however began when she was researching for a script after winning a European-wide screenplay writing competition run by the London Screenwriters' Workshop. This marked the beginning of the beloved Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mysteries—and many more.

More about Tessa Harris

Genres: Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery, Thriller

United Kingdom

Website: http://www.tessaharrisauthor.com/

Non Series

  • Beneath a Starless Sky (2020)
  • The Light We Left Behind (2021)
  • The Paris Notebook (2023)

Constance Piper Mystery

  1. The Sixth Victim (2017)
  2. The Angel Makers (2018)
  3. A Deadly Deception (2019)

Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery

  1. The Anatomist's Apprentice (2011)
  2. The Dead Shall Not Rest (2012)
  3. The Devil's Breath (2013)
  4. The Lazarus Curse (2014)
  5. Shadow of the Raven (2015)
  6. Secrets in the Stones (2016)

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Beneath a Starless Sky

Munich 1930: Smoke filled the air.

Lilli Sternberg’s quickening heart sounded an alarm as she rounded the street corner. Lifting her gaze to the rooftops, a roaring blaze of thick flames engulfed the side of the building and joined the stars to fill the black sky. Her father’s shop was no more.

Lilli Sternberg longs to be a ballet dancer. But outside the sanctuary of the theatre, Munich is no longer a place for dreams.

The Nazi party are gaining power and the threats to Jewish families increasing. Even Lilli’s family shop was torched because of their faith.

When Lilli meets Captain Marco Zeiller during a chance encounter, her heart soars. He is the perfect gentleman and her love for him feels like a bright hope under a bleak sky.

But battle lines are being drawn, and Marco has been spotted by the Reich as an officer with potential. Lilli means more to him than anything and he knows he must find a way out.

With their lives on the line, will Marco and Lilli survive the growing Nazi threat, or do they risk losing everything in the fight to be free?

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-0008444983
Publisher: HQ Digital
The Light We Left Behind

England: 1944

When psychologist Maddie Gresham is sent a mysterious message telling her to report to Trent Park mansion, she wonders how she will be helping the war effort from a stately home.

She soon finds captured Nazi generals are being detained at the house. Bugged with listening devices in every room, it’s up to Maddie to gain the Nazis’ trust and coax them into giving up information.

When Max Weitzler, a Jewish refugee, also arrives at Trent Park with the same mission, Maddie finds herself trapped in a dangerous game of chess.

The two met in Germany before the war, and Maddie’s heart was his from the moment they locked eyes.

But Maddie has finally gained the trust of the Nazi officers at the house, and her love for Max must remain a secret.

When the walls have ears, who can you trust?

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2021
ISBN: 978-0008523848
Publisher: HQ Digital
The Paris Notebook

The smallest treasures can hold the darkest secrets...

When Katja Heinz secures a job as a typist at Doctor Viktor’s clinic, she doesn’t expect to be copying top secret medical records from a notebook.

At the end of the first world war, Doctor Viktor treated soldiers for psychological disorders. One of the patients was none other than Adolf Hitler...

The notes in his possession declare Hitler unfit for office – a secret that could destroy the Führer’s reputation, and change the course of the war if exposed...

With the notebook hidden in her hat box, Katja and Doctor Viktor travel to Paris. Seeking refuge in the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, they hope to find a publisher brave enough to print the controversial script.

But Katja is being watched. Nazi spies in Paris have discovered her plan. They will stop at nothing to destroy the notebook and silence those who know of the secret hidden inside...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2023
Ebook: B0BQD8CCN1
Publisher: HQ Digital

Constance Piper Mystery

The Sixth Victim

London’s East End, 1888: When darkness falls, terror begins... 

The foggy streets of London’s Whitechapel district have become a nocturnal hunting ground for Jack the Ripper, and no woman is safe. Flower girl Constance Piper is not immune to dread, but she is more preoccupied with her own strange experiences of late.

Clairvoyants seem to be everywhere these days. Constance’s mother has found comfort in contacting her late father in a séance. But are such powers real? And could Constance really be possessed of second sight? Following the latest grisly discovery, Constance is contacted by a high-born lady of means who fears the victim may be her missing sister. She implores Constance to use her clairvoyance to help solve the crime, which the press is calling “the Whitechapel Mystery,” attributing the murder to the Ripper.

As Constance becomes embroiled in intrigue far more sinister than she could have imagined, assistance comes in a startling manner that profoundly challenges her assumptions about the nature of reality. She’ll need all the help she can get—because there may be more than one depraved killer out there...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-1496706553
Publisher: Kensington
The Angel Makers

In November 1888, the specter of Jack the Ripper instills fear in every woman who makes her living on London’s streets. But there are other monsters at large, who shun fame and secretly claim their victims from among the city’s most vulnerable...

Options are few for unmarried mothers in Victorian England. To avoid stigma, many find lodging with “baby farmers”—women who agree to care for the infant, or find an adoptive family, in exchange for a fee. Constance Piper, a London flower seller gifted with clairvoyance, has become aware of one such person, Mother Delaney, whose promises she suspects hide an infinitely darker truth.

Guided by the spirit of a deceased friend, Constance gathers evidence about what really goes on within Mother Delaney’s Poplar House. It’s not only innocent children who are at risk. A young prostitute’s body is found in mysterious circumstances. With the aid of Detective Constable Hawkins, newly promoted thanks to Constance’s help, she links the death to Mother Delaney’s vile trade. But the horror is edging closer to home, and even the hangman’s noose may not put this evil to rest...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2018
ISBN: 978-1496706584
Publisher: Kensington
A Deadly Deception

The streets of Victorian London are clothed in shadows and secrets...

London, July 1889. Eight months have passed since the horrific murder of Mary Jane Kelly. The residents of Whitechapel have begun breathing easy again—daring to leave windows open and walk about at twilight. But when old Alice McKenzie is found dead, throat slashed from ear to ear, the whispers begin once more: Jack the Ripper is back.

Constance Piper, a flower seller with a psychic gift, was a friend to both women. With the supernatural help of her late mentor, Miss Emily Tindall, and her more grounded ally, police detective Thaddeus Hawkins, she uncovers links between the murders and a Fenian gang. The Fenians, committed to violence to further their goal of an independent Ireland, are also implicated in a vicious attack in which the Countess of Kildane’s uncle was killed. Could the Whitechapel murders be a ruse to make the British police look helpless?

Soon, Constance is called upon for help. But there are spies everywhere in the city, and a bomb plot intended to incur devastating carnage. And as Constance is fast discovering, the greatest evil may not lurk in the grimy alleys of the East End, but in a conspiracy that runs from Whitechapel to the highest office in the land…

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2019
Ebook: B07L2FG43Z
Publisher: Kensington

Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery

The Anatomist's Apprentice

The death of Sir Edward Crick has unleashed a torrent of gossip through the seedy taverns and elegant ballrooms of Oxfordshire. Few mourn the dissolute young man--except his sister, the beautiful Lady Lydia Farrell. When her husband comes under suspicion of murder, she seeks expert help from Dr. Thomas Silkstone, a young anatomist from Philadelphia.

Thomas arrived in England to study under its foremost surgeon, where his unconventional methods only add to his outsider status. Against his better judgment he agrees to examine Sir Edward's corpse. But it is not only the dead, but also the living, to whom he must apply the keen blade of his intellect. And the deeper the doctor's investigations go, the greater the risk that he will be consigned to the ranks of the corpses he studies. . .

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2011
ISBN: 978-0758266989
Publisher: Kensington
The Dead Shall Not Rest

It is not just the living who are prey to London's criminals and cutpurses. Corpses, too, are fair game--dug up from fresh graves and sold to unscrupulous men of science. Dr. Thomas Silkstone abhors such methods, but his leading rival, Dr. John Hunter, has learned of the imminent death of eight-foot-tall Charles Byrne, known as the "Irish Giant," and will go to any lengths to obtain the body for his research.

Thomas intends to see that Byrne is allowed to rest in peace. Yet his efforts are complicated by concern for his betrothed, Lady Lydia Farrell, who breaks off their engagement without explanation. When Dr. Hunter is implicated in the horrific murder of a young castrato, Thomas must determine how far the increasingly erratic surgeon will go in the name of knowledge. For as Thomas knows too well, the blackest hearts sometimes go undetected--and even an unblemished façade can hide terrifying secrets...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2012
ISBN: 978-0758266996
Publisher: Kensington
The Devil's Breath

Eighteenth-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone travels to the English countryside to unravel a tangled web of mystery, medicine, and murder.

A man staggers out of his cottage into the streets of Oxfordshire, shattering an otherwise peaceful evening with the terrible sight of his body shaking and heaving, eyes wild with horror. Many of the villagers believe the Devil himself has entered Joseph Makepeace, the latest victim of a "great fog" that darkens the skies over England like a Biblical plague. When Joseph's son and daughter are found murdered--heads bashed in by a shovel--the town's worst suspicions are confirmed: Evil is abroad, and needs to be banished.

A brilliant man of science, Dr. Thomas Silkstone is not one to heed superstition. But when he arrives at the estate of the lovely widow Lady Lydia Farrell, he finds that it's not just her grain and livestock at risk. A shroud of mystery surrounds Lydia's lost child, who may still be alive in a workhouse. A natural disaster fills the skies with smoke and ash, clogging the lungs of all who breathe it in. And the grisly details of a father's crime compels Dr. Silkstone to look for answers beyond his medical books--between the Devil and the deep blue sea...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-0758267009
Publisher: Kensington
The Lazarus Curse

In 1780s London, American anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone is plunged into a swirling cauldron of sorcery, slavery, and cold-blooded murder...

When the sole survivor of an ill-fated scientific expedition to Jamaica goes missing upon his return to London, Dr. Thomas Silkstone--entrusted with cataloging the expedition's New World specimens--feels compelled to investigate. There are rumors of a potion that has the power to raise the dead--and the formula is suspected to be in the private journal that has disappeared along with the young botanist.

As Dr. Silkstone searches for clues to the man's whereabouts, he is drawn deeper into a dark and dangerous world of vengeance, infidelity, murder, and the trafficking of corpses for profit. Without the support of his beloved Lady Lydia Farrell--from whom he has been forcibly separated by law--he must confront the horrors of slavery, as well the very depths of human wickedness. And after a headless corpse is discovered, Dr. Silkstone begins to uncover the sinister motives of those in power who would stop at nothing to possess the Lazarus potion...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-0758293374
Publisher: Kensington
Shadow of the Raven

Ensconced in the woods of rural England, 1784, American anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone hunts for justice amid a maelstrom of madness, murder, and social upheaval...

In the notorious mental hospital known as Bedlam, Dr. Thomas Silkstone seeks out a patient with whom he is on intimate terms. But he is unprepared for the state in which he finds Lady Lydia Farrell. Shocked into action, Thomas vows to help free Lydia by appealing to the custodian of her affairs, Mr. Nicholas Lupton. But when Silkstone arrives at the Boughton Estate to speak to Lupton, he finds that another form of madness has taken over the village...

Sweeping changes to the Boughton Estate threaten to leave many villagers, who are rightfully angry, destitute. After a single shot rings out and a man dies in the woods, it appears that the desperate villagers have turned to murder to avenge their cause. But for Thomas, a post-mortem on the victim raises more questions than answers. 

Although he manages to save an innocent man from the gallows, a second murder warns him of his potentially fatal situation. Soon he discovers a conspiracy far more sinister than anything he has ever faced. But who it leads to is the last person he suspects...

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-0758293398
Publisher: Kensington
Secrets in the Stones

Within the mysteries of the body, especially those who have been murdered, 18th-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone specializes in uncovering the tell-tale clues that lead towards justice…

Newly released from the notorious asylum known as Bedlam, Lady Lydia Farrell finds herself in an equally terrifying position--as a murder suspect--when she stumbles upon the mutilated body of Sir Montagu Malthus in his study at Boughton Hall.

Meanwhile Dr. Thomas Silkstone has been injured in a duel with a man who may or may not have committed the grisly deed of which Lydia is accused. Despite his injury, Thomas hopes to clear his beloved's good name by conducting a postmortem on the victim. With a bit of detective work, he learns that Montagu's throat was slit by no ordinary blade, but a ceremonial Sikh dagger from India--a clue that may be connected to the fabled lost mines of Golconda.

From the mysterious disappearance of a cursed diamond buried with Lydia's dead husband, to the undying legend of a hidden treasure map, Thomas must follow a trail of foreign dignitaries, royal agents--and even more victims--to unveil the sinister and shocking secrets in the stones…

Author: Tessa Harris
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-0758293411
Publisher: Kensington