AVAILABLE NOW Death in a Time of Spanish Flu

Starred Review in Publisher's Weekly

Set in 1918 Chicago, McNamara’s excellent ninth Emily Cabot mystery (after 2020’s Death on the Home Front) finds Emily’s physician husband, Stephen, serving on the front lines of the Spanish Influenza epidemic. Meanwhile, Emily gets drawn into a murder investigation involving Flora Murphy, a notorious gambling king’s second wife, who’s accused of shooting her younger lover. When Emily discovers that two of her children—Jack, a physician who served in France, and Lizzie, an aspiring sculptor—were friends of the victim, Emily must follow them into the notorious Bohemian circle of the Dil Pickle Club, where revolutionaries, mobsters, and intellectuals such as Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Sherwood Anderson once congregated to read poetry and discuss politics. The shooting death of a man at the club raises the stakes. The real-life characters mingle seamlessly with the fictional ones to capture the myriad contradictions of Chicago, from the dirty politicians and gangsters who run the city to the idealists, intellectuals, and revolutionaries who are committed to social change. This timely novel informs as much as it entertains. (Oct.)

Welcome to Rudiyat Press!

The Emily Cabot Mysteries will be reissued on the following schedule:

Death at the Fair 1/17/22

Death at Hull House 2/7/22

Death at Pullman 2/14/22

Death at Woods Hole 2/21/22

Death at Chinatown 2/21/22

Death at the Paris Exposition 2/28/22

Death at the Selig Studios 3/7/22

Death on the Homefront 3/14/22
Death in a Time of Spanish Flu 10/20/22

Death at Hull House: Emily Cabot Mysteries Book 2

It’s Chicago in 1893 and Emily Cabot, an aspiring sociologist, finds work at Hull House, the famous settlement established by Jane Addams. There she quickly becomes involved in the political and social problems of the immigrant community. But when a man who works for a sweatshop owner is murdered in the Hull House parlor, Emily must determine whether one of her colleagues is responsible, or whether the real reason for the murder is revenge for a past tragedy in her own family. As a smallpox epidemic spreads through the impoverished West Side of Chicago, the very existence of the settlement is threatened and Emily finds herself in jeopardy from both the deadly disease and a killer. This is the exciting sequel to Death at the Fair.

Death in a Time of Spanish Flu

In October 1918, the Allies are winning the war in Europe, but the Spanish flu is rampant at home. In Chicago, Emily’s husband is fighting the virus at Cook County Hospital. Their daughter has dropped her social ambitions to study sculpture while their doctor son has returned from France injured in body and spirit. Emily is shocked to learn her children were friends of the victim in a scandalous murder. The wife of a notorious gambling king shot her young lover. When Emily follows them to the Dil Pickle club she enters an avant-garde world of artists and writers biding their time for their lives to return to normal. When a man is found shot there, Emily works with Detective Whitbread prove her children are not involved in the death.

About Rudiyat Press

Rudiyat Press was established to provide reprints of previously published mystery series and new books that continue the series. There is no technical reason not to keep series books available in print and ebook formats. Readers who like a new book often want to go back and read the whole series. Rudiyat Press will ensure they can do that by keeping the whole series available.

The nine books of the Emily Cabot Mysteries by Frances McNamara will be available as print and ebooks. The first eight are reprints of the Allium Press of Chicago editions. New books in the series are created and published by Rudiyat Press.

Other mystery series will be published based on financial and other considerations.

Rudiyat Press is not accepting submissions at this time.

NOTE ON THE NAME: When it was necessary to find a unique name for the press, we chose "Rudiyat" for the Rhodes 19 sailboat once owned by Rudy Wolfson and Frances McNamara which sailed out of Montrose Harbor in Chicago. Since the name was made up, it was unique and uniquely represented good memories of sailing on Lake Michigan while the original Emily Cabot mysteries were being written.