The Darkwood Mysteries (1): The Thief of Faces

Emily Darkwood is already resisting Victorian society's expectations of her as a woman of the upper classes, when she receives a strange and life-changing inheritance in the wake of her missing parents. A stone of amber that draws her into mysteries, supernatural, cosmic, and criminal. Armed with this guide stone, her wits, revolver, sword-stick umbrella, and faithful servant-companion, the streetwise, scrappy, and young Jack Hobbs, she determines to challenge the mysteries and threats she encounters in her search to understand the power of the stone, its connection to her parents, and their fates. Yet dark forces conspire against her, and her drive for answers and her fight against the darkness of the world risks her friends, family, her fought for studies in medicine and surgery, and herself.

In The Thief of Faces (short story), why is Darkwood keeping vigil at her friend's tomb? Darkwood hunts a serial killer with a gruesome signature mutilation. What does a murderer want his victim's faces for?

The Darkwood Mysteries is a non-linear series of short-stories, novellas, and novels which can be enjoyed as standalone tales of horror and adventure, or together as part of a deeper mystery.