“Once again, Cora Harrison brings sixteenth-century Ireland beautifully to life and her Brehon detective, Mara, is a fantastic protagonist—an absolute one-off and yet refreshingly real.” —The Historical Novel Society on A Secret and Unlawful Killing (Editors’ Choice)

The year is 1509 and autumn has come to the Burren in western Ireland. It’s a time of harvest and preparation for the winter to come—the end of summer and, for some, the end of life. When Mara attends the funeral of a local priest of the Burren, the last thing she expects to discover is another corpse on the church steps—a man stung to death by bees.

Sorley, the silversmith, was a greedy and distrusted man: there would be no shortage of people who wanted him dead. But who really stood to profit from his murder? As Mara investigates, she must use all her cunning and prowess as a judge to bring the sting of justice to a killer with a hate-filled heart and a murderous mind.