Days of the Dead (Benjamin January)

The New York Times hails Barbara Hamblys novels featuring Benjamin January as “masterly,” “ravishing,” and “haunting.” The Chicago Tribune crowns them “dazzling…January is a wonderfully rich and complex character.” Now the bestselling author returns with a story that leads January from the dangerously sensual milieu of New Orleans into a world seething with superstition and dark spirits, where one mans freedom turns on a case of murder and blood vengeance.

Days of the Dead

Mexico City in the autumn of 1835 is a lawless place, teeming with bandits and beggars. But an urgent letter from a desperate friend draws Benjamin January and his new bride Rose from New Orleans to this newly free province. Here they pray theyll find Hannibal Sefton aliveand not hanging from the end of a rope.Sefton stands accused of murdering the only son of prominent landowner Don Prospero de Castellon. But when Benjamin and Rose arrive at Hacienda Mictlán, they encounter a murky tangle of family relations, and more than one suspect in young Fernandos murder.

While the evidence against Hannibal is damning, Benjamin is certain that his consumptive, peace-loving fellow musician isnt capable of murder. Their only allies are the dead boys half sister, who happens to be Hannibals latest inamorata, and the mentally unstable Castellon himself, who awaits Mexicos holy Days of the Dead, when he believes his slain son will himself reveal the identity of his killer.The search for the truth will lead Benjamin and Rose down a path that winds from the mazes of the capitals back streets and barrios to the legendary pyramids of Mictlán and, finally, to a place where spirits walk and the dead cry out for justice. But before they can lay to rest the ghosts of the past, Benjamin and Rose will have to stop a flesh-and-blood murderer whos determined to escape the day of reckoning and add Benjamin and Rose to the swelling ranks of the dead.

In 1835, Benjamin January and his new bride, Rose Vitrac, head to Mexico City to aid Hannibal Sefton, accused of poisoning the son of a prominent landowner. As Mexico's holy Days of the Dead approach, Benjamin and Rose search for a killer.

Barbara Hambly is the author of The Emancipators Wife, a finalist for the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. She is also the author of Fever Season, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and seven acclaimed historical novels.