Her Majesty's Mischief finishes the Simon & Elizabeth Mysteries. I thought about doing a fifth book with Simon meeting William Shakespeare, but the plot never gelled in my head. Besides, we'd taken Elizabeth from princess to queen and I had other ideas I wanted to work on. Historical books require a lot of research, and you'll still probably get some bit wrong. There is always a reader who's only too happy to point out mistakes. Here are a few examples.

In the first book, I said that a business owner was "squeezing the last dollar" out of his property. Someone wrote to tell me they didn't have dollars back then. It's true I used the phrase without thinking, but I also could have told her that dollar was a slang word for money (crowns, I think) back then. I didn't. It doesn't pay to argue.

In one book, I mentioned the Globe Theater. A critic commented (I picture him with his nose raised) that the Globe wasn't open yet at the time. He was right. I was off by a decade or so. Mea culpa.

Another time I used the word tea, which a reader wrote to tell me wasn't available in England yet at that time. She was correct; I should have used "tisane."

And the funniest was a man who wrote to tell me that the book was good, the characterization was excellent, and he loved the plot. What bothered him was my mention of rhododendrons, which, he informed me, were not seen in England in those days. So now I look up flowers and trees before I mention them in a book.

Her Majesty's Mischief: Elizabeth is now Queen of England. Bothered by rumors about her cousin Mary in Scotland, she sends Simon with a delegation to try to judge if Her Majesty of Scotland has designs on the throne now occupied by the last Tudor. This book is available here for $2.99.