The Bitter Cup at Michaelmas (Sister Aveline Medieval Mystery #1)

Michaelmas brings salt wind, rent day, and an unwelcome royal collector to St. Radegund’s Priory. While storms isolate the Norfolk coast, Sister Aveline tends the sick, guards her physic garden, and tries to forget the noblewoman she failed seven years before. Then the manor’s tally clerk dies inside the priory cider store, poisoned with an herb taken from Aveline’s own locked supplies.

Royal clerk Martin de Vaux trusts numbers more readily than people. Aveline trusts neither, particularly when his investigation threatens the priory and suspicion settles upon her. To uncover the truth, they must follow altered tallies, concealed parentage, and a medicinal honey jar exchanged amid the confusion of rent day.

But why did the dead man possess the same strange mark Aveline found beside Lady Ysabel’s final cup?

To clear her name, Aveline must follow the trail through rent-day confusion, priory secrets, and a medicinal honey jar before the tide washes the truth beyond her reach.

Perfect for readers who enjoy historical cozy-adjacent mysteries, impossible attraction, dry humor, and monastic atmosphere.