CAPTAIN HAZARD’S GAME (forthcoming September 2022) is set in late Autumn 1708. In this novel, murder and scandal come uncomfortably close as Widow Trotter and her friends are drawn into the frenzied world of gaming and stock-market speculation. In the years before the famous ‘South Sea Bubble of 1720 this hazardous world of Chance was unregulated: fortunes were made overnight, and ruin could descend in a single hour. In ‘Exchange Alley’ and the illegal clubs of Covent Garden people played for high stakes, and men of power manipulated the market for their own ends. The Bay-Tree itself comes under threat as Mary Trotter, Tom and Will take on the money men and struggle to find the truth behind an ingenious system of deception.