The Bartered Brides
core novel 2018 The Elemental Masters
Record
| First published | 2018 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.01 (1,793 ratings, collected 2026-09-12) |
| Page count | 320 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780756408749 |
| Internal chronology | 16 |
Synopsis
Following the disappearance of Sherlock Holmes, The Bartered Brides finds Nan Killian, Sarah Lyon-White, and the Watsons investigating a disturbing series of murders in which headless brides are discovered floating in London's waterways. As they piece together the pattern connecting the victims, the investigators uncover evidence that the killings are tied to dangerous magic linked to the surviving remnants of Professor Moriarty's criminal network, now operating without its old leadership but no less deadly. With Holmes absent from the case, the group must rely more heavily on their own combined psychic and magical resources to track the perpetrator, navigating a London underworld left unstable by Moriarty's fall and still dangerous to anyone who gets too close to its secrets.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Elemental Masters
- Series: The Elemental Masters core; position 16 of 21 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Mercedes Lackey
Notes
- From the series record (The Elemental Masters): Loosely connected fairy-tale retellings unified by a shared elemental-magic system rather than a continuous cast.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Elemental Masters: position 16 of 21: previous A Scandal in Battersea (2017) · next The Case of the Spellbound Child (2019)
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey
- https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/315217/the-bartered-brides-by-mercedes-lackey/
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