The Ambitious Stepmother [Import] [Hardcover]

FIDELIS MORGAN (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: COLLINS CRIME (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007134231
• ISBN-13: 978-0007134236
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,504,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Fidelis Morgan was born in a red gypsy caravan, Kiomi Romani, in an orchard at the corner of the grounds of the ancient Amesbury Abbey, halfway between Stonehenge and Woodhenge.

Her parents, Liverpool Catholics, believed in education in the widest sense, and enjoyed picking up waifs and strays. Once the family moved to a house it was not only crammed with animals (cats, dogs, chickens, geese, goats and foxes) but an endless stream of eccentric characters: boisterous painters who picked up women in the street to pose nude in the living room, musicians who battered away on milk bottles, the disgraced son of a local Earl, an Irish builder who had won and lost a million three times over and a bearded man who wore her mother's underwear and did the cleaning while Mae West records played. There was even a famous cat-burglar, who was proudly paraded at school sports day.
Fidelis survived school, despite being jeered at for her northern accent, and being expelled a number of times.

During her school holidays she spent a lot of time living in Paris where her mother sometimes worked as a painter on the Butte, Montmartre. Fidelis regularly earned enough money painting clowns, playing the guitar and giving Americans guided tours in a cod French accent ("Don't you talk good English, little girl. Here's a dollar.") to buy supper for them both.

She gained an honours degree at Birmingham University. Her finals papers were on Restoration London and the world of the 17th century theatre. Which led to her ground-breaking book THE FEMALE WITS, which rediscovered the long lost women playwrights of the Restoration. She followed up with numerous anthologies and biographies set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including A WOMAN OF NO CHARACTER, and The WELL-KNOWN TROUBLEMAKER.

She works as a professional actor. Her screen appearances include Jeeves and Wooster, As Time Goes By, Mr Majeika, Dead Gorgeous, Big Women and Never Let Me Go.
Fidelis has played leading roles by Brecht, Chekhov, Wilde, Coward, Lorca, Orton, Shaw, Genet, Goldoni, Massinger & Schiller, in companies like West Yorkshire Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse, Liverpool Everyman, Paines Plough and particularly the Glasgow Citizens, where her work won her a Best Actress nomination in The Observer.
She has played opposite Rupert Everett, Glenda Jackson, Dame Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Gary Oldman, Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman.


As a playwright, her adaptation of Samuel Richardson's PAMELA won her a nomination as Most Promising Playwright, and was described in the Guardian as "a new eighteenth century play". The Morgan/Benedict play Fragments From the Life of Marie Antoinette won the LIPA award for large cast play 1997, while her adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's HANGOVER SQUARE played for an extended run at the Lyric Hammersmith, where it acquired cult status, and was recently revived to great acclaim at the Finborough Theatre.

Her four murder mysteries featuring The Countess Ashby dela Zouche and her maid Alpiew are acclaimed throughout the world.

She has a new short story collection TRIPLE SHORTS and a modern novel, MURDER QUADRILLE available for Kindle and download to computers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anastasia and Alpiew go to France, September 3, 2011

By 

Jody (Northwest Ohio) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Ambitious Stepmother (Countess Ashby dela Zouche) (Kindle Edition)

In the third outing for the Countess Ashby de la Zouche and the intrepid Alpiew, the setting moves to the French court of the exiled King James. Anastasia and Alpiew have been hired to escort young Virgina to the exiled court to find her a husband. As the story progresses, they are robbed by highwaymen, Virginia has a secret agenda, and no one at the court is exactly who he or she appears to be. Because of their penurious condition, Anastasia is banished to the attics and Alpiew to the kitchens, where life suddenly becomes much more interesting--and dangerous.

Fidelis Morgan has hit Anastasia and Alpiew's stride with this one. There are some laugh out loud moments: the Countess inadvertently invents Bechamel sauce, and the would-be novelist Isabel Murdo-McTavish, in search of the perfect title for her book, proposes "Gone with the Wind" and "War and Peace." As always, real characters drift in and out of the story, and Anastasia and Alpiew find themselves in the company of the Man in the Iron Mask in the Bastille and grouse about the King's fondness for peas to an incognito Louis the XIV.

This is a light-hearted series for all it doesn't gloss over the real discomfort and physical unpleasantness of 17th and early 18th century life. Ms. Morgan doesn't hesitate to describe the filthy streets of her setting or the dubious personal hygiene of her characters, but the contrast makes Anastasia's and Alpiew's antics that much more credible. As always, the loose ends are tied up, and the chapter headings having to do with 17th century cooking are fascinating. (Larks tongues, anyone?).