The William & Mary Resurrection Men

The dead are walking in Williamsburg. And three innocent men may hang for it.

October 1763. The leaves have turned crimson on the campus of William & Mary, and twenty-year-old Thomas Jefferson should be focused on his legal studies. Instead, he’s standing in a fog-shrouded churchyard at midnight, staring at an empty grave.

Bodies are disappearing from Williamsburg’s cemeteries. Not paupers buried in unmarked plots, but prominent citizens-men of reputation and standing in the community. And witnesses are coming forward with stories that make Jefferson’s blood run cold: they’ve seen the dead walking through the autumn mist. Corpses shambling through churchyards in the gray hours before dawn.

The town has found its scapegoats. Three medical students from William & Mary have been arrested, accused of practicing the dark art of ＂resurrection＂-robbing graves and somehow raising the dead through unholy experiments. A mob is gathering. Prominent families demand justice. And unless someone proves their innocence, the students will hang before the month is out.

The students swear they’re innocent of the worst charges. Yes, they’ve taken bodies-but only paupers, unclaimed dead, for legitimate anatomical study. They’ve never touched the graves of gentlemen. They’ve never made corpses walk.

Jefferson believes them. Because he’s noticed something the mob has missed: the prominent citizens whose bodies vanished all had something in common. Something that has nothing to do with medical experiments. Something far more dangerous than grave robbery.

Someone in Williamsburg is hiding a secret worth killing for. And they’re using the hysteria about ＂resurrection men＂ to cover their crimes.

But proving it means Jefferson must challenge powerful enemies who enjoy Crown protection. It means confronting science twisted to monstrous purpose. And it means racing against time as the mob’s fury grows and three young men’s lives hang in the balance.

With his mentor George Wythe providing legal guidance and the resourceful Arabella Finch at his side, Jefferson begins an investigation that will take him from foggy graveyards to hidden laboratories, from college halls to courtroom drama. What he uncovers is a conspiracy that strikes at the heart of colonial society-and a villain who believes that some knowledge justifies any crime.

The William & Mary Resurrection Men combines gothic atmosphere with courtroom tension in a mystery that asks: What happens when science serves evil? How far will powerful men go to protect their secrets? And can truth prevail when the mob has already chosen its victims?

Book 3 in the Thomas Jefferson: Paranormal Investigator series

Can be read as a standalone, but readers will enjoy Jefferson’s continued evolution from promising student to colonial Virginia’s most unconventional defender of justice.

Before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson hunted monsters in the Virginia night.