4-STAR REVIEW: LAST DANCE BEFORE DAWN by Katharine Schellman

About The Book

The Nightingale Mysteries: Book 4
Publication Date: May 26, 2026

Vivian Kelly has finally created a home and a family at the glamorous speakeasy known as The Nightingale, where no one cares who you are in the daytime. After all, in the underground world of 1920s New York City, everyone has a secret to keep, and they’re on the Nightingale’s dance floor to leave those secrets behind. But sometimes it takes more than a dance to escape your past.

When a stranger from Chicago shows up at The Nightingale looking to settle old scores, Vivian and the Nightingale’s owner, the mysterious and alluring Honor Huxley, send him packing. They soon discover, though, that the stranger was just a warning. Slowly, the people who have made The Nightingale their home realize that someone is following them. Hunting them. And that someone won’t stop until they unravel a mystery that’s been cold for years: a missing girl, a boy out for revenge, and a truck full of cash that disappeared in a job gone horribly wrong.

Vivian just wants to protect the people she loves, and she’s willing to dig into the dirt of the past to make it happen. But some questions are safer left unanswered, and now that Vivian has built a family for herself, she has more to lose than ever before.

Now experience this Edgar Award–nominated historical mystery in paperback!

Excerpt

The Review

Within the doors of the Nightingale, people gather to dance and have fun without caring about the restrictions of the outside world.

Author Katharine Schellman continues the Nightingale Mysteries with the fourth installment, Last Dance Before Dawn.

Vivian Kelly finds refuge at the speakeasy, cobbling together an unusual band of misfits to call her family. Danger comes calling when a stranger shows up asking questions, soon followed by a murder.

Add in the sudden appearance of a man claiming to be her father, and Vivian, along with her sister, tries to put together the missing pieces of the past. Vivian must trust her boss, Honor, to help everything out.

Last Dance Before Dawn pits an amateur sleuth against a dangerous criminal element.

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About The Author

Katharine Schellman is an award-winning author of historical crime fiction, including the Nightingale Mysteries and the Lily Adler Mysteries, whose work has been called “worthy of Rex Stout or Agatha Christie” (Library Journal). Her books have been nominated for an Edgar and a Silver Falchion, and she has won a Zibby Media National Book Award for “Best Book for the History Lover.” A former actor, onetime political consultant, and graduate of William & Mary, Katharine lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia.