Excerpt, Guest Post, & #Giveaway: Last Dance Before Dawn (Nightingale Mysteries #4) by Katharine Schellman
- Archaeolibrarian
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Book Details:
Genre: Historical Mystery
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: May 26, 2026 | Paperback
Number of Pages: 350
ISBN: 978-1250325822
Series: The Nightingale Mysteries, Book 4
@katharineschellman @partnersincrimevbt
@katharinewrites @partnersincrimevbt
Last Dance before Dawn is the final book in the luscious, mysterious, and queer Nightingale mystery series by Katharine Schellman, set in 1920s New York.
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.
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Manhattan, 1925
Everyone came to the Nightingale looking for something.
They didn’t have much else in common, the folks who snuck down the alley toward a single electric light that flickered like it had been forgotten for years and could burn out at any moment. You never knew who would whisper the password at the door under the light, who would make their way through the midnight velvet curtains that muffled loud laughter and louder jazz.
Maybe your family could have bought half of Fifth Avenue, or maybe you couldn’t even buy new shoes. More likely, you lived somewhere in between, with work that paid your bills and the hope, one day, of something a little more. At the Nightingale, it didn’t matter who you were in the daytime. If you could hold your booze and let loose on the dance floor and keep a secret for a stranger, you were in.
They came looking for excitement, for the thrill of breaking a law that no one liked anyway. They came to dance and drink and maybe find a new friend, the sort of friend who— after a glass or three of champagne— would meet them in a quiet corner to get a little bit friendlier.
They came because they loved the music, the way it curled through the air and carried them across the floor, the way the singer’s voice filled the room and made their hearts ache.
They came for the party. They came to escape.
If they were lucky, they could pretend that whatever waited for them back at home didn’t exist. They could lose themselves in the music and the arms of someone new. They could feel free, even if it would never last, because in that moment nothing mattered but the next dance, the next drink, the next hour.
If they were lucky, they found what they were looking for, and they left before trouble could find them.
But not everyone was lucky.
***
Vivian recognized the sound of danger before she even realized what she was hearing.
Twilight had settled on the city, humid and heavy and speckled with the glow of streetlamps. She and Beatrice Henry— Beatrice Bluebird, as she was known at the Nightingale, where she sang six nights a week— moved through it with the practiced carefulness of two women who were used to navigating New York’s streets alone. Their steps were quick, but their eyes were quicker, always on the lookout for a man who might be trouble or a cop who might be trailing them.
The Nightingale paid off the police weekly, like any other dance hall or juice joint. But everyone who worked there knew to be wary just the same.
It was that wariness that sent a prickle of warning down Vivian’s back when they were two blocks from the Nightingale’s back entrance.“Bea— ” Vivian tossed out a hand to stop her friend in the middle of the sidewalk. A few steps ahead of them, a cat yowled as it ran out of a narrow alley. “You hear that?”
For a moment, the only sound out of the ordinary was the distant grumble of thunder. Then Vivian heard it again.
“Look a little closer, pal.” The voice was low and menacing, snaking out of the shadows and clearly not meant to be overheard. “I want to make sure you and me is on the same page.”
“Viv— ” Bea hissed, but Vivian couldn’t help herself; she took a step forward, just enough to peek down the alley.
Halfway down the narrow stretch of filthy brick walls, two men were just visible in the fast- fading light. One had his back against a wall. He was the taller of the two, but he still shrank back from the menacing bulk of the second figure. That one loomed toward him, his wide shoulders cutting off any escape as he shoved some kind of paper toward the nervous man’s face.“—told you, when I have something, I’ll let you—”
The menacing man shoved him against the wall, the gesture nearly careless enough to hide the violence of it. The voice broke off with a grunt of pain, but it had been enough. Usually, Vivian would have stayed far away from anything that sounded like a beating and wasn’t her business. But she recognized that voice.
“Don’t interrupt,” the menacing man snarled. “My boss don’t take kindly to rude fu—”“It’s Spence,” Vivian hissed.
Bea tried to pull her away. “It’s not our business. We can tell Silence or Benny,” she whispered, naming two of the bruisers who worked at the Nightingale keeping customers— and anyone else who needed it— in line. “They’ll come handle it.”
“That’ll take too long.” Vivian shook her head, pulling away from Bea’s cautious hand and running down the alley toward trouble. “Hey! Leave him alone!”
The bruiser barely glanced over his shoulder at her, just cocked his fist back and drove it, almost casually, into the nervous man’s stomach. He doubled over, heaving and gasping for air, as his assailant tipped his hat mockingly. “We’ll be seeing you soon, boyo. You can count on it.”
He was gone before Vivian could reach them. She stood, panting and staring at the gap between buildings where he had disappeared. A drizzling rain began to fall, plastering her hair against her cheeks. She wasn’t dumb enough to go after him.
“You okay, Spence?” she asked instead, turning toward the remaining man as he braced his hands on his knees.
“Swell,” croaked the Nightingale’s second bartender, a lanky, mouthy, handsome grump. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Apparently chasing off the fella who was about to beat you to a pulp,” she said, stung. Spence had been working at the Nightingale all summer and still hadn’t managed to endear himself to any of the other staff. But Vivian had expected at least some gratitude. Instead, he scowled at her like she was the one who had just punched him in the stomach, not the one who had run the attacker off. “But no need to say thanks or anything.”
He hauled himself upright, wincing. “I had it handled, you know,” he said, still sounding resentful. “I didn’t need a rescue.”
“Sure you did, pal,” Bea said, joining them at last. “That was a stupid thing to do, by the way,” she added, glancing at Vivian as she opened her umbrella and held it over both their heads. “Be glad he didn’t have a friend waiting to beat the stuffing out of you too.”
“My stuffing’s doing just fine,” Spence groused, pushing his wet hair off his forehead and straightening his jacket and tie.
“What was that about?” Vivian asked, laying a hand on his arm. “Spence? Are you in trouble?”
I’ve lost count of the number of mystery series I’ve started in the middle.
With most series, I try to start at the beginning. Starting a fantasy series in the middle is usually a recipe for confusion, especially if it’s one with detailed worldbuilding. Same with science fiction. With historical fiction, I can usually figure what’s going on. Still, I’ve accidentally read way too many huge spoilers in that genre to start with anything other than book one anymore.
But one of my favorite things about mysteries is that more often than not, you can pick up the “wrong” book first and you’ll still have a great time.
In a lot of ways, mystery series are designed to be read out of order. It’s rare to find a mystery where the main plot doesn’t wrap up in one book, so you don’t have to worry about having missed clues or details from previous books. There may be a few character beats and relationships that would land differently if you read the books in order. But usually, mystery authors will fill in enough blanks that you can dive right into the relationships, too, and start rooting for your favorite couple, hating your favorite antagonist, or getting deeply invested in your favorite best-friendship.
And because the fun of mysteries is solving the crime along with the characters, mystery authors tend to go out of their way not to spoil previous books. We may hint at what happened, but that’s usually just because we want you to go back and pick up the other books too. You’ll almost never see true spoilers, of the who-was-the-killer variety.
So the next time you find a mystery with a fun cover at the bookstore, don’t worry if it’s book two and you can’t find book one. If a mystery writer at a book sale tells you that you can start with any book in the series, feel free to believe them. If you’re waiting for your library hold on book one but book three is available now, start there.
You’ll still have a great time reading. And when you get hooked (because who doesn’t get hooked on a good mystery?) you’ll be even more excited to back and find the other ones, too.
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.
Catch Up With Katharine Schellman:
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Thanks so much for featuring Last Dance!
Oh my gosh! My daughter and I were just talking about this exact thing the other day!
Reading books out of order, should you or shouldn't you?
Great guest post!