C. M. Gleason is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award-winning author. She lives with her family and two dogs in the Midwest, where she is hard at work on the next Lincoln White House Mystery.

On Independence Day, the citizens of Washington, DC, are celebrating as if there isn’t a war on. But the city is teeming with green Union recruits while President Lincoln and his War Department are focused on military strategy to take Richmond in Secessionist Virginia in order to bring the conflict to a swift end. Manassas, Virginia, near Bull Run Creek, is in their sights.

The very next morning, as Congress convenes once more, a dead body is found on the marble floor of the Rotunda beneath the unfinished dome of the Capitol. Lincoln’s close confidante, Adam Speed Quinn, is called upon to determine whether the man fell, or was pushed to his death.

With the help of Dr. George Hilton and journalist Sophie Gates, Quinn investigates what turns out to be murder. But the former scout is about to be blindsided, for a Southern sympathizer in the city is running a female spy network reporting to the Confederacy, and she has an insidious plot to get to Lincoln himself through Quinn—by employing the charms of one Constance Lemagne…