Say Anything but Your Prayers: a Novel of Elizabeth Stride, the Third Victim of Jack the Ripper

An imaginative reconstruction of the life of Elizabeth Stride, the third victim of Jack the Ripper. The beast of poverty and disease had stalked Elizabeth all her life, waiting for the right moment to take her down. To survive, she listened to the two extremes within herself--Bess, the innocent child of hope, and Liza, the cynical, hardbitten opportunist. While Bess paints rosy pictures of what lies ahead and Liza warns of dangers everywhere, the beast, in the guise of a man offering something better, circles ever closer. The life of Elizabeth Stride holds mysteries beyond the most obvious one concerning the identity of her murderer. In reconstructing her life in fiction, the author addresses many of these mysteries, including one that involves a bizarre misidentification of her body while it was at the mortuary. This novel is part of the Jack the Ripper Victims Series. Each novel in the series is a stand-alone story.