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Series

Elizabethan Mysteries

The Elizabethan Mysteries are four historical adventures for younger readers featuring Ben Button, an apprentice actor with Lord Bonner's Men. Beginning on a provincial tour and moving through London theatre and back to Ben's home village, the books place mysteries of theft, sabotage and murder inside the working life of a late-sixteenth-century acting company.

The sequence introduces the practical world of travelling players while also drawing on the political climate of Elizabeth I's reign: memories of Mary, Queen of Scots, hostility to the public theatre, fear of Spanish enemies and the pressures faced by poorer rural families. Ben's limited status makes investigation a matter of curiosity, friendship and personal risk rather than official authority.

Reading order

Books in this series (4 books)

Rogues’ Gold cover

1. Rogues’ Gold

John Pilkington

First published 2007

2.5(5)

Elizabethan England, in the 1590s. Twelve-year-old Ben Button is an apprentice actor touring with Lord Bonner's Men when the company performs at a wealthy country house. A jewel-encrusted gold plate disappears and one of Ben's fellow players is accused of stealing it, placing the actor in…

Traitor! cover

2. Traitor!

John Pilkington

First published 2008

2.5(5)

Elizabethan London. Apprentice actors Ben Button and Matthew Fields are preparing with Lord Bonner's Players for a performance before Queen Elizabeth at the Rose Theatre in Southwark. Rival players, hostile moralists and the everyday hazards of the theatre create plenty of tension even before an expensive…

Revenge! cover

3. Revenge!

John Pilkington

First published 2009

2.5(5)

Elizabethan London. Ben Button befriends a young thief who is living disguised as a boy and learns that she is a runaway named Jane. Her family was dispossessed by a powerful nobleman, and she is determined to take revenge on the man she blames for her…

Thief! cover

4. Thief!

John Pilkington

First published 2009

2.5(5)

Fourteen-year-old actor Ben Button returns to his family in the village of Hornsey after two years with the travelling players. Home is less welcoming than he hoped: his widowed mother is being courted, his younger brother resents his departure, and his grandmother has become an angry…