Sixteen travelers disappear into the winter mountains.

Weeks later, their animals return without them.

There are no riders. No bodies. No convincing signs of massacre. But hidden in one saddle is something far more disturbing—a fragment of a map drawn in the unmistakable hand of Lady Verena Ashdown.

Verena swears she never made it.

For explorer and cartographer Verena Ashdown, the forgery is more than an attack on her professional reputation. Whoever created it knows private methods she developed during the three years when the world believed her dead. To discover how, Verena and physician Dr. Ginevra Quade follow the vanished caravan east through Anatolia, the Armenian Highlands, and the Caucasus.

Their investigation leads through treacherous winter roads, false survey markers, an avalanche, a mountain observatory concealing an industrial-scale cartographic forgery operation, and a desperate pursuit before stolen geographical intelligence can be transmitted beyond their reach.

Yet the journey exposes another danger closer to home. Ginevra is no longer the woman who waits safely behind while Verena accepts every risk. She has become an experienced expedition member in her own right—and Verena discovers that fearing for the woman she loves does not necessarily give her the right to decide which dangers Ginevra may face.

As forged maps begin pointing toward the geography of Verena's lost years, one terrifying possibility becomes impossible to ignore:

Someone possesses work Verena created while she was a prisoner.

And they have been using it.

The Caravan of Empty Saddles is Book Three of The Uncharted Ladies, a Victorian adventure-romance series of dangerous expeditions, historical mysteries, hidden geographical knowledge, and two women determined to build a partnership on equal ground.