The Listening Lamps of Mosswood
(2026)(The first book in the Mosswood Apothecary Mystery series)
A novel by Cordelia Clark
The lamps along Fernwick Lane do not shift on their own.
Petra Hawthorne has been keeping her grandmother Edna's apothecary for thirty-eight days when one of the streetlamps outside the shop turns toward the rise overnight. By morning, six lamps have rotated — and on Bridge Street, beneath one of them, Bea from the jam kitchen finds Walt Dalrymple unconscious on the cobblestones. Walt, who has lived in Mosswood his whole life. Walt, the retired township surveyor, who reads regional history in his chair every evening and takes his afternoon glass at the inn.
The doctor says he slipped. Sheriff Caleb Mercer is not so sure. And the bookish stranger who has been at the inn for two months, who has been buying Walt's afternoon glass and listening to his stories about the old township maps, has been quietly paying for another month.
Beneath the apothecary's cellar, in a chamber Petra did not know existed, three brass dials are reading off-quadrant. Crispin, the apothecary's black cat, watches her descend the spiral staircase and says only: "Interesting."
Book One of the Mosswood Apothecary Mysteries — a quiet, observational cozy mystery for readers who like their puzzles plain and their towns watched-over.
Genre: Mystery
Petra Hawthorne has been keeping her grandmother Edna's apothecary for thirty-eight days when one of the streetlamps outside the shop turns toward the rise overnight. By morning, six lamps have rotated — and on Bridge Street, beneath one of them, Bea from the jam kitchen finds Walt Dalrymple unconscious on the cobblestones. Walt, who has lived in Mosswood his whole life. Walt, the retired township surveyor, who reads regional history in his chair every evening and takes his afternoon glass at the inn.
The doctor says he slipped. Sheriff Caleb Mercer is not so sure. And the bookish stranger who has been at the inn for two months, who has been buying Walt's afternoon glass and listening to his stories about the old township maps, has been quietly paying for another month.
Beneath the apothecary's cellar, in a chamber Petra did not know existed, three brass dials are reading off-quadrant. Crispin, the apothecary's black cat, watches her descend the spiral staircase and says only: "Interesting."
Book One of the Mosswood Apothecary Mysteries — a quiet, observational cozy mystery for readers who like their puzzles plain and their towns watched-over.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Cordelia Clark's The Listening Lamps of Mosswood