Murder in the Marginalia
(2024)(The first book in the Aunt Alice's Bookshop Mystery series)
A novel by Julie Ecker
A mansion, a cat, a mystery – and a murder to solve.
Haunted by a personal tragedy, Nell Murray arrives in Pepper Lake hoping to turn the page on a new, brighter chapter in her life. She has inherited her aunt's mansion and antique bookselling business, and Aunt Alice's beautiful lakeside home is more than just a house: it's a legacy, filled with secret passages, old diaries, and cryptic book-related riddles.
Surrounded by old books, accompanied by her aunt's cat Gatsby, and supplied with plenty of coffee from the Buttered Scone Bakery down the road, Nell starts her next chapter with new friends and the hope of a freshly written happy ending.
But Nell's newfound peace is shattered when a member of the Antiquarians, a close-knit group of elderly booksellers and friends of her aunt, turns up dead with a poisoned scone in hand. As the plot thickens and the bodies begin to pile up, Nell discovers that her aunt's legacy has more plot twists than the old mansion's bookshelves. And someone would kill to keep these secrets off the front page.
Can Nell's knack for puzzle-solving and Gatsby's feline intuition close the book on this mystery before the killer pens Nell's final sentence?
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Haunted by a personal tragedy, Nell Murray arrives in Pepper Lake hoping to turn the page on a new, brighter chapter in her life. She has inherited her aunt's mansion and antique bookselling business, and Aunt Alice's beautiful lakeside home is more than just a house: it's a legacy, filled with secret passages, old diaries, and cryptic book-related riddles.
Surrounded by old books, accompanied by her aunt's cat Gatsby, and supplied with plenty of coffee from the Buttered Scone Bakery down the road, Nell starts her next chapter with new friends and the hope of a freshly written happy ending.
But Nell's newfound peace is shattered when a member of the Antiquarians, a close-knit group of elderly booksellers and friends of her aunt, turns up dead with a poisoned scone in hand. As the plot thickens and the bodies begin to pile up, Nell discovers that her aunt's legacy has more plot twists than the old mansion's bookshelves. And someone would kill to keep these secrets off the front page.
Can Nell's knack for puzzle-solving and Gatsby's feline intuition close the book on this mystery before the killer pens Nell's final sentence?
Genre: Cozy Mystery