What a huge change there has been in my typical day since I moved from Broadwick city centre to the Cotswold village of Little Pride.

I planned to start a new life in a derelict curiosity shop, turning it into a cute cottagecore home, after my ex-partner Steven left on his motorbike to find himself in India. Despite 25 years together, I hadn’t known he was lost.

My plans were scuppered when I discovered I was legally obliged to keep the shop open for business. Just as well, because the week I moved in, I lost my job in the city museum and was in dire need of a way to earn my living.

Fortunately, the skills I’d learned at the museum came in handy, as did my old museum pal Danny. I revamped the shop, replenished the stock, and added a pavement café. There’s a steady flow of customers most days, some more welcome than others.

There’s the charming Bob Sponge, a widowed wealthy industrialist who lives next door. I’m not so keen on heartless developer Terence Bolt, trying to build houses on the donkey paddock beside my cottage. Rather more winning is one of his labourers, who secretly brought me intriguing finds from the building plot to sell in my shop.

Although had I known what that would lead to, I’d have turned him away. I never anticipated having to call an ambulance to attend to a body left for dead on my tea terrace.

Thankfully, most days are much less traumatic. I choose the shop’s opening hours to suit myself, leaving plenty of time to get to know my new neighbours. Coralie lives in a tiny-house behind the old barn she’s turned into a hairdressing salon. Should I believe Suki, surly proprietor of Suki’s Stores, when she tells me parish magazine editor Andrew Gloster is a retired spy? And what should I make of Maudie Frampton, the forthright old lady who trudges about the place in her husband’s hobnail boots, spreading village gossip. Though I confess I’m partial to hearing such rumours when I pop up to The Quarrymen’s Arms at the end of the day.

Do stop by my shop whenever you’re passing. You’ll find a fine array of bric-a-brac, great coffee and cake, and only the occasional dead body.

There’s something for everyone at the Cotswold Curiosity Shop!

Death at the Old Curiosity Shop, An Old Curiosity Shop Mystery Book 1
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: October 2024
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Amazon | Barnes & Noble

A picturesque village. A quaint highstreet… And a murder to solve. Alice’s new life is off to a deadly start.

When Alice Carroll steps into Curiosity Cottage, a picture-perfect former bric-a-brac shop in the Cotswold Village of Little Pride, she thinks she’s found the perfect place to start the new phase of her life. Freshly separated from her collector long-term boyfriend, she’s excited to embrace her new, minimalist existence.

All Alice needs to do is sell off the left-behind stock, and settle in. But the villagers of Little Pride have other ideas, and Alice quickly realises they won’t give up their beloved shop without a fight.

Then a dead body is found buried in her neighbour’s compost heap, and Alice realises there’s much more to Little Pride, and its residents, than meets the eye.

Head for the Cotswolds in this delightful new cozy mystery series, perfect for fans of Fiona Leitch, Faith Martin and Agatha Christie.

Meet the author
Debbie Young is the author of three series of cozy mystery novels set in the Cotswolds, where she has lived for over 30 years. Having served on every local committee from the Horticultural Show to the PTA, she draws on a wealth of intimate knowledge of English rural life to create hilarious, heartwarming village mysteries. In her spare time, she sings in the village choir and is a bell ringer at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Hawkesbury. She finds it disconcerting that her fellow bell ringers keep telling her new ways to kill people with church bells. Death At The Old Curiosity Shop is Debbie Young’s 14th novel.

Find out more about Debbie Young and her writing life at her website, authordebbieyoung.com, where you can also download a fun free cozy mystery novelette, The Pride of Peacocks, when you sign up for her newsletter.