Little Bookshop of Murder by Maggie Blackburn is the first book in the NEW “Beach Reads” cozy mystery series, coming September 8, 2020.
A Shakespearean scholar inherits a beachside bookshop–and a murder mystery–in this delightful new cozy series for fans of Kate Carlisle and Ellery Adams.
Summer Merriweather’s career as a Shakespeare professor hangs by a bookbinder’s thread. Academic life at her Virginia university is a viper’s pit, so Summer spends her summer in England, researching a scholarly paper that, with any luck, will finally get her published, impress the Dean, and save her job. But her English idyll ends when her mother, Hildy, shuffles off her mortal coil from an apparent heart attack.
Returning to Brigid’s Island, NC, for the funeral, Summer is impatient to settle the estate, sell her mom’s embarrassingly romance-themed bookstore, Beach Reads, and go home. But as she drops by Beach Reads, Summer finds threatening notes addressed to Hildy: “Sell the bookstore or die.”
Clearly, something is rotten on Brigid’s Island. What method is behind the madness? Was Hildy murdered? The police insist there’s not enough evidence to launch a murder investigation. Instead, Summer and her Aunt Agatha screw their courage to the sticking place and start sleuthing, with the help of Hildy’s beloved book club. But there are more suspects on Brigid’s Island than are dreamt of in the Bard’s darkest philosophizing. And if Summer can’t find the villain, the town will be littered with a Shakespearean tragedy’s worth of corpses–including her own.
Dru’s Musing:
What a fantastic ending that came full circle for Summer Merriweather in this fresh new whodunit that craved to be solved.
This was a well-executed light drama that I could not put down until all was said and done. Believing her healthy mother could not have succumbed to a heart attack and with the police not listening, Summer takes it upon herself to find the truth and in doing that, learned some truths herself. The author know how to tell a story that had me immersed in every aspect from Summer’s arrival at the island home, to a look at her mother’s circle of friends, to hindering a killer’s threat to do harm, and to dogged determination in solving this, no matter the risk. Boasting a quirky cast of lovable characters, engaging dialogue, and a small-town atmosphere (I love that bookstore), this was a wonderful beginning to a series that I look forward to more adventures in reading, especially with that ending.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
This book is on my To Be Read list.