Shadows on the Ivy
An Antique Print Mystery
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Maggie Summer has three loves: her antique print business, Shadows; her career as a community college professor in Somerset County, New Jersey; and the new man in her life, Will Brewer. Her biological clock is pushing her to decide whether she's ready to add a fourth love: an adopted child.
Although Will is on the road just now, Maggie's life is full. She uses prints by Currier & Ives, Thomas Nast, and William Ludwell Sheppard to illustrate her lectures on American cultural history, and Oliver and Dorothy Whitcomb, a wealthy couple who are on the college board, are two of her best customers.
When the Whitcombs design and dedicate a special dormitory for single parents and their children, Maggie is thrilled to become the faculty adviser to the young parents. Her new assignment gives her plenty of time to think about what single parenthood would mean for her. Plenty of time -- until one of the young mothers is poisoned, and the web of danger at the dorm threatens to encircle Maggie.
There is a killer on campus. Is it an outsider or someone Maggie knows and trusts? Does someone want to destroy Whitcomb House or the college? And is Maggie in as much danger as her students?
As always, Maggie finds the answers to her questions in the antique prints she knows and loves. And this time, torn between her own needs and those of her students, the most important discoveries Maggie makes are about herself.
Rich with appealing characters and fascinating insiders' lore about antique prints, Shadows on the Ivy is the best yet in this award-nominated series from an author who brilliantly brings together her knowledge of prints and her love of storytelling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Agatha nominee Wait's third enjoyable antique print mystery (after 2003's Shadows on the Coast of Maine), professor, antique print dealer and part-time sleuth Maggie Summer gets embroiled in an on-campus murder. Somerset County College, thanks to wealthy benefactors Dorothy and Oliver Whitcomb, is experimenting with a new dormitory designed to house single parents and their children. During a party at the Whitcombs' house, one of the students is poisoned, and as student adviser for the dorm residents, Maggie takes great interest in the case. When another student is murdered, Maggie digs even harder to get at the truth. Who could possibly have a motive to harm these struggling students? Are the Whitcombs as benevolent as they seem, or do they each have ulterior motives that could prove sinister? Maggie is hard put to juggle her teaching duties (during lectures she uses antique prints to illustrate American history) with her detecting. While it has little to do with the plot, Wait's knowledge of antique prints and American culture will entertain and educate readers.