Ink and Shadows
A Witty & Page-Turning Southern Cozy Mystery
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4.5 • 23 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Controversy erupts in Miracle Springs, North Carolina, when the owner of the local bookstore tries to play peacekeeper—but winds up playing detective instead . . .
Known for her window displays, Nora Pennington decides to showcase fictional heroines like Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Madeline Miller’s Circe for Halloween. But a family-values group disapproves of the magical themes and wastes no time launching a modern-day witch hunt. Suddenly, former friends and customers are targeting not only Nora and Miracle Books, but a new shopkeeper, Celeste, who’s been selling CBD oil products.
Nora and her friends in the Secret, Book, and Scone Society are doing their best to put an end to the strife—but then someone puts an end to a life. Declared an accident, the ruling can’t explain the old book page covered with strange symbols and disturbing drawings left under Nora’s doormat. It’s up to Nora and the Secret, Book, and Scone Society to sort out the clues before more bodies turn up and the secrets from Celeste’s past come back to haunt them all . . .
“Entertaining . . . packed with mystery, romance, and sisterhood.”
—Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's fall festival season in Miracle Springs, N.C., in bestseller Adams's subpar fourth Secret, Book, and Scone Society mystery (after 2020's The Book of Candlelight), and good-hearted Nora Pennington, the owner of Miracle Books, and her friend and employee, Sheldon Vega, choose powerful women as the theme for the shop's front window. Following an evening at the Farm to Table festival, Nora returns home to find an old book page covered in strange symbols on her deck and a dead body on her lawn. In between shared moments with her circle of friends, Nora investigates and becomes a target for both a murderer and the strident Women of Lasting Values Society. Nora's constant need to suggest books to everyone she meets makes her bibliophilia seem like a clinical disorder and mostly serves to pad the slim plot. Inveterate readers looking for new authors to try may welcome Nora's nonstop recommendations. Others will hope for a meatier plot next time.
