Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Lovers of reading and strong women will be impressed by this entertaining cozy packed with mystery, romance, and sisterhood.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Could someone’s attempt to create a faux valuable item have served as the motive for murder? The answer seems to lie in Celeste’s mysterious past, which she keeps hidden-until her death puts Nora in grave danger. A joyful reconciliation is followed by the identification of the paper as being much older than the ink. Nora gives the local sheriff a recommendation of an expert to identify the paper, which brings her former college roommate to town, though Nora hasn’t seen her since her own life fell apart years earlier.

Nora’s group springs into action to support Celeste and do some detection. When Bren is found dead in Nora's yard, the only clue is a sheet of paper covered with strange symbols and letters that she left under Nora's doormat. After Celeste Leopold and her moody daughter, Bren, open a health-food store selling CBD oil in Miracle Springs, they’re shunned and verbally attacked by the narrow-minded Women of Lasting Values Society, which also targets Nora's shop for putting a display of books about witches in the window for Halloween. Each member's success in overcoming a troubled past has given her the strength and insight to help Nora solve several murders. Nora Pennington, the owner of Miracle Books in Miracle Springs, has a coterie of friends calling themselves the Secret, Book, and Scone Society. A North Carolina bookseller takes time out from her vocation of matching every reader with the perfect book to solve another murder.

Ink and Shadows by Ellery Adams