When Harriet Met Homicide

A small-town bookstore owner investigates the mysterious death of her favorite author, using all she has learned from fictional crimes in this charming adult debut mystery by award-winning author Meg Blakemore.

When reclusive, cult author Kaye Montgomery dies, her publisher calls Harriet Page, the thirtysomething owner of a small bookstore in Kaye’s rural New Hampshire hometown. The literary estate needs Harriet’s help to go through the copious amounts of writing that Kaye left behind, and as a Kaye Montgomery super-fan, Harriet is thrilled to get this behind the scenes view of the author she adored from afar. Before the work can even get going, though, Kaye’s death is declared a homicide: poisoning by hemlock. Harriet, along with her team of booksellers, decides to solve the crime.

As Harriet and the booksellers dig through clues and create color-coded spreadsheets, a hornet’s nest of suspects emerges. Kaye’s nephews, cousins Ezra and Wes, both handsome, both keeping secrets, enlist her help in finding the rumored second novel of their aunt. Also, on the scene: the supremely prolific bestselling thriller author Harrison Magnus, who knew Kaye when they both went to Yale. There’s also Harriet’s on-again, off-again boyfriend who has a previously undisclosed interest in poisonous plants. With every twist and turn of the investigation, Harriet becomes entangled in a plot as engrossing as her favorite mysteries.