A Bookshop Full of Secrets - A Page-Turning Whodunit of a Festival Gone Wrong, Hidden Motives, and the Neighbor No One Suspected

Someone died in the reading room. The door was locked from the inside. And the only person found inside was Lark's sister. Lark Penwythe came back to Inkwell-on-Wye for one reason: bury her father and clear out his crumbling bookshop. She came for closure, not a corpse. But on the eve of the town's annual Literary Lantern Festival, the local historian is found poisoned inside the shop's private reading room — a room locked from the inside, no forced entry, no explanation. The detective has already made up his mind. Sitting in that room, clutching a rare folklore collection, was Briony. Lark's fragile younger sister. No alibi. A history of sleepwalking. A troubling gap in her memory from that very night. The case looks clean. Lark knows it isn't. Because the historian hadn't just been studying Inkwell's past — he'd been threatening to expose a decades-old crime that would shatter the town's most respected families. And now everyone who had reason to want him silenced is wearing their most sympathetic face. To save Briony, Lark has to peel back forty years of buried truth. Bitter academic rivalries. A vanished manuscript. A love affair that ended in flames. A circle of neighbors who've spent a lifetime perfecting the art of the friendly lie. But the killer isn't done. A second death tightens the noose. And the only clues Lark has are faded marginalia in old books, half-remembered recipes, and the hushed confessions of a village that trusts no one. She has until the festival ends. After that, her sister stops being a suspect and becomes a conviction. A Bookshop Full of Secrets is a charming and atmospheric cozy mystery about locked-room murder, small-town secrets, family loyalty, and the sins that surface when the past refuses to stay buried. Perfect for readers who love amateur sleuth mysteries, village whodunits, bookshop settings, golden-era puzzle plots, and cozy crime in the tradition of Anthea Fraser and Rachel Ekstrom Courage. A twisty, cozy whodunit you'll devour in one sitting.