A Most Edifying Murder at the Ladies’ Library

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Love and Murder

The Ladies’ Minerva Library is very keen on improving the female mind. It is much less keen on having a dead clergyman flattened under a bookcase in the restricted pamphlet room. Especially when the room was locked, the pamphlets are loudly against novels, and the keys were in Eleanor Pryce’s sensible pocket the whole time.

Eleanor, assistant librarian and quiet smuggler of scandalous Gothics to deserving matrons, has two problems. First, a righteous reverend who has obligingly become a locked room murder in the pamphlet room. Second, Henry Blackwood, a dangerously charming publisher whose firm has profited from every sort of fiction the Minerva publicly deplores. If they cannot prove what really toppled the shelves, the magistrate will call it Providence, the trustees will call it a disgrace, and Eleanor will lose both her post and the only place in London where women may read what they please.

Together, Eleanor and Henry pick through wedges, catalogues, ruined reputations, and increasingly nervous subscribers, in a clue rich, fair play mystery with a closed door slow burn romance and a happy for now ending. The violence stays offstage, the humour is dry, and the pamphlets are vicious only in print.

Perfect for readers who adore cozy Regency mysteries, locked room puzzles, irreverent takes on moralists, and slow, reluctant attraction that behaves itself in public. Tap Look Inside or Read for Free to visit a library where the pamphlets judge everyone, and the heroine judges them right back.