Murder, Mutton, and the Earl Who Wouldn't Tip

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Murder, Love & Ghosts

De: Marisa Paxon

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

I am the narrator of this book; I dragged every quarrel, corpse, kitchen mishap, and regrettable glance across the page without so much as a thank you, and now they have decided I must sell it to you as well. Very well; if I could endure the Earl of Harrowden’s dinner table, I can certainly endure your browser window.

What you are walking into is a cozy Regency manor house mystery with one extremely opinionated ghost. Harrowden House is a grand Northumberland pile kept upright on watered wine and creative accounting, and I had the privilege of watching its famously miserly earl drop dead over the mutton in a fashion so undignified that everyone instantly pretended nothing had happened. Minutes later, he reappeared in the scullery to Harriet Wainwright alone, a sharp tongued kitchen maid with a terrifyingly good memory for missing joints and missing shillings, and he has been counting crumbs at her elbow ever since. He remembers almost nothing useful about his final hours, of course, but he has very firm opinions about wasted candles, suspicious bookkeeping, and a missing ledger that ought to be upstairs and balanced, unlike his last breath.

To reach that ledger, Harriet needs someone who can stroll through locked corridors as if they were built for him, which regrettably describes the Honourable Sebastian, the earl’s cheerful younger son, the right face, and a reputation for not taking anything seriously until it actually matters. He cannot see the gaunt, powdered ghost glowering beside her, but he can see the way she pauses in doorways and mutters numbers under her breath, so I was forced to shepherd them into a reluctant partnership: she brings the ghost and the ledgers, he brings the keys and the charm, and together they pick through genteel secrets where murder and miserliness look uncomfortably alike. If they fail, Harriet becomes the most convenient person to blame, Sebastian’s already precarious credit collapses with the house’s finances, and Gideon Harrowden will go on policing every ribbon, candle, and crust until one last, mortifying correction is made that has very little to do with the coroner and far too much to do with pride.

If you like kitchen maids who can out-think the gentry over a butcher’s bill, younger sons who weaponise charm in service of actual competence, penny pinching ghosts who behave like auditors with unfinished business, and investigations built on receipts, gossip, and who knows exactly how much soap costs, then yes, I know exactly the sort of reader you are. Perfect for readers who collect village and manor house whodunits, enjoy sharp upstairs-downstairs banter, and secretly prefer their supernatural activity petty, practical, and extremely British.

Here is your contract, since apparently I must spell it out: a clue rich mystery with a satisfying, logical reveal, and a closed door slow burn romance that lands in a solid, class-crossing HEA. The murder is tidy rather than gory, the worst injuries are to reputations and account books, and the heat lives in stolen glances, late night confrontations in unwise alcoves, and a small number of kisses that are nobody else’s business. This is a fully complete stand alone case in the Regency: Ghostly Grievances Society world, so you may start here without homework, though I am sure they will make me shepherd you through other hauntings in due course. For now, if you are ready to spend an evening in a crumbling country house where a dead earl counts crumbs while two inconveniently besotted fools count clues, kindly stop loitering on the product page and let me drag you into chapter one.