New York Times bestselling author Paige Shelton returns with the next installment of The Scottish Bookshop Mystery series, The Stolen Letter.
Delaney Nichols is confident she’s doing what she loves—case in point, just one day after returning from her fabulous European honeymoon, she’s eager to get back to the Cracked Spine, the bookstore where she works. But as she disembarks her bus and hurries toward the shop she and another woman collide, sending a stack of books the woman is carrying to the ground.
Delaney’s hapless victim’s name is Mary, and the two women can’t help but notice that they bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. According to Mary, they both also look like the long-beheaded Mary Queen of Scots. Even stranger, Mary believes she is the reincarnation of the Scottish queen. But peculiar as Delaney’s doppelganger is, she doesn’t have time to dwell on it: on her arrival to the bookshop, she learns the Edinburgh city council wants to close the Cracked Spine, citing code violations, and she’s determined to stop them.
But when Mary’s husband dies in a car explosion—and Delaney learns he was the very member of city council who proposed that the city take a closer look at the bookshop’s construction—she starts to wonder if her meeting with Mary wasn’t an accident. Edinburgh has become as filled with intrigue and deception as any European court, and Delaney is determined to get to the bottom of this royal mystery.
Delaney Nichols is back in the most captivating Scottish Book Shop mystery yet. This time, she has to save The Cracked Spine from a bogus closure process involving the reincarnated Mary, Queen of Scots and underhanded government officials. The familiar and beloved book shop characters are back – Rosie, Hector, Hamlet, and Edwin. Although landlords Aggie and Elias play much smaller roles in this one, new husband Tom is front and center.
Delaney charms the reader again with her quick wit and bookish voices as she follows multiple clue strands through to the thrilling conclusion. As cozies go, this series is one of the best out there. The location descriptions are wonderful, the characters endearing, and the mysteries inventive and interesting. Well done!
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
Published By: St. Martin’s/Minotaur Books
Thanks to Netgalley for he review copy
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