Murder at Secret Pages Bookshop : A small-town bookshop cozy mystery about a blocked crime writer, a dead guest author, and a store full of suspects
About Murder at Secret Pages Bookshop : A small-town bookshop cozy mystery about a blocked crime writer, a dead guest author, and a store full of suspects
Book 1: Murder at Secret Pages Bookshop. Some people go to their hometown bookshop for comfort. Riley Knox walks into a murder scene with her name all over it. When mid list crime writer Riley returns to the seaside town of Thornbridge, her career is in pieces and her bank account is a joke. Her aunt’s indie store, Secret Pages, is supposed to be a safe place to lick her wounds, shelve paperbacks, and maybe coax a new idea onto the screen. Instead, Aunt Maeve lands the kind of event most small shops only dream about. Thriller superstar Grant Calloway is coming for a launch night. Cameras. Wine. A signing queue out the door. It is all going perfectly until the lights flicker in the middle of Grant’s dramatic reading. When they come back on, the guest of honour is on the floor behind the counter, his glass shattered, his pulse gone. His last recorded words are a throwaway joke about being murdered for what is in his new book. Within hours, the whisper turns into a headline. Toxicology hints at poison in Grant’s drinkThe only people near his glass were staff and his tightly wound assistantAn anonymous blog pops up accusing Riley of plagiarising Grant years agoA viral clip resurfaces of Grant mocking Riley at a panel and her snapping backNow Secret Pages is trending for all the wrong reasons, Maeve’s finances are hanging by a thread, and Detective Noah Ellison seems far too interested in Riley’s past with the dead man. To clear her name and save the shop, Riley leans on the only skills she has left. Years of studying crime scenes on the page. A nose for plot holes. An instinct that keeps pointing her back to a locked Local Authors shelf, a missing short story by a forgotten Thornbridge writer, and a literary theft someone buried a long time ago. If stories belong to whoever tells them loudest, Riley is done staying quiet. Murder at Secret Pages Bookshop is a cozy, clue rich mystery for readers who love small town bookshops, sarcastic amateur sleuths, slow burn detective tension, and cases that twist through the world of books and publishing.
Perfect for fans of bookish cozies and clean crime with all the brains and none of the gore