The Murder at Marigold Bookshop by Mara Quinn

A dead man. A village full of secrets. And a bookshop that has been keeping them for decades.

When forty-two-year-old Violet Finch inherits her late aunt's bookshop in the picturesque English village of Marigold-on-Wye, she expects a quieter life among dusty shelves, eccentric customers, and Agatha, the shop's decidedly opinionated ginger cat.

She does not expect to find local property owner Edmund Blackwood dead in the Mystery section before opening one rainy morning.

Unfortunately for Violet, the evidence is rather inconvenient. A letter opener belonging to her family lies beside the body, Blackwood had been trying to buy Marigold Books for months, and half the village heard Violet tell him he would get the shop "over my dead body."

Enter Detective Inspector Daniel Hart: clever, irritatingly observant, and not nearly as willing to dismiss Violet as a suspect as she would prefer.

But Blackwood's death is only the beginning.

A mysterious envelope, a missing box, an old village history, and a cryptic message left by Violet's aunt point towards a secret buried beneath Marigold-on-Wye for more than fifty years. With the irrepressible Beatrice Honeysett supplying gossip from the bakery across the road, Agatha providing distinctly unhelpful assistance, and Hart repeatedly suggesting that Violet leave the investigating to the police, Violet begins asking questions someone would very much prefer remained unanswered.

Because Marigold Books hasn't merely been selling stories.

It has been hiding one.

And someone has already killed to keep it that way.

The Murder at Marigold Bookshop is the first book in The Marigold Bookshop Mysteries, a charming English village cozy mystery series featuring a bookshop full of secrets, an amateur sleuth with a talent for trouble, an opinionated ginger cat, a cast of eccentric villagers, and a touch of slow-burn romance.