Showing results by author "Nancy Atherton" in All Categories

While exploring the attic in her cottage near the small English village of Finch, Lori Shepherd makes an extraordinary discovery: a gold and silver bracelet inlaid with gleaming garnets, which she quickly learns belonged to Aunt Dimity. When Lori brings news of the garnet bracelet to Aunt Dimity, it awakens poignant memories of a doomed romance in Aunt Dimity's past. Regretfully, Aunt Dimity asks Lori to do what she could not bring herself to do - return the bracelet to her unsuccessful suitor or to his rightful heir.

When Lori Shepherd returns from her trip to America, she is shocked to hear that Prunella "Pruneface" Hooper has been killed. This is the first murder in the village of Finch in more than a century, and everyone is in an uproar. Before the town implodes in the wake of this scandal, Lori sets out to solve the murder. Unfortunately, nearly everyone in Finch had a reason to want Mrs. Hooper dead.

The gentle spirit's sixteenth adventure is a New York Times bestseller and as "cozy and charming as a cup of Earl Grey" (Bookpage.com). After a dizzying time Down Under, Lori Shepherd returns to Finch and finds that her wealthy father-in-law, William Willis, Sr., has just purchased a splendid ten-acre estate nearby. While William fends off local ladies intent on romance, Lori oversees the painstaking restoration of a peculiar painting found during renovations. It's nothing Lori can't handle-until moving furniture, strange sounds, and the theft of the painting prompt her to call on Aunt Dimity for help uncovering the estate's shadowy past.

When a finely wrought silver sleigh figurine turns up in her thrift shop, Lori Shepherd recognizes it instantly. It was the object that mesmerized the sweet but very poor nine-year-old Daisy Pickering at Sproggton Manor, the bizarre Jacobean house-turned-museum Lori recently visited with her twin sons. Hoping to avoid any real commotion, Lori decides to speak with the museum curator, who turns out to be oddly uninterested in the theft. But there’s not much that could be done anyway for the Pickerings seem to have come into some money and moved to Australia.

On a dull and dreary October day, Lori Shepherd and her husband set off for a quiet weekend without the kids. But before they go, he must pay a visit to a reclusive client. After Lori drops him off, a storm that's been brewing intensifies, and she ends up stranded in an ancient, rambling inn named for a king's ransom in smuggled goods that passed through the village in ages past. When Lori begins hearing footsteps and strange noises, Aunt Dimity reminds her that the inn is almost certainly haunted but that not all ghosts are interested in harming the living. But the longer Lori is stuck at the inn, the stranger things seem.

Nancy Atherton ’s Aunt Dimity novels have enchanted thousands of readers, and this new addition to the series is likely to broaden the spell. A series of death threats sends Lori Shepard to a remote island off the Scottish coast and to a fabulous castle restored by an eccentric friend of her husband’s. But she finds herself drawn into an elaborate whodunit that may involve smuggling - or worse. Why has a human skull washed up on the beach? Is a desolate island really the best place to hide from a murderer? As Lori draws once more on Aunt Dimity’s supernatural aid, Atherton whips equal measures of whimsy and suspense into an irresistible confection.

When a strapping young Jack MacBride arrives in Finch to wrap up his late uncle's affairs, heads turn in the sleepy English village. But when Lori volunteers to help Jack clear out his uncle's overgrown garden, they discover something even more shocking than a stranger turning up in Finch. After Lori laughingly tosses a coin into the garden's old well and makes a wish, she is baffled to find that the wish seems to have come true. Word spreads, and the villagers turn out in droves to make wishes of their own. But as they soon learn, one person's wish is another person's worst nightmare.

Lori Shepherd and the phantom Aunt Dimity have become one of the mystery genre’s most celebrated detective duos. In their latest adventure, a pleasant woodland stroll through the English countryside is rudely cut short by the blizzard of the century, forcing Lori to take shelter in Ladythorne Abbey - an old pile still haunted by the presence of the madwoman whose prison it once was. But the abbey’s greatest secret is the priceless jewel it conceals somewhere within its cloisters - an heirloom that hides a treacherous past that Lori’s fellow guests can’t wait to get their hands on.

In Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, Lori's twins are now toddlers, walking and talking enough to drive her nearly stir crazy. So she jumps at the offer of a break - a trip to evaluate a rare-book collection in a remote and misty corner of Northumberland. On a dark and stormy night in late October, she sets out for Wyrdhurst Hall, the grim neo-Gothic castle owned by newlyweds Nicole and Jared Hollander. On the way there she encounters Adam Chase, a charming, handsome stranger who knows more than he's telling about the hall's mysterious secrets....

While her husband and sons are spending Easter break camping, Lori is perfectly happy to be left at home where she can take care of her toddler and attend the quilting bee that her elderly neighbor is holding in the old schoolhouse. In fact, once at the schoolhouse, Lori is delighted to find herself seated next to her widowed neighbor and uses the opportunity to learn more about her life in the village of Old Cowerton.

Lori Shepherd and her family spend Christmas in the cottage willed to her by her late Aunt Dimity, but when she discovers a stranger barely alive in the snow, she teams up with a priest and together they unveil the tragic secret that led the stranger to her door.

Everyone's favorite paranormal detective is back in Nancy Atherton's 13th Aunt Dimity mystery - but this time Lori's supernatural confidante may not be the only one who's not quite dead. Could the cloaked figure Lori's twins saw in the woods near the family's English country cottage really have been a vampire? Atherton's ever-growing legion of fans and all fans of cozy mysteries will find themselves curling up with a nice cup of garlic- er, tea - for the most spine-tingling Aunt Dimity mystery yet.

When Lori Shepherd's husband, Bill, is summoned to a will reading at the Earl of Harrisford's resplendent Palladian home, Lori herself thinks she is just along for the ride. But this gathering of the entire Harrisford clan, all of them affected by the earl's new will, devolves into a dangerous family dispute. Burning topiaries, threatening notes, suspicious maids, and family intrigue lead Lori to seek her phantom aunt's help in identifying the culprit before he or she can torch the whole house and its guests within.

There's trouble in Finch. Four recently sold cottages are standing empty, and the locals fear that a developer plans to turn their cozy village into an enclave of overpriced weekend homes. But for once, Lori Shepherd can't help. Her infant daughter, her father-in-law's upcoming wedding, and the crushing prospect of her 40th birthday have left her feeling overwhelmed.

The latest in this enchanting and fast-selling series, featuring the beloved ghost Aunt Dimity, opens in a picturesque English cottage where the lovable Lori Shepherd is up to her elbows in pureed carrots and formula bottles, striving to be the perfect mother to twins! Luckily, a beautiful Italian nanny arrives just in time - so Lori can help settle the local civil war stirred up by a visiting archaeologist's excavation. With Reginald, the stuffed pink rabbit, and Edmond Terrance, the stuffed tiger in tow, Lori hunts down a missing document.

Nancy Atherton's growing number of fans will certainly be delighted by Aunt Dimity's latest appearance in the honey-colored English cottage she bequeathed to her "niece", Lori Shepherd. Thanks to Aunt Dimity, Lori's life has taken on fairy-tale proportions: She's financially set for life and happily married...or so she thinks. When Lori's plans for a second honeymoon to England with her workaholic husband fall through, she begrudgingly takes along her father-in-law who promptly disappears, leaving behind a mysterious note.

Feeling a touch world-weary, Lori Shepherd decides to become a volunteer at the Radcliffe Infirmary, where she can spread a little good cheer. There she meets Elizabeth Beacham, a kind, retired legal secretary with no family, except a brother who has mysteriously disappeared. But after only a few visits, Miss Beacham suddenly passes away, leaving Lori to tie up the loose ends of her late friend’s life. Lori soon discovers that hidden among Miss Beacham’s belongings are clues that Lori believes her friend left for her to discover.

Nancy Atherton 's Aunt Dimity series has charmed its way into the hearts of mystery fans everywhere, finding a larger audience with each new book. In Aunt Dimity Goes West, Atherton's vivid storytelling and knack for bringing a setting to life will have fans lassoed to their chairs. Lori Shepherd, still recovering from her most recent adventure, is taking a vacation with her family in the beautiful mountain town of Bluebird, Colorado. But there's something amiss at their seemingly perfect vacation home. Is the place cursed? Or is a sinister human hand shaping its eerie reputation?

Emma Porter is 40, fat, frumpy, and a passionate amateur gardener. When her longtime lover dumps her for a younger woman, Emma escapes the cloying sympathy of family and friends by setting out on a summer-long driving tour of England's glorious gardens. A Dimity-contrived coincidence brings her to Penford Hall, a sprawling Gothic mansion in Cornwall, where she finds a duke in search of a missing lantern with extraordinary powers.

Last year, the otherworldly sleuth's devoted fans secured a place on the New York Times best seller list for Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree. Now Lori and Aunt Dimity are back on the list - and this time, they're on a witch-hunt.