The Bookseller Detective

A body sealed inside a wall. A secret he died to protect. And the only woman in London who can find it.

January 1884. Lizzie St. Vrain has spent years hiding her gift from her disapproving relations. But with her grandfather’s bookshop drowning in debt, using it may be their last hope. So she places a discreet advertisement: Plagued by lingering spirits? Now accepting clients for supernatural investigations.

Club owner Griffith Sinclair didn’t survive the East End rookeries by believing in ghosts. But when workmen find a man stabbed to death inside a walled-up passage in his aunt’s new house, she’s certain it’s haunted. Worse, the murdered man sent Griff a cryptic message only hours before his death, and now rumors name Griff as the killer. Desperate to calm his aunt and clear his name, he answers Lizzie’s ad.

He doesn’t believe her claims for a second, and she has every reason to suspect her brooding new client. Yet Griff can’t explain how this sensible, stubborn woman finds what everyone else missed: a list of names, dates and sums that hints at dark sins at the heart of London society. Now the skeptic and the believer must learn to trust each other, because whoever killed for that list is still hunting…

Perfect for readers who love:

- Victorian London mysteries with a touch of the paranormal

- A bookseller sleuth who senses spirits and has a shop to save

- A self-made, street-hardened club owner with a soft spot for his aunt

- A slow-burn spark between wary partners from opposite worlds 

- A cynical hero who doesn’t believe in ghosts, but starts to believe in her

- Hidden passages, dusty bookshops and private gaming clubs

- A twisty mystery involving high society’s darkest secrets

For fans of Irina Shapiro, Cara Devlin and the Lady Sherlock mysteries.

Book 1 in The St. Vrain Investigations.