The Secret in the Bookplate

A false bookplate. A dead binder. A family secret pasted over the truth.

When a box of old books arrives at Bellwether House from Greyfield Lodge, rare book cataloguer Nell Harrow expects schoolroom castoffs, worn sermons, and the usual forgotten volumes families send away when an estate is being cleared.

Then she finds A Garland of English Verse.

At first glance, the book appears to carry a Bellwether House bookplate. But the plate is wrong. The paper is too new, the placement is off, and something older seems to be hidden beneath it. Someone wanted the book to look as if it belonged to Bellwether House, and someone wanted the original owner erased.

With the help of solicitor Rowan Vale, sharp-tongued Mara Finch, and the late Ada Bellwether's precise ghostly corrections, Nell begins tracing the buried claim beneath the false one. The trail leads from a modest poetry volume to Greyfield Lodge, the polished Ashcombe family, and a binder who knows far more than he should.

When Arthur Pembroke is found dead in his workshop after examining the book, the mystery becomes impossible to treat as a harmless cataloguing dispute. Someone is protecting an old deception, and the wrong bookplate may expose a secret generations have worked to keep buried.

Elegant, atmospheric, and gently ghostly, The Secret in the Bookplate is a paranormal cozy mystery for readers who love old libraries, rare books, English country houses, family secrets, amateur sleuths, hidden ownership, and ghosts who insist the record be corrected.