Alan Bradley

When Flavia de Luce is banished to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada she’s soon on familiar ground, when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve.

Flavia's mother, Harriet, has always been presumed dead, killed in a mountaineering accident in Tibet. Now, astonishingly, she returns to Buckshaw, and series of bizarre and deadly events occur, as a most curious group of individuals converge to pay their respects…

Flavia is enjoying the summer, spending her days punting along the river with her reluctant family. Languishing in boredom, she drags a slack hand in the water, and catches her fingers in the open mouth of a drowned corpse. Flavia needs to put her super-sleuthing skills to the test to investigate the murder of three gossips in the local church, and to keep her sisters out of danger.

With the family finances in a state, Flavia's father has rented Buckshaw to a film company for a location shooting. When the actors are talked into staging a benefit performance, old jealousies surface, and the leading lady is murdered! As the list of suspects grows, Flavia investigates.

For Flavia de Luce, the words of an old gypsy open up old wounds. Is she a faker, or is there some truth to her powers? And when the village is rocked by another ghastly murder, how will a growing fascination with gypsy lore help Flavia to solve it?

The villagers of Bishop’s Lacey are holding their breath as St Tancred’s tomb is about to be opened after 500 years. But the body is not that of a saint; it is Mr Collicutt, St Tancred's celebrated organist. Flavia soon finds herself investigating one of Bishop's Lacey's most peculiar families.

Flavia de Luce is back at Buckshaw when she makes a macabre discovery - the corpse of a reclusive woodcarver, in a house, empty except for a curiously uncurious cat. Curiosity may not kill this cat, however, what awaits Flavia will shake her to the core.

A grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in Bishop's Lacey village hall tests Flavia de Luce's powers of deduction to the limit - and provides a shocking insight into the darker corners of the adult world.