Never underestimate a librarian.

Intelligent cosy crime series with razor-sharp wit and an unlikely hero, for fans of P.G. Wodehouse and Muriel Spark

Intrepid fifty-something librarian Shona McMonagle, erstwhile Marcia Blaine Academy prefect, finds herself in an isolated French mountain village, where she must solve a mystery involving the mayor, the cheesemonger, the soprano Mary Garden, and even Count Dracula himself.

Shona has been personally selected by school founder Marcia Blaine to travel back in time for this important mission in fin-de-siècle France – a curiously Gothic setting. But she finds it all very confusing. Why, for example, have so many people been torn to death by wild animals, what are Maman and the mayor up to, and is the reclusive aristocrat really suffering from toothache?

It’s a race against time to solve the mystery. It is also a very tall order – but as Shona is wont to remind herself: Never underestimate a librarian!