The Christmas Carol Caper
📚 See this whole series in order and tick off what you've read — in the free PureRead Series Tracker.
Open the Series TrackerFifty chairs would not fit in the Fell & Feather. Imogen Frost had done the arithmetic three times on the back of a delivery note, and the arithmetic kept insisting that they would, which only proved that arithmetic had never tried to walk through Travel and Topography with a stack of folding chairs under each arm.
"They'll fit," said Tilly, from somewhere behind the poetry shelf.
"They'll fit if we move Local Interest."
"Then we move Local Interest."
"Local Interest weighs as much as a small pony and it's screwed to the floor," Imogen said, hauling a chair upright.
Perfect for fans of bookshop cosy mysteries, impossible theft puzzles, and Christmas village settings.
A bookseller whose loan rides on one rare book. A bookbinder who won’t go home. A Lakeland village with a debt sixty Christmases old.
Imogen Frost, Third-Generation Bookseller and Owner of the Fell & Feather. Imogen runs the Fell & Feather in Thornmere, where her grandfather’s 1843 first edition has sat in a locked Victorian case since 1962. Then the lights fail at the village Christmas reading, and the case is found empty. She wants it back before the bank reviews her loan. The door was shut, the window latched, every bag searched, and Thornmere is whispering about insurance.
Callum Rooke, Kendal Bookbinder Working for the Insurer. Callum checked the case for the insurer on the morning of the reading. The next day he is back at her counter with his loupes, unasked. He believes books are stolen by people who understand them. But a bookbinder’s opinion is not evidence, and he will not build a case out of guesses.
The book secures the loan that keeps the shop open, unsigned notes in violet ink keep arriving, and a sixty-year-old village grudge carries the Frost name. Three generations of bookselling may end with Imogen.
Some chains were forged in this shop. This Christmas, Imogen means to find out which ones.
– bookshop cosy mystery — a third-generation bookseller in a crooked old village shop
– rare book theft — an 1843 first edition gone from its locked Victorian case
– impossible crime — a blackout, a shut door, a latched window and a shop full of neighbours
– anonymous notes — unsigned lines in violet ink, two on the doormat and one in the evening post
– village feud — a Thornmere family that has crossed the street to avoid the Frosts for sixty years
– slow-burn romance — a reserved Kendal bookbinder who keeps coming back
– teen sidekick — the village sergeant’s sixteen-year-old niece behind the till
– English village Christmas — fairy lights on Kirkgate, mince pies and snow on the fells
– clean cosy mystery — a theft rather than a murder, with no profanity and no violence
Perfect for fans of bookshop cosy mysteries, impossible-theft puzzles set in an English village at Christmas, and a slow-burn romance between two people who work with old books.
Spend December in Thornmere with Book 2 of the Lakeland Christmas Cosy Mystery series today.
Heat Level: Closed Door (no on-page intimacy)
Tone: Cosy · Witty · Heart-warming
Series Type: Book 2 in the Lakeland Christmas Cosy Mystery series — each book reads as a standalone
Ending: Hopeful close
POV: Single POV · Third Person
Inspirational Theme: Hopeful · faith-friendly tone
