I thoroughly enjoyed Eliza Casey’s Lady Takes the Case. This is the first book in a new series, called ‘Manor Cat Mystery’. The author’s name is a pseudonym for an award -winning author but I have no idea who it is. Set in England in 1912, the heroine Lady Cecilia Bates, is the daughter of the Earl and Countess of Avebury. In an attempt to save the family home, Danby Hall, and the lands, the family is trying to arrange a marriage between Cecilia’s brother Patrick and an American heiress. Needless to say the path to the altar does not go smoothly. The second title in the series Lady Rights a Wrong, will be published in June 2020. (Both the titles are in trade paper $22.)

Kate Collins, who wrote the ‘Flower Shop Mystery’ series has just published a new title, The Statue of Limitations (mm, $10.99). This is the first title in a new series called the ‘Goddess of Greene St. Mystery’. The main character Athena Spencer, has returned to Sequoia, a small coastal town on Lake Michigan from Chicago. Her large Greek family are delighted by her (and her son’s return), and her mother is busily trying to find her a new husband. Athena with her sisters Delphi, Maia and Selene work in the family’s Garden Centre in the Greek section of Sequoia. This area is under threat of demolition for a new development. The intrigue surrounding this threat and a six-foot-tall statue of the goddess Athena, which may have or may not have been stolen, form the centre of the plot.

Nicola Ford is the pen-name of Dr. Nickie Snashall, who is the National Trust archaeologist for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage site. The first title The Hidden Bones, in her Hills and Barbrook series introduced us to recently widowed Clare Hills, who before her marriage had studied to be an archaeologist and Dr. David Barbrook, an old friend from her student days who is now a university lecturer in archaeology. In the second title in the series, The Lost Shrine, Clare is heading an archaeological survey of a tract of arable land which is slated for residential development. The death of the previous head has resulted in many rumours which creates a tense atmosphere further exacerbated by the actions of “the nighthawks”. Nighthawks are metal detectorists who go to archaeological sites under the cover of darkness to pillage the site.