The Cruellest Month

Oxford's New Bodleian library holds many secrets—and some of them are deadly—as Mrs. Malory discovers in this "civilized and tantalizing mystery" (Publishers Weekly).

Widow Sheila Malory has been looking forward to her stay at the Bodleian Library in Oxford as a chance to research wartime women writers and catch up with old friends from her college years, the one "purely happy" time in her whole life. But her relaxing idyll is interrupted when librarian Gwen Richmond is crushed to death beneath collapsed bookshelves.

After the accident proves to be murder, Mrs. Malory's godson Tony, another library employee, asks Mrs. Malory to help investigate. Gwen was manipulative and unpleasant, so there is no shortage of suspects. Among them are the girl Tony is in love with and a female don who has stolen an artifact from an archeological dig. But Gwen's own diaries from World War II reveal even more dreadful truths—and force Mrs. Malory to see her happy past in a new and colder light.

Holt's second Mrs. Malory Mystery explores both modern Oxford and rural wartime England "with just the perfect balance of humor, introspection and vulnerability" (St. Petersburg Times).

"A wonderful heroine." —St. Petersburg Times