Violet Waverly rushes home to her ailing grandmother to find it was all a ploy to get her closer to home. Violet begins working in Charming Books, her grandma's magical bookshop. Soon a dead man is discovered clutching a volume of Emily Dickinson's poems and Violet is caught up in the mystery.

Violet Waverly sleuths a Thoreau-ly puzzling Christmastime murder in Agatha Award-winning, USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower's fifth Magical Bookshop mystery. Christmas is coming to the Western New York village of Cascade Springs, and so is the long-awaited wedding of Charming Books proprietor Violet Waverly and police chief David Rainwater. Grandma Daisy and Violet's best friend, Sadie, go all out to make the nuptials the event of the season--whether Violet likes it or not. But the reception becomes memorable for all the wrong reasons when a woman's dead body floats by on the frigid Niagara River. Violet is shocked to recognize the deceased as a mysterious woman who visited Charming Books two days before the wedding, toting a rare first edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Well aware that a mint condition copy could be worth more than $14,000, Violet told the woman she would have to have the book appraised before she could consider buying it. Most displeased, the woman tucked the precious tome under her arm and stormed out of the shop. Now she's dead, and an enigmatic message scrawled in pen upon her palm reads, "They stole my book." It's a confounding case, indeed. But fortunately, Violet can draw on the resources of her bookshop's magical consciousness, which communicates clues to Violet via quotes from Walden. With Emerson the tuxedo cat and Faulkner the crow at her side, Violet sets out to recover the priceless book by solving a murder most transcendental.

The hunting accident -- Little Italy -- A young man's trouble with the law -- Code of silence -- The truth -- Nathan Leopold -- The darkness -- Plato's cave -- The inferno -- The übermensch -- Principles of sound -- The woods of the suicides -- Final exam -- The sins of the fathers -- The glim box -- The letter -- Purgatorio -- Paradiso.

Magic, books, and cats collide in a village near Niagara Falls in the latest Magical Bookshop Mystery from the author of Crime and Poetry. In Cascade Springs, New York, Violet Waverly and her grandma, Daisy, are the proprietors of Charming Books, where the power of the written word is positively enchanting... October in Cascade Springs means tourists are pouring in for the annual Food and Wine Festival, and Daisy hopes to draw those crowds to the store. She asks Violet and the local writing group, the Red Inkers, to give a reading of the works of Edgar Allan Poe in the shop’s back garden to entertain the revelers. Everyone eagerly agrees. Yet their enthusiasm is soon extinguished when Violet discovers one of the writers dead during the event. After the shop magically tells Violet she’ll need to rely on Poe’s works to solve the murder, she enlists the help of her trusty tuxedo cat, Emerson, and the shop’s crow, Faulkner. But they must act fast before someone else’s heart beats nevermore...

Offering inspiration to all, one man's philosophy of life and truth, considered one of the classics of our time.

"Designated as the prestigious 1989 Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets, and winner of the 1991 American Library Association Gay/Lesbian Book Award, Pratt's Crime Against Nature is a stunning achievement. This beautifully crafted sequence of poems takes its title from language in the statute under which the author could have been prosecuted as a lesbian if she had sought legal custody of her children. These are poems of despair, self-doubt, sexual bliss, sexual shame, exhilaration, rage, hope, victory. In Crime Against Nature, Pratt breathes new life into the words lesbian, poet, mother. Without contradiction or self-denial, she holds herself, her loves, and her children in a world of passion, of power being realized, of wholeness."--AUTHOR WEBSITE.

USA Today–bestselling author Amanda Flower returns with the third cozy mystery in her more-charming-than-ever Magical Bookshop series—for fans of Sofie Kelly and Heather Blake. Niagara region booksellers Violet Waverly and Grandma Daisy get a little help from Little Women as they sleuth the slaying of a sommelier whose book signing turned into her sayonara. January means ice wine season in the Niagara Falls region, but the festivities leave Charming Books owner Violet Waverly cold, still reeling from a past heartbreak. A past heartbreak who will be present at the annual midnight grape-harvest festival, and no magic in the world or incantation powerful enough could get Violet to attend. But Grandma Daisy, an omniscient force all on her own, informs Violet that she’s already arranged for the mystical Charming Books to host celebrity sommelier Belinda Perkins’s book signing at the party. Little do either Waverly women know, the ice wine festival will turn colder still when Violet finds Belinda in the middle of the frozen vineyard—with a grape harvest knife protruding from her chest. Belinda grew up in Cascade Springs, but she left town years ago after a huge falling-out with her three sisters. One of those sisters, Violet’s high school friend Lacey Dupont, attends the book signing in the hope of making amends with her sister, but Belinda and Lacey end up disrupting the signing with a very public shouting match and Lacey quickly becomes the prime suspect in the sommelier’s murder. Violet is sure Lacey is innocent, and to keep her friend out of prison, Violet asks for guidance from her magical bookshop. The shop’s ethereal essence points her to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, but what have the four March sisters to do with the four Perkins sisters? If she can’t figure it out, Violet, herself, may turn as cold as ice. Violet, Grandma Daisy, Emerson the tuxedo cat, and resident crow Faulkner are back on the case in Murders and Metaphors, USA Today–bestselling author Amanda Flower’s enchanting third Magical Bookshop mystery.