While at an Oxford cocktail party, tearoom owner Gemma Rose overhears a sinister conversation minutes before a University student is fatally poisoned. Could there be a connection? And could her best friend Cassie's new boyfriend have anything to do with the murder? Gemma decides to start her own investigation, helped by the nosy ladies from her Oxfordshire village and her old college flame, CID detective Devlin O'Connor. But her mother is causing havoc at Gemma's quaint English tearoom and her best friend is furious at her snooping... and this mystery is turning out to have more twists than a chocolate pretzel! Too late, Gemma realises that she's could be the next item on the killer's menu. Or will her little tabby cat, Muesli, save the day? (** Velvet Cheesecake recipe included!)

While at an Oxford cocktail party, tearoom owner Gemma Rose overhears a sinister conversation minutes before a University student is fatally poisoned. Could there be a connection? And could her best friend Cassie's new boyfriend have anything to do with the murder? Gemma decides to start her own investigation, helped by the nosy ladies from her Oxfordshire village and her old college flame, CID detective Devlin O'Connor. But her mother is causing havoc at Gemma's quaint English tearoom and her best friend is furious at her snooping... and this mystery is turning out to have more twists than a chocolate pretzel Too late, Gemma realises that she's could be the next item on the killer's menu. Or will her little tabby cat, Muesli, save the day?

While at an Oxford cocktail party, tearoom owner Gemma Rose overhears a sinister conversation minutes before a University student is fatally poisoned. Could there be a connection? And could her best friend Cassie's new boyfriend have anything to do with the murder? Gemma decides to start her own investigation, helped by the nosy ladies from her Oxfordshire village and her old college flame, CID detective Devlin O'Connor. But her mother is causing havoc at Gemma's quaint English tearoom and her best friend is furious at her snooping... and this mystery is turning out to have more twists than a chocolate pretzel! Too late, Gemma realises that she's could be the next item on the killer's menu. Or will her little tabby cat, Muesli, save the day? (** Velvet Cheesecake recipe included!)

Gemma ditches her high-flying job and returns to Oxford to follow her dream: opening a traditional English tearoom serving warm buttery scones with jam and clotted cream, and fragrant tea in pretty bone china... Only problem is-murder is the first thing on the menu and Gemma is the key suspect! And the only people Gemma can turn to for help are four nosy old ladies from her local Cotswolds village - not to mention a cheeky little tabby cat named Muesli. Who is the mysterious woman Gemma met on the flight back from Australia and why was she murdered? Now Gemma must find the killer, solve the mystery and clear her name if she's to have her cake-and serve it too. This PREQUEL to the OXFORD TEAROOM MYSTERIES can be read as a standalone, before or after any other book in the series.

What if you could live again and again, until you got it right? On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she? Darkly comic, startlingly poignant, and utterly original: this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best.