Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce is an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. In the summer of 1950, a series of inexplicable events strikes Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that her family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp pinned to its beak. Later, Flavia finds a man dying in the cucumber patch. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw.

"Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop's Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce's sister Ophelia is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. "A church is a wonderful place for a wedding," muses Flavia, "surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar." Flavia is not your normal twelve-year-old girl. An expert in the...

""The world's greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth" (The Seattle Times), Flavia de Luce, returns in a twisty new mystery novel from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley. In the wake of an unthinkable family tragedy, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is struggling to fill her empty days. For a needed escape, Dogger, the loyal family servant, suggests a boating trip for Flavia and her two older sisters. As their...

Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, sets out to solve the murder of a beloved puppeteer. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can't solve--without Flavia's help.

When the tomb of St. Tancred is opened at a village church in Bishop's Lacey, its shocking contents lead to another case for Flavia de Luce, where greed, pride, and murder result in old secrets coming to light.

"In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. She is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill and is hospitalized. Looking for something to do, Flavia is eager to run an errand, delivering a message from the vicar's wife to a reclusive wood-carver. Flavia stumbles upon the poor man's body hanging upside down on the back...