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Hexes & Hardcovers: A Cornish Bookshop Cozy Mystery
Some bookshops just sell books. Finch & Fable reads them.
When Elowen Finch inherited her great-aunt's magical bookshop on the Cornish coast, she got the shop cat, a lifetime supply of ink-stained cardigans, and an ability she'd never quite the power to read the emotional residue left behind in old documents.
She also got a problem.
A mysterious annotated property record turns up in an estate donation — and two days after Elowen sells it to a nervous historian named Percival Alder, he turns up dead at the foot of the harbour wall. The book is gone. And the records inside it, if genuine, would prove that Blackwater Quay's most powerful family built their fortune on two centuries of fraud — right where a fifty-million-pound development is about to break ground.
Aided by Atlas, her magically perceptive cat, Benji the café owner who commits to the sidekick role with alarming enthusiasm, and the formidable Mrs. Tilling — retired headmistress, unofficial town historian, devastatingly accurate gossip — Elowen must use her gift to uncover what the ink remembers before someone decides she knows too much.
Hexes & Hardcovers is the first book in the Blackwater Quay cozy mystery series — warm, witty, and steeped in the atmosphere of a Cornish harbour town where the secrets run centuries deep and the margins of old books remember everything.
Perfect for fans of T.E. Kinsey, Paige Shelton, and Juliet Blackwell.
When Elowen Finch inherited her great-aunt's magical bookshop on the Cornish coast, she got the shop cat, a lifetime supply of ink-stained cardigans, and an ability she'd never quite the power to read the emotional residue left behind in old documents.
She also got a problem.
A mysterious annotated property record turns up in an estate donation — and two days after Elowen sells it to a nervous historian named Percival Alder, he turns up dead at the foot of the harbour wall. The book is gone. And the records inside it, if genuine, would prove that Blackwater Quay's most powerful family built their fortune on two centuries of fraud — right where a fifty-million-pound development is about to break ground.
Aided by Atlas, her magically perceptive cat, Benji the café owner who commits to the sidekick role with alarming enthusiasm, and the formidable Mrs. Tilling — retired headmistress, unofficial town historian, devastatingly accurate gossip — Elowen must use her gift to uncover what the ink remembers before someone decides she knows too much.
Hexes & Hardcovers is the first book in the Blackwater Quay cozy mystery series — warm, witty, and steeped in the atmosphere of a Cornish harbour town where the secrets run centuries deep and the margins of old books remember everything.
Perfect for fans of T.E. Kinsey, Paige Shelton, and Juliet Blackwell.
251 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 10, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 6, 2026
Good story but writing needs to be fixed
Its a good book and story. Only problem I have with it is that it jumps. I read a part and it jumps ahead them comes back repeating the same part. So, I get lost for second. If the kindle edition had not done that I'd have given five stars.
Its a good book and story. Only problem I have with it is that it jumps. I read a part and it jumps ahead them comes back repeating the same part. So, I get lost for second. If the kindle edition had not done that I'd have given five stars.
June 29, 2026
Good mhystery
Ellowen and her friends become involved in a mystery involving land fraud. Then a murder occurs, it's very enjoyable as she goes about either friends and her cat to solve the mystery.she's left with a big decision, keep hiding the fraud or put it out in the open. Read the book to find out what she chooses.
Ellowen and her friends become involved in a mystery involving land fraud. Then a murder occurs, it's very enjoyable as she goes about either friends and her cat to solve the mystery.she's left with a big decision, keep hiding the fraud or put it out in the open. Read the book to find out what she chooses.
June 22, 2026
Can't quite make up my mind about this one. The repetition of something happening (like there was a rewrite but the first version never got deleted) was a bit annoying, but sadly happening more often these days. But the people sound quite real, and it's easily read. The whole investigation was messy as the book said, and I was a bit lost at times - when people were loudly claiming to have been wrongly accused of something when she just reported a theory to her police pal (the least believable character, imo). Anyway, worth a read, and I plan to read the next to work out what I really think.
March 18, 2026
Excellent mystery, slow but good character development. Several fairly obvious ‘holes’, witnesses not asked to id suspects, things slightly out of order, but this didnt interfere with progress of story too much. Overall I enjoyed it and look forward to further from Mr Rudd
July 1, 2026
Wonderfully suspenseful story about smartly, serenely, and resourcefully solving a poignant mystery!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews