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Lantern & Quill Bookshop #8
The Ashes of Crooked Lane
Some buildings keep their history in ledgers. The Lantern & Quill kept one in the wall.
Crooked Lane's Open Doors Weekend should mark the end of months of dust and scaffolding at Charlie Vale's bookshop. Instead, the renovation turns up a soot-darkened tin box beneath the cellar stair—three old ledgers filled with aliases, medicines, and secret routes through Bramblewick, from the years before Wren owned the shop.
Before Charlie can read more than a few lines, someone sets fire to The Lantern & Quill. The blaze is contained, but the heat and hose water break open a sealed section of the cellar—and human remains hidden there since the civic unrest of 1972, when the bookshop sheltered tenants and students under curfew.
The ledgers tell of a frightened boy who once betrayed the cellar's refuge, then spent a lifetime trying to repair the harm—and of the promise Wren inherited to keep his name safe. Now a respected man would rather burn the refuge to the ground than let that promise fail. As Charlie and Detective Jonah Reed trace the modern fire through access logs and frozen ash, the old cellar yields a harder what does a home owe the dead, and what does it owe the living?
The Lantern & Quill Mysteries, Book Eight. A cozy about refuge, inheritance, and the promises buried under an old building. A complete standalone.
Perfect for fans of Kate Carlisle's Bibliophile Mysteries, Jenn McKinlay's Library Lover's Mysteries, and Ellery Adams's Book Retreat Mysteries.
.
Crooked Lane's Open Doors Weekend should mark the end of months of dust and scaffolding at Charlie Vale's bookshop. Instead, the renovation turns up a soot-darkened tin box beneath the cellar stair—three old ledgers filled with aliases, medicines, and secret routes through Bramblewick, from the years before Wren owned the shop.
Before Charlie can read more than a few lines, someone sets fire to The Lantern & Quill. The blaze is contained, but the heat and hose water break open a sealed section of the cellar—and human remains hidden there since the civic unrest of 1972, when the bookshop sheltered tenants and students under curfew.
The ledgers tell of a frightened boy who once betrayed the cellar's refuge, then spent a lifetime trying to repair the harm—and of the promise Wren inherited to keep his name safe. Now a respected man would rather burn the refuge to the ground than let that promise fail. As Charlie and Detective Jonah Reed trace the modern fire through access logs and frozen ash, the old cellar yields a harder what does a home owe the dead, and what does it owe the living?
The Lantern & Quill Mysteries, Book Eight. A cozy about refuge, inheritance, and the promises buried under an old building. A complete standalone.
Perfect for fans of Kate Carlisle's Bibliophile Mysteries, Jenn McKinlay's Library Lover's Mysteries, and Ellery Adams's Book Retreat Mysteries.
.
215 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 29, 2026
About the author
K.J. McGillick
50 books176 followersK. J. McGillick writes legal and psychological thrillers shaped by nearly three decades inside the courtroom and a background in nursing. Her stories are built the way real cases are built — on forensic detail, procedural reality, and the pressure of a system where truth and verdict don't always align.
Art history runs through everything she writes. A lifelong fascination
with forgery, provenance, and the crimes hidden in beautiful objects
threads through her work, alongside a deep interest in Tudor England and the women history tends to misplace or rewrite. Her cozy mystery series range from a Vermont bookshop to a Northumberland village to the windswept Yorkshire coast — each one grounded in place, character, and the particular satisfaction of a puzzle solved.
She is the author of more than thirty independently published works — novels, novellas, and short fiction — spanning legal thrillers, cozy mysteries, and historical fiction. Across all of them, one idea holds: the truth is rarely where people expect to find it.
Originally from New York, she now lives in metro Atlanta — usually with a cup of coffee nearby and a notebook within reach.
Check out her books at https://kjmcgillick.com/
Art history runs through everything she writes. A lifelong fascination
with forgery, provenance, and the crimes hidden in beautiful objects
threads through her work, alongside a deep interest in Tudor England and the women history tends to misplace or rewrite. Her cozy mystery series range from a Vermont bookshop to a Northumberland village to the windswept Yorkshire coast — each one grounded in place, character, and the particular satisfaction of a puzzle solved.
She is the author of more than thirty independently published works — novels, novellas, and short fiction — spanning legal thrillers, cozy mysteries, and historical fiction. Across all of them, one idea holds: the truth is rarely where people expect to find it.
Originally from New York, she now lives in metro Atlanta — usually with a cup of coffee nearby and a notebook within reach.
Check out her books at https://kjmcgillick.com/
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