Paige Shelton – författare

Beth Rivers is still in Alaska. The unidentified man who kidnapped her in her home of St. Louis hasn’t been found yet, so she’s not ready to go back.However, as October comes to a close, Benedict is feeling more and more like her new home. Beth has been working on herself: She’s managed to get back to writing, and she’s enjoying these beautiful months between summer and winter in Alaska.But everything in Benedict changes after a mudslide exposes a world that had been hidden for years. Suddenly, two mud-covered and silent girls appear, and a secret trapper’s house is found in the woods. The biggest surprise, though, is a dead and frozen woman’s body in the trapper’s shed. No one knows who she is, but the man who runs the mercantile, Randy, seems to be in the middle of all the mysteries.Unable to escape her journalistic roots, Beth is determined to answer the questions that arrive: Are the mysterious girls and the frozen body connected? Can Randy possibly be involved? And - most importantly - can she answer these questions before the cold wind sweeping over the town and the townspeople descends for good?

When Delaney wins a special Hidden Door Festival invitation to artist Ryory Bennigan's studio, she isn’t sure quite what to expect. What she finds is an elusive fellow obsessed with the Picts - complete with his own versions of their blue tattoos and vibrant red hair - recreating the stones they left behind. She also meets a visiting paleontologist, Dr. Adam Pace, from the University of Kansas attempting to sell an artifact that might just explain what the Picts' language really sounded like.Or at least that’s what he claimed the artifact was for. Before the deal can close and Ryory can get a closer look at it, Dr. Pace is found dead.With the police dragging their feet in the investigation, Delaney takes it upon herself to dig into Dr. Pace's past. Her research goes murky as she quickly discovers Pace’s shady background - selling fake dinosaur bones and running into some 3D-printing trouble back in Kansas. Could his past have come back to bite him in Edinburgh? And what does his questionable background mean for the mysterious Pictish artifact he was trying to sell to Ryory? Delaney will have to dust off her magnifying glass to uncover the truth behind this case… or risk becoming a pile of bones herself.

When Delaney wins a special Hidden Door Festival invitation to artist Ryory Bennigan's studio, she isn’t sure quite what to expect. What she finds is an elusive fellow obsessed with the Picts - complete with his own versions of their blue tattoos and vibrant red hair - recreating the stones they left behind. She also meets a visiting paleontologist, Dr. Adam Pace, from the University of Kansas attempting to sell an artifact that might just explain what the Picts' language really sounded like.Or at least that’s what he claimed the artifact was for. Before the deal can close and Ryory can get a closer look at it, Dr. Pace is found dead.With the police dragging their feet in the investigation, Delaney takes it upon herself to dig into Dr. Pace's past. Her research goes murky as she quickly discovers Pace’s shady background - selling fake dinosaur bones and running into some 3D-printing trouble back in Kansas. Could his past have come back to bite him in Edinburgh? And what does his questionable background mean for the mysterious Pictish artifact he was trying to sell to Ryory? Delaney will have to dust off her magnifying glass to uncover the truth behind this case… or risk becoming a pile of bones herself.

One winter's night, bookseller Delaney Nichols and her coworker Hamlet are invited to a Burns Night dinner, a traditional Scottish celebration of the poet Robert Burns. The dinner takes place at Burns House itself, a tiny cottage not far from the Cracked Spine bookshop. There, they learn of a longstanding feud between Edwin, Delaney's boss, and one of the other invitees, who suspected Edwin for burning down his own bookshop twenty years ago.But after the dinner, there’s another fire. The Burns House itself is burned to the ground, and this time there’s a body among the ruins. When Hamlet is accused of the crime, Delaney rushes to prove his innocence, only to discover that he might actually have a plausible motive...

When Edwin, Delaney’s boss at the Cracked Spine bookstore, leaves town on secret business, Delaney is called upon to guide his yearly literary tour around Edinburgh. But on the first night of the tour, at the inn where the tour group is staying, the inn manager falls - or is pushed - off the roof of the inn, and killed. Then, one of the tour members disappears, leaving a trail of puzzles in her wake.In a race against the clock, Delaney sets out on the expedition of her life, following clues around Edinburgh to get to the bottom of this mystery. Exploring sights from Greyfriars Bobby to the Royal Mile to the Sir Walter Scott Monument, she'll have to put the pieces together quickly, or the bookstore's survival could be on the line... as well as her own.

When Delaney's boss's friend claims to have found something on her property, an estate in the village of Roslin, Edwin sends Delaney out to investigate. Could Jolie possibly have in her possession a priceless relic, a Crusader Sword? But when Delaney arrives at Jolie's estate, she is greeted by a legal team with a vested interest in the property. Delaney and Jolie manage to remove the intruders, but as they're examining the antique sword, they hear a scream, and meet a much less welcome discovery: a body.As Delaney digs deeper, she discovers Jolie's own fascinating history. Jolie's mother had long claimed that her daughter was the rightful heir to the throne, not Elizabeth II, because of an affair she claimed to have with King Edward VIII. The only evidence, however, is in the form of a journal that one of Edward’s secretaries kept. The puzzles become more confusing when a connection is uncovered between this far-fetched story and the murdered man. And shortly thereafter, the journal goes missing. Delaney will have to read between the lines to put together the pieces...or become history herself.