The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

From worldwide renowned and Dagger Award-winning author Alan Bradley, comes a completely captivating mystery featuring one of fiction's most amazing sleuths: Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce is a gifted and dangerously intelligent girl who has a strong interest in chemistry and a knack for investigating crimes. This time, Flavia has to sort through two deaths that were separated in time but connected by the most unlikely of links.

In the picturesque English village of Bishop's Lacey, Flavia believes her days of detecting crimes are finished. However, Rupert Porson has an unlucky run-in with electricity. Though who would do such a thing and why, the adored puppeteer has had his own strings snapped. Flavia finds the questions fascinating enough to distract her from her chemical experiments and plans to get revenge on her annoying older sisters. With her dependable bicycle, Astride Gladys, Flavia departs from the dilapidated de Luces estate to uncover the most lethal secrets of Bishop's Lacey.

Is the insane resident of Gibbet Wood more knowledgeable than she is revealing? What about the peculiar care the vicar gave to the mute lady in the dovecote? There's also a repulsive spinster aunt, a German pilot who is infatuated with the Brontë sisters, and a box of chocolates that have been poisoned. The most concerning of all is Nialla, Porson's endearing but unstable helper. All the signs lead to a strange death that occurred years ago, a case that the local constables are unable to solve without Flavia's assistance. Is our brash heroine now in over her head after getting so close to the person who is covertly controlling this deadly dance?