The Author's Guide to Murder: A Novel

Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote in this witty locked room mystery by New York Times bestselling team of novelists: Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists. The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together: a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious. Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death? A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!

About the Author

Beatriz Williams is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including The Beach at Summerly, Our Woman in Moscow, and The Summer Wives, as well as four other novels cowritten with Lauren Willig and Karen White. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.Lauren Willig is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City.Karen White is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Dreams of Falling and The House on Prytania, as well as the Tradd Street mystery series. She currently writes what she refers to as “grit lit”—Southern women’s fiction. She is a graduate of the American School in London and has a BS in management from Tulane University. When not writing, she spends her time reading, singing, and avoiding cooking. She has two grown children and currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and two spoiled Havanese dogs.