Stamps, Scones, and Strikethrough – Paperback

Flossie Fairweather gave up sixteen years as a London accountant after a panic attack on the Tube. Her great-aunt Maud has left her a village post office in the Cotswolds, a pile of green ledgers and a flat above the shop. A year of quiet should do her good.

Then the register has a page cut out, the spare key is tied in the wrong knot, and the old squire is found dead in the sorting room. Flossie, who cannot leave a column unbalanced, begins to notice what does not add up: a stamp count in the wrong handwriting, a registered parcel to an address that does not exist, and a village that is hurrying towards a vote on the one meadow everyone wants.

Inspector Tom Croft is thorough, Dr Julian Rhys is kind and slightly mysterious, and Bea Higgins’s rooster crows at everything. Everyone in Little Marshford was somewhere else that night, and Flossie is beginning to think the friendliest of them is lying.

A warm, funny English village mystery with a rooster, a ledger, and a lemon drizzle recipe at the back.